We've all seen that vCenter Orchestrator (vCO) is quite powerful in automating many aspects of your Infrastructure through the variety of specific and generic plug-ins. While there are hundreds of workflows and actions for vCenter included in a clean install of vCO, they simply don't cover every single thing you may want to do. One such example has come up a few times in the VMware Communities: Managing Services. The following article will walk you through creating a simple workflow that allows you to manage services on a specified ESXi (VC:HostSystem) server.

With the release of vCloud director 1.5 a new important API feature was introduced : the query service. Quoting the "What's new" whitepaper: VMware vCloud Director 1.5 also introduces a VMware vCloud API query service, which can significantly improve developer efficiency, by minimizing the number of API requests and the amount of data transferred for an API client to obtain needed information. Example query parameters include sorting and ordering, pagination, filtering, projection, and expressions.

Quoting the product page VMware vCenter Configuration Manager, a key part of the VMware vCenter Operations Management Suite, automates configuration management across virtual, physical and cloud environments. Enterprises can use vCenter Configuration Manager to continuously audit the configurations of VMware Infrastructure (including VMware ESX, ESXi, vCenter, vCloud Director and vShield) as well as Windows, Linux and Unix operating systems. Easily maintain configuration compliance against internal standards, security best practices, vendor hardening guidelines and regulatory mandates.

vCenter Orchestrator 4.2.1 has been released as part of the vCenter Server 5.0 update 1. This is the first common release for the Windows (Build 555) and Appliance (Build 612841) version. This release contains several improvements and bug fixes such as: The app-server/server/vmo/log/script-logs.log now automatically include the workflow the log is coming from using the format: {code}<Date> <Severity> [SCRIPTING_LOG] [<Workflow> (<Execution start date>)] <Message>{/code} SSH plug-in does not fail anymore transfering files.

If you like the VMware vCenter Orchestrator (vCO) Appliance because it is easy to deploy, configure and use then you may want to improve it with enabling additional features. I like very much the vCO appliance but I recognize it has a few shortcomings: The vCO web start client does not work well on Mac since it does not preserve the client preferences. I am missing local shell control and live logs.

Another new VMware plug-in release for vCenter Orchestrator, this time for vCenter Chargeback Manager. You can use the plug-in to run Orchestrator workflows that automate vCenter Chargeback processes. In this release, the plug-in contains sample workflows. You can also create custom workflows that implement the plug-in API to automate tasks in your vCenter Chargeback Manager environment. The vCenter Chargeback Manager plug-in API provides various Javascript objects such as cost models, fixed costs, and hierarchies, that are created in you vCenter Chargeback Manager instance.

Question: Just curious if you have ever experienced a lag in what VMware vCenter Orchestrator (vCO) sees in vCloud Director (vCD)? I discovered that the workflows are failing because it seems like the data gets stale. Sometimes the new vApp shows up to vCO and other times it takes time... sometimes it seems like things are completely stale. I waited about 30 minutes and it still wasn't showing up when I queried the vApps available.

The overall goal of the Custom Deploy vApp workflow is to provide a single call workflow that is capable of instantiating a vApp Template from vCloud Director (vCD) and performing a number of operations on the resulting vApp before actually deploying and powering it on. The workflow is intended to be an example and starting point for deployments that require any or all of these features. It can also be called via 3rd party connectors using the vCenter Orchestrator SOAP API.

The virtual Insanity blog has a good article describing the VMware virtual Customer Lab (vCL) consisting in a fully automated cloud solution where users can checkout VMware software solutions for 14 days of testing and training/education. The article explains what is the vCL and how it works. A part of the solution involves a vCO powered request / approval portal. Read more about it here.

VMware Solution Exchange (VSX) Enables Customers to Discover, Evaluate and Expedite Buying Process for Joint Solutions through Direct Engagement with Partners and Developers. This are important news for vCenter Orchestrator. Here is what these involve: vSphere customers will now find all the vCenter Orchestrator plug-ins in a single location. vCenter Orchestrator is bundled with some plug-ins but VMware and partners have provided several additional ones. The solution exchange will feature the latest version of all VMware and all VMware partners vCenter Orchestrator plug-ins.