VMware has just made available its Orchestration plug-in leveraging vCloud Director 5.1 latest and greatest features. This is the most complete automation solution for vCloud Director and is a free download !
To put things in perspective the 1.0 version of the plug-in was released months after vCloud Director 1.0, the 1.5 release weeks after vCloud Director 1.5, the 5.1 version is released together with vCloud Director 5.1. Kudos to the VMware engineering team who have automated the plug-in build process so much that the plug-in could accomodate the changes in pre-release vCloud Director version so quickly.
As part of the Cloud Infrastructure and Management Center of Excellence Team who worked on this project we are glad to announce the release of the new vCloud Architecture Toolkit. Amongst many enhancements, this version covers vCenter Orchestrator best practices that have been proven in real-world enterprise and service provider cloud deployments. It also includes a Workflow examples implementation guide and its workflows.
Quoting the vCAT page:
The VMware vCloud Architecture Toolkit (vCAT) is a set of reference documents designed to help you construct a superior working cloud solution leveraging current technologies, recommended practices and innovative tools that have been proven in real-world enterprises.
VMware released the most important upgrade of vCenter Orchestrator. vCenter Orchestrator 5.1 is providing important enhancements geared towards the end user.
vCenter Orchestrator, formely VMO (VMware Orchestrator) and (VS-O) Dunes Virtual Service Orchestrator) was packaged as part of vCenter Server since vSphere4.
As part of this was a rebranding effort and an exhaustive vCenter plug-in synched with the vCenter server release. A year later the 4.1 version brought in scalability with moving to a 64 Bits JVM, performance improvements and reliabilty improvements.
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.
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.
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 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.
