Following their press-release and VMworld 2011 presentation Infoblox has now published a technical note which can help you to learn how the Infoblox VMware vCenter Orchestrator Plug-in alleviates the challenges of IP Address Management within rapidly expanding virtualized environments. Quoting a part of the Tech Note: The plug-in was developed for and is delivered with the VMware vCenter Orchestrator (vCO), which works in tandem with the VMware vCloud Director (vCD). The vCD provides automated IP addressing and related management capabilities in real time as virtual machines are created and destroyed.

vCenter Orchestrator 4.2 shipped with vCenter 5 including a vCenter 4.1 plug-in. While being usable with vCenter 5 it does not leverage the new functionality of vCenter 5. This has now being taken care of with the release of the vCenter 5 plug-in. Not only the plug-in exposes 100% of the vCenter 5 API it also provides a lot of additional workflows for networking and host configuration. Some of these workflows include:

This SNMP plug-in allows vCenter Orchestrator to connect and receive information from Simple Network Management Protocol enabled systems. In terms of capabilities the plug-ins allows to: Register SNMP hosts, Add SNMP GET, GETNEXT and GETBULK queries to retrieve device from host MIBs (Management Information Base) using OIDs (Object Identifier): Running these workflows will add new items to the inventory. Set policies to listen to trap events coming from SNMP hosts and to start remediation workflows

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.

Growing interest in vCenter and vCloud Orchestration has led to the creation of a new training course for vCenter Orchestrator. This three days hands on training is available in classroom, onsite or online. It is aimed at vCenter Orchestrator beginners and requires vSphere administrators and basic scripting skills. Areas covered are installation and configuration, architecture, use of the library workflows and development of custom workflows interacting with external systems. For knowing some of the folks involved in designing and giving the course (Brian and Jörg) we heartily recommend it.

Download the VMware Press FREE Preview sampler. Containing advance chapters from upcoming VMware Press books and from author Cody Bunch, Mike Laverick, and Mostafa Khalil. Automating vSphere: With VMware vCenter Orchestrator by Cody Bunch, ISBN: 9780321799913, December 2011 CHAPTER 6: Introduction to Workflow-Fu Administering VMware Site Recovery Manager 5.0 by Mike Laverick, ISBN: 9780321799920, December, 2011 CHAPTER 9: Configuring the Protected Site CHAPTER 16: Upgrading from SRM 4.1 to SRM 5.

Quoting the Infoblox press-release: Today at VMworld® 2011, Infoblox Inc. announced it is delivering a fully integrated plug-in for the VMware vCloud® Orchestrator community. Working with VMware vCloud Director™, the integrated solution provides automated IP addressing and related management capabilities in real-time as virtual machines are created. As a result, the Infoblox plug-in accelerates private and public cloud deployment, simplifies management and bridges network and virtual IT team silos by enabling automated assignment of IP addresses to virtual machines.

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.

An article listing the vCenter Orchestrator sessions, demos and hands on labs has been posted on the vCO blog. This year Orchestrator is present and used in the background in a lot more places than in the past.Sessions: Go to CIM3235 to hear about how customers use vCenter Orchestrator as an automation and integration platform for vCloud Director and how VMware IT did it. Go to TEX2923 to learn about workflow development techniques from one of the most experienced vCenter Orchestrator partner / trainer and from VMware engineering.