It has just been announced on the VMware Orchestrator communities, several plug-ins have been updated with some critical updates, some new requested features and some minor fixes.
Quoting the communities post:
vCO-Powershell-Plug-in -1.0.1 - kerberos support added
vCO-SQL-Plug-in -1.1.0 - two related plugins combined with auto-generation as well as advanced SQL scripts. A few important issues fixed.
vCO-vCenter-Plug-in - 5.0.1.1 - Critical update. Fixes a major issue with performance and losing attributes value.
Quoting the release notes:
The VMware vCenter Orchestrator plug-in for vShield allows vShield administrators to simplify the management of their vShield infrastructure by extending the robust workflow automation platform of VMware to the vShield environment. These workflows are built using the drag-and-drop capability of the workflow editor in the Orchestrator client. vCenter Orchestrator uses the plug-in to access the functionality of vShield and the vShield APIs. The included, pre-built workflows simplify the process to get you started with custom workflow creation.
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.
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.
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.
