When provisioning a server via PXE or ISO install you might run into a problem where you see your machines being in an ‘Installing OS’ state (between ‘BuildingMachine’ and ‘MachineProvisioned’) though the actual installation has finished long time ago. This might be because the ‘Guest Agent’ is either not installed on the image/machine or because there is no connectivity between the machine and vCAC (eg for security reason). Instead of waiting for the provisioning to time out there is a workaround that you might want to use: you manually advance the workflow to the next (i.e. Completed) state.

In order to do this you will lookup the (child) provisioning workflow for your machine via the WorkflowMaps and initiate a ChangeStateRequest as illustrated in the following example:

PS > $m.GetType().FullName;
DynamicOps.ManagementModel.ManagementModelEntities
PS > $Machine = $m.VirtualMachines |? VirtualMachineName -eq 'myServer';
PS > $wfMap = $m.WorkflowMaps |? VirtualMachineID -eq $Machine.VirtualMachineID;
PS > $wfMap
VirtualMachineID                     ChildWorkflowID
----------------                     ---------------
561e4136-a0ee-4746-8108-b3aa8ca49352 8836d18a-ed82-4bcc-bb76-a29632bdd7b3

PS > $csr = New-Object DynamicOps.ManagementModel.ChangeStateRequest;
PS > $csr
WorkflowID                           NextState IsEvent
----------                           --------- -------
00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000

PS > $csr.WorkflowID = $wfMap.ChildWorkflowID;
PS > $csr.NextState = 'BuildComplete';
PS > $csr.IsEvent = $false;
PS > $m.AddToChangeStateRequests($csr);
PS > $m.UpdateObject($csr);
PS > $m.SaveChanges();

The API equivalent would look like this:

PS > $Method = 'POST'
PS > $Uri = 'https://vcac52.sharedop.org/repository/Data/ManagementModelEntities.svc/ChangeStateRequests'
PS > $ContentType = 'application/atom+xml;type=entry'
PS > $Body = @"
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" standalone="yes"?>
<entry xmlns:d="http://schemas.microsoft.com/ado/2007/08/dataservices" xmlns:m="http://schemas.microsoft.com/ado/2007/08/dataservices/metadata" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom">
 <title />
 <author>
  <name />
 </author>
 <updated>2014-02-13T05:42:00.123456Z</updated>
 <id />
 <content type="application/xml">
  <m:properties>
   <d:IsEvent m:type="Edm.Boolean">false</d:IsEvent>
   <d:NextState>BuildComplete</d:NextState>
   <d:WorkflowID m:type="Edm.Guid">8836d18a-ed82-4bcc-bb76-a29632bdd7b3</d:WorkflowID>
  </m:properties>
 </content>
</entry>
"@
PS > Invoke-RestMethod -Method $Method -Uri $Uri -Body $Body -UseDefaultCredentials -ContentType $ContentType;

After issuing this request you will see your machine advancing to the ‘MachineProvisioned’ state.

Note: Depending on your workflow you might see a step with a slightly different name, you should have a look at the workflow states for your specific workflow and advance to the next desired state.