I am always asked why choose orchestration over scripting. The short answer is that orchestration has a lot more to offer; the long answer is below.
I started to work in IT in 1995 after getting my analyst-programmer degree. Naturally I used scripted automation right away and never stopped since then. I have used batch, shell, vbscript, kix, perl and various other scripting languages to automate desktop and server automated provisioning and operations in physical and then virtual environments in the early 2000s.
OK, so we told you about the great new plug-in that VMware has made available for vCO to work with AMQP, but now what? You'll need a couple things to get started before you can run off and code a bunch of cool workflows so let's step through this initial process...
Get and Install AMQP Server (RabbitMQ)
Configure Publisher (vCloud Director 1.5)
Configure Consumer (vCenter Orchestrator)
Apply Policy Template to create new Policy
How to create new Policy manually
Starting the Policy
Get and install an AMQP server.
In a previous article we demonstrated how vCenter Orchestrator can leverage the vCloud Director plug-in to automate tasks or create new functionality by combining them. These workflows are initiated by vCenter Orchestrator.
Now if you would like to have vCO triggering workflows based on vCloud Director events (For example an end user task started from the vCloud Director UI, a system event or a task started from the vCloud API) you will be able to leverage the vCloud Director 1.
VMware vCenter Orchestrator (vCO) keeps your last workflows inputs as long as you keep your vCO client open. It is very practical since it avoids filling all the input fields on each subsequent run of the same workflow.
Now if you close your client you have to refill these inputs except if ...
You use the following tip:
When your input are filled. Hold Alt and right click, A contextual menu appear.
With the increasing popularity of VMware vCenter Orchestrator, there is a growing desire to use it over SSL connections. While vCO supports this type of connectivity out of the box, it is not necessarily pre-configured automatically to have a proper SSL certificate. Regardless of how or where you import the default certificate, you are unlikely to get away from warnings such as:
Firefox Warning: Internet Explorer Warning:
After clicking "Continue to this website (not recommended).
A common task among vCenter Orchestrator (vCO) developers is to check the results of workflows that have already executed. This can be done in the vCO Client by clicking the plus sign next to the Workflow you are checking on, but this isn't always the most desirable method. For instance, you may have a vCO Policy/Task setup to check the executions of other workflows at a recurring interval. The following code can help guide you to gathering the desired information.
With the new released SOAP/REST plug-in you can automate everything you ever dreamed of! One of my favorite use cases is to automate the VMware Lab Manager operations with the SOAP plug-in. As many of you know the Lab Manager offers 2 API´s: an external and an internal one. The following examples are based on the internal API (https://YourLabManagerServer/LabManager/SOAP/LabmanagerInternal.asmx). This use case shows how to establish the VMware LabManager SOAP connection, create an new configuration, adding a template-based VM to the configuration, deploy the configuration and change the owner of the configuration.
If you ever wanted to start a workflow based on a VM triggering an alarm in vCenter the solution is a few click away.
The following action get all VMs that triggered alarms from any vCenter vCO is managing with filtering on Alarms names, acknowledged state, start time, status (warning, alert).
First go to the action tab. Right click on the root to create a new action module. Use the naming convention org.
If you thought vCO was powerful, think again. The new SOAP and REST plug-in are taking it to new levels. With the following tutorial you can in as little as 30 minutes and without a single line of code (yes really !) create a workflow that will update your Twitter status. If you never had a chance to do a vCO Tutorial this one is really an easy one for starting.
One thing vCO users and administrators always ask for is changing the boot order for virtual machines. The bad news is: It is part of the BIOS of the virtual machine (.nvram). But based on this community discussion and the solutions in PowerShell, I decided to test it with the vCenter Orchestrator and I was surprised how easy it is!
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 var changedValue = new Array(); changedValue[0] = new VcOptionValue(); changedValue[0].
