Virtualization Tips » Orchestrator

VMware needs to integrate Orchestrator into vCloud Director more to improve Cloud automation

Brian — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 13:04:59 +0000

In working on several Cloud related projects one of the items that sticks out to me is the need for deeper automation within the vCloud Director product. I understand this is still just version 1.5, but with how hard VMware is pushing the “Your Cloud” journey. I think that some parts are just not ready for what some companies need to do in the way of automation.

If self-service is suppose to be such a big part of Cloud, then the need for automation is going to play a big part. Not everything can be accomplished from creating templates and using customization to change the identity of the new VM. In server virtualization this worked great and saved time for most IT shops. But there were still manual processes that some shops needed to do. This breaks the idea of self-service IT, if a user still relies on someone to execute a manual process to have a VM or application provisioned from vCloud.

I guess what this mostly deals with is private cloud. Many IT shops are trying to automate the creation of as many servers and platforms as possible, to reduce their work load in provisioning new servers. But there are still some manual processes that need to take place and I think that being able to tie vCenter Orchestrator more tightly with vCloud Director could go a long way in help this issue.

Other cloud software companies such as DynamicOps are already doing this type of thing. By making the workflow or automation part of their offerings built into the same admin console. This allows for tight integration and opens up the options for what you are allowed to automate.

If you listen to rumors and in dark alleys you might hear that this type of integration is coming from VMware in a future release. Nobody knows if it will be the next release or even when that will happen.

About Brian

Brian is a Technical Architect for a VMware partner and owner of this website. He is active in the VMware community and is helps lead the Chicago VMUG group. This blog Virtualize Tips was started to document and remember things that I come across while working with tech.

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VMware Labs announces VIX Plugin for vCenter Orchestrator

Brian — Fri, 15 Oct 2010 18:14:12 +0000

Looks like the engineers at VMware are not slowing down with the cool toys they keep releasing via VMware Labs. These are usually side projects for them that are very helpful to the community. This one I can see a lot of possibilities for. The ability to copy files to and from a VM guest could save time. Also being able to run scripts and affected processes from outside the VM.

vCenter Orchestrator(vCO) supports extended functionality using plug-ins. This VIX plug-in allows users to automate virtual machine operations within guest operating systems as vCO Javascript objects and methods to create workflows to run operations within a Windows/Linux Guest. Some of the sample workflow provide the following functionality:

Check for a file or a directory in guest
Copy file from guest to vCO and from vCO to guest
Create, delete a file or a directory in guest
List directory content
List, stop processes in guest
Run a program or script in guest

You can download it from the following link – http://labs.vmware.com/flings/vix-vco .

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VMware Orchestrator is going to make Admins happy

admin — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 16:39:24 +0000

I’ve been wondering what would be possible with VMware Orchestrator. After some reading and attending product demos things are much clearer now. This tool is going to make automation of common tasks much easier for the admins that are not good script writers. Orchestrator provides a GUI to create work flows that will automate a large number of tasks. The Orchestrator will also allow plugins from 3rd parties to extend the functionality.

While all of these tasks were possible in the past either by manual methods or through scripting. If you were not good a creating your own scripts there is a very dedicated community around VMware and there most likely was already something out there that you could use. With Orchestrator you will have over 400 built in work flow options to perform tasks like find orphaned vm’s, vm’s with snapshots, convert to thin provisioning, add hosts and many other tasts.

Some even better news is that Orchestartor will work with both ESX 3.5 and vSphere 4 hosts. Each will be made available with a plugin and can talk to multiple vCenter servers for each generation.

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