VMworld 2013: Part 1: Getting Started with vCenter Orchestrator

Part 1: Getting Started with vCenter Orchestrator

James Bowling, General Datatech, LP

Savina Ilieva, VMware

VCM4875

#VCM4875

© 2013 General Datatech

Who Are These People?

• James Bowling, Cloud Architect, General Datatech, LP • Over 14 years experience in IT

• VCP5-DCV, VCP5-IaaS, VCP-Cloud

• VMware vExpert 2011, 2012, 2013

• Houston VMUG Leader (2011-Present)

• VMware vCO User Council Member

• Blog: http://vsential.com

• Savina Ilieva, Product Manager, VMware, Inc.

• Product Manager for vCenter Orchestrator

• 10 years experience in IT

• Part of vCenter Orchestrator Team since 2008

• Leading a team which released more than 10 vCO Plugins in one year

http://vsential.com/


Agenda

• vCenter Orchestrator Overview

• Installation/Configuration

• vCO Use Cases

• vCO Extensibility

• What’s New in 5.5

• Demo Interface and Features


What Are My Takeaways?

You will:

• Have an understanding of the

installation/configuration, new features

and integration

• Know some common use cases

• Have a basic knowledge of how to work

with vCO to automate/orchestrate

• Good understanding of what vCO is and

where it is positioned in today’s SDDC


What Makes the SDDC?

• Standardized • Homogeneous infrastructure delivered

across pools of standard x86 hardware, eliminating some complexity

• Holistic • A unified platform optimized for the entire

data center fabric, to flexibly support any and all workloads

• Resilient • A software-based architecture that

compensates for failing hardware, delivering unprecedented resiliency at minimum cost


What Makes the SDDC?

• Adaptive • Self-programmable infrastructure that

dynamically configures and reconfigures the environment according to changing application demands, for maximum performance, agility, and efficiency

• Automated • A management framework with built-in

intelligence to eliminate complex and brittle management scripts, for cloud-scale operations with less manual effort and significant cost savings


What Is vCenter Orchestrator?

"The most powerful product VMware (n)ever released!"


Fundamental IT Challenge

Infrastructure Operations

We have isolated automation initiatives, but getting all of our systems and teams to work in harmony is a different story! Provisioning still takes days or weeks…

Executing complex Cloud operations faster and at lower cost

We used to own the servers running our apps. Now we don’t know if the apps can get the resources they need to run well.

We’ve spent a fortune on monitoring tools. Why are our end users still the first to know about performance problems and why do they take so long to solve?

Forget rapid provisioning or decommissioning… … I’m expected to monitor AND support higher loads but cannot hire any new staff!

vCenter Orchestrator helps automate your Cloud


vCenter Orchestrator Overview

Features

Drag-&-drop

design

• Create powerful workflows easily by drop-&-dragging pre-built actions

Cloud

scalability

• Execute hundreds of workflows in parallel to meet Cloud scale

Flexible

triggers

• Launch workflows from user interface, web browser, schedule, event, and API

Automate

VMware

• 100% coverage of vSphere and vCloud Director APIs

• Unmatched VMware content

Included with

vSphere

• Included with vSphere at no extra cost

• Installed with vCenter

Key Benefits

• Reduce IT OpEx and total cost of ownership of VMware solutions

• Integrate VMware solutions into your IT environment and processes

• Automate your cloud and accelerate transition to “IT as a Service” model

Platform

Plug-ins Ecosystem

vSphere


High-Level Product Architecture

• Windows

• Mac & Linux

Designer

• SOAP

• REST

Web Services Operator

• vSphere Web Client

• Oracle

• MS SQL Server

• PostgreSQL

Workflow Library

Webview Library

Workflow Engine

…

vCO Platform (Access points)

Management Systems

IT Infrastructure

vCO Platform (Engine, 64-bit)

vCO Plug-Ins

……

• vCloud Automation Center

• Service Catalogs

• AMQP

• SNMP

External Notifications


Installation of vCO

Installation Types

• Bundled

• Standalone

• Appliance


Configuration of vCO


Main vCO Use Cases

VMware Cloud Service Provisioning

vCloud Automation Center (IaaS, & DaaS Automation )

Infrastructure Integration

• CMDB • DNS

• IPAM

• Load

Balancers

• Service Desk

• Monitoring

Systems

• Databases

• Web Services

• Etc.

Fabric Management Automation

vC

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ter

Orc

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trato

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Pro

cess

Au

tom

atio

n

vFabric Application Director (PaaS Automation )

Additional Use Cases:

o Automation of vSphere administrative tasks o Remediation of infrastructure failures o Automation of general IT admin tasks


Common Use Cases

Maintenance & Administration

Backup & restore operations

System upgrades & migrations

Continuous compliance

Triage & Remediation

Validate and/or create incidents

Incident enrichment

Complex remediation flows

Miscellaneous

System installations & patching

Report collection & dispatching

Other routine tasks


Example Workflows


Thousands of Out-of-the-Box

Workflows and Actions

• vCenter Server 4.0, 4.1, 5.0 & 5.1

• vCloud Director 1.0, 1.5 & 5.1

• vCloud Automation Center 5.1

• vCenter Update Manager 4.1, 5.0 & 5.1

• vCenter Chargeback 2.0

• vCenter Configuration Manager 5.5

• vCenter Orchestrator Multinode 5.0 & 5.1

• vCenter Operations Package - NEW

• vSphere Auto Deploy

• VMware Service Manager 9.1

• VMware Service Elasticity

• AMQP / RabbitMQ

• Email (POP3 and SMTP)

• HTTP-REST

• JDBC

• SOAP

• SNMP v1, v2c and v3

• SQL

• SSH

• Telnet

• XML

• BMC Atrium CMDB & Remedy – NEW

• Cisco UCS Manager

• EMC Unified Infrastructure Manager

• Egenera PAN Manager - NEW

• Infoblox NIOS

• Microsoft Active Directory

• Microsoft Windows PowerShell

• NetApp storage - NEW

• Radware vDirect

• ServiceNow - NEW

• Up.time Software

Standard Protocols

Partner Applications

A lot more coming soon!!!

VMware Applications


Need More Plug-ins –

Find Them at the VSX

• Facilitates integration with third party

technologies and proprietary systems

• Significantly expands vCloud Automation

Center’s automation library

Overview

Benefits

Single-stop marketplace for all

vCenter Orchestrator plug-ins!


vCO 5.5 ‒ What’s New


Further Integrate vCO within

vCloud Suite

• Facilitate vCO reuse by vCloud Suite

• Continue to provide stand-alone virtual appliance

• Provide remediation capabilities for vCenter

Operations

• vCO Remediation package for vCOPs

• Add automation and integration capabilities to

any VMware vCloud Suite product

• Reduce costs & MTTR by automating the

remediation of infrastructure failures

• Integrate vCOps with homegrown and

commercial Incident management systems

Overview

Benefits

Automate remediation and

reduce MTTR!


vCenter Orchestrator – Improves

Workflow Design Efficiency

• New workflow debugging capabilities

• Usability improvements

• Reduce workflow development and testing times

• Reduce the learning curve for designing

workflows

Overview Benefits


Optimize for Growing Clouds

• Improve scalability & availability

• Built-in HA & clustering

• Support external load balancers

• Extend the vCO REST API to:

• vCO server installation

• vCO server configuration

• Provide higher availability

• Scale orchestration capacity along with the

growth of your cloud

• Enable dynamic scale-up and scale-down of

orchestration capacity

Overview

Benefits

Orchestration HA and dynamic

elasticity!


Other Improvements

• Leverage vCO workflows in a localized environment

• Support simplified & traditional Chinese, French, German, Korean and Japanese

• Security improvements

• vCO VA hardening – OS Update and

Hardening scripts

• Extend the benefits of automation to non-English speaking vSphere administrators

• Reduced platform surface of vulnerability

Overview

Benefits


Enablement Resources

Getting started

More in-depth • blogs.vmware.com/orchestrator • vcoteam.info • professionalvmware.com • vcoportal.de • vsential.com • virtuallyGhetto.com


vCO Workflow Designer

• Drag and drop actions • Debugging - New • Conditional logic • Pause, wait until,

counters, etc. • Exception handling • Version control • Role-based access control • And more ...

~500 workflows and actions for vCenter Server and vCloud Director


Integration with vSphere Web Client

Integrate with vCO, and you get the integration with vSphere Web Client for free!

Your Workflows shown here


vCO Demonstration


Closing / Questions

http://blogs.vmware.com/orchestrator

28

Other VMware Activities Related to This Session

HOL:

HOL-SDC-1307

vCloud Automation Solutions

Breakout Session:

VCM5695

Part 2: How to Build a Self-Healing Data Center with vCenter

Orchestrator

THANK YOU

Part 1: Getting Started with vCenter Orchestrator

James Bowling, General Datatech, LP

Savina Ilieva, VMware

VCM4875

#VCM4875


Should I Use vCloud Automation

Center or vCO?

CMDB

DNS

IPAM

Load

Balancers

Service Desk

Monitoring

Systems

Databases

Web

Services

Etc. v

Cen

ter

Orc

hes

trato

r

Virtual Infrastructure

Virtual Datacenter

IT In

fras

tru

ctu

re &

O

pe

rati

on

s IT

Co

nsu

me

rs


vCO and vCAC Synergy

1 Enable your complex datacenter for the Cloud using platforms you already

have in house

3 Simplify your Cloud orchestration with complete management of virtual

& physical environments

2 Lower your costs – vCO Included with vCenter Server at no extra price

- vCAC included in the vCloud Suite Enterprise edition

4 Improve efficiency: By Creating Business resiliency, elastic capacity, and

streamline processes that cut across network, storage, and compute silos

5 Get it all from one place - VMWARE as single source for entire solution:

virtualization platform, management, services & support


Best Practices: When & What?

We recommend:

Technology

VMworld 2013: Part 1: Getting Started with vCenter Orchestrator