Posts Tagged "VMware Orchestrator"

VMware Labs announces VIX Plugin for vCenter Orchestrator

Posted by on Oct 15, 2010 in Labs, Orchestrator, VMware | 0 comments

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 .

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 Orchestrator is going to make Admins happy

Posted by on Oct 29, 2009 in Orchestrator, VMware | 0 comments

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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