---
title: "Best Practices for VMware Aria Automation Provider for NIOS DDI"
canonical: "https://docs.infoblox.com/space/ipamvmware8x/52049021/Best%20Practices%20for%20VMware%20Aria%20Automation%20Provider%20for%20NIOS%20DDI"
format: markdown
---
VMware Aria Automation Orchestrator is the workflow engine used to automate the provisioning or de-provisioning of new services that are based on virtual machines. An organization might execute provisioning by using an existing VMware Aria Automation Orchestrator interface, a third-party portal, or a customized portal for provisioning. The interface used for the process is generic to the operation of the VMware Aria Automation Provider for NIOS DDI.

Best practices for using the plug-In include the following:

- Ensure that you can connect to a specific NIOS appliance from VMware Aria Automation Orchestrator.
- <span style="color: #000000">On the NIOS appliance, define an admin account with the name of the VMware Aria Automation Orchestrator account that is performing the plug-in operations. This ensures that the event logs are directed to the correct administrator.</span>
- Avoid using the NIOS superuser account.
- Ensure that the extensible attributes are defined on the NIOS system to which the plug-in is connected.
- When production requires a new VM in a particular network or range, this DHCP network or range must already be defined in NIOS.
- When configuring individual workflows for operation, ensure that all values are accurate. If any value is incorrect, the workflow does not execute properly.
- The DHCP network or range should be used exclusively by VMware Aria Automation Orchestrator and should not be used to define IP configurations for other networks or devices.
- Ensure that each workflow call for creating a VM has the corresponding workflow call that destroys that VM. Otherwise, the synchronized information in the NIOS or vNIOS appliance and vCenter could get out of sync.
- Deploy the Cloud Network Automation license and use the Cloud API to improve visibility on the use of VM IP addresses and DNS records.
- <span style="color: #000000">Consider deploying Cloud Platform appliances. This will improve the scalability of APIs and local survivability for large-scale deployments of single-site and multi-site data centers.</span>
- When the number of networks and ranges in NIOS is large (more than 1000), by default, the plug-in retrieves only the first 1000 networks. To retrieve all networks and ranges from NIOS, add the custom endpoint property Infoblox.IPAM.GetIPRanges.maxResults in the plug-in integration.
- Reserve the IP address to be assigned to a router to exclude it from the pool of available IP addresses.