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Backup vCloud Director vApps automatically, driven by vCO

This video shows another example how powerful vCenter Orchestrator really is:

Auto-Create a new Backup Job, whenever a new vApp is deployed in vCloud Director

vCloud Director Backup driven by vCenter Orchestrator from Joerg Lew on Vimeo.

For that I used the AMQP-Plugin, so that the “Create VM“-Event in vCD triggers the Generate Backup Job-Workflow. This workflow calls out to a Powershell-Script to create a new Backup Job using the vendor’s snapin. I used Veeam Backup&Recovery, because they provide a lot of helpful Cmdlets to automate their backup solution.

What to learn?

  • For vCloud Administrators: vCO allows you to integrate vCD with the rest of your IT-world
  • For Backup Vendors: Provide a Plugin for vCO (or at least a basic API), and your customer can integrate your backup product with the rest of their IT-world.
    (Then you don’t even have to develop the integration for vCloud Director from scratch 😉 )
  • For every VMware User: Even without vCloud Director you can use vCO for a lot of cool stuff to integrate your IT-world (what about to create a new Backup Job whenever anybody deploys a Template in vCenter…?)
  • For all: Be creative! Everything is possible with vCO!

References (in case I kicked your mind :mrgreen:)

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Secret(?) #vCO Tips for #VMworld 2012

VMworld 2012 is coming (in fact, I’m writing this post on the plane to San Francisco  😎 ).

This year there will be a lot of great content about the Orchestrator, see this article on the official VMware Orchestrator Blog:
http://blogs.vmware.com/orchestrator/tag/vmworld-vco-vcenter-orchestrator-orchestration-breakout-sessions-plug-ins-vmware-f5-networks-infoblox-radware-vce-emc

About and in addition to these promising sessions, I have some “secret” special tips for you:

The #vBrownBag TechTalks

In the Communites/Blogger Lounge a bunch of lightning talks will be hosted, including some sessions about vCO:

  • Monday, 3pm: I will tell you a love story about vCO and WaveMaker (will there be an happy-end?)
  • Monday, 3:15pm: Maish Saidel-Keesing will talk about vCO hands-on labs: http://technodrone.blogspot.com/2012/08/T-4-to-VMworld.html
  • Tuesday, 11:45am: Edward Shen auto-deploys ESXi-hosts with vCO

See the complete agenda and the scheduling here:
http://www.virtualnetworkdesign.com/2012/08/20/techtalks-powered-by-vbrownbags-the-topics/
http://www.vmworld.com/docs/DOC-6032

Sorry, but not everybody can go to San Francisco!

<placeholder for a joke about flowers in your hair />

Great news for you: You can watch the sessions live and in color online  on http://livestream.com/vmwarecommunitytv

OPS-CSM1379 – Extending vCloud Director

No vCloud Director extension whithout vCO! I got word that you will learn how to provide “Availability as a Service” with vCD, RabbitMQ and vCO in this session.
including some brand-new never-published-before stuff….

OPS-CIM1274 – Building Cloud Services using VMware vCenter Orchestrator

I want to highlight this session, because: It is a Panel Session, Thomas Corfmat and Igor Stoyanov from VMware discuss and demonstrate Orchestrator use-cases with Sean Harrison (Nothrop Grumman), Vivienne Cleveland (FedEx Services) and James Bowling (iland Cloud Infrastructure).
This high-class cast promises great real-world stories about vCO!

Solution Exchange

More and more vendors present plugins for vCO… Ask them all about their integration with Orchestrator!
(In the past this was hard business, but if you keep asking, you will get to the proper person for a demo….)

Party (and everywhere else)

To qoute from the official Orchestrator Blog:

And as you roam the convention floors, be on the lookout for orchestration gurus like Burke Azbill, James Bowling, Cody Bunch, Bill Call, Christophe Decanini, Chris Knowles, Thomas Kraus, Savina Ilieva, William Lam, Joerg Lew and Igor Stoyanov.

Let’s see who can snap the most pictures with these workflow jedis… ;-)

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Orchestrator@VMworld2012

Summer’s coming, VMworld’s coming.  😎

This year there is a impressing number of sessions targeting vCenter Orchestrator available for public voting on http://www.vmworld.com/cfp.jspa

That means a great choice for to vote for you (and quite a competition for me  :mrgreen: )…

If you want to hear about how to create a self-service portal for your IT-Services leveraging vCO and Wavemaker, vote for Session 1638! Together with James Bowling (www.vsential.com) we will show you strategies to drag-and-drop develop a Wavemaker-based frontend for vCO Workflows. (As frequent reader of this blog you already might got some ideas  ;-))

In Session 1639 I will tell you something about using vCO as Integration Platform for your complete IT-Infrastructure. Based on real-life experiences I’ll show why and how you can use workflows to glue different systems together…

See you in San Francisco & Barcelona!

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There’s a new guitar in town!

An Orchestra typically needs more than one musician. And for a blog about vCenter Orchestrator it’s also a good idea to have more than one authors!

***DRUMROLL***  Let me introduce ……***DRUMROLL***… Christian Strijbos as co-author for vcoportal!

Christian works as Senior IT-Architect for a VMware Consulting Partner in Germany, helping customers of all sizes and all industries to design, implement, automate and orchestrate (obviously  :-D) their VMware environments. He holds VCDX3 and VCDX4 certifications (magic number: 64).

Current work in progress: Wavemaker and Orchestrator and (better(?): versus  :mrgreen: )  LDAP, much more in the pipeline… So, stay tuned for great articles coming soon!

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Cool JavaScript code in 140byt.es

This weekend I stumbled over a cool repository to see what’s possible in JavaScript even in very short code snippets:

http://140byt.es

There you find functions and other small examples of JavaScript code in Tweet-length. Mostly very elegant solutions, sometimes hard to understand directly, but always with a longer, annotated version.

Most functions can be used as-is in vCO Scriptable elements, like this one to figure out the ordinal suffix of a number (the “st” of 1st, “nd” of 2nd and so on):


function b(a){return["th","st","nd","rd"][(a=~~(a10&&a3?0:a]}

In a vCO Scriptable Element (or an Action) the annotated long version would look like this (theNumber is an IN-Parameter of type Number):


var ret = ordinal(theNumber);
System.log(theNumber + ret);

function ordinal(
a                         // number
){
return[
"th","st","nd","rd"     // array of ordinal suffixes
][
(a=~~                   // floor the value for usable index (integer)
(a10&&a3                      // all digits above 3 return "th"
?0                      // return "th" for above cases
:a                      // return "th", "st", "rd" for others
]
}

Just be aware that some of the snippets use the prototype-Feature of JavaScript (to extend basic objects with new methods). This is not available in vCO and you will get an error like

Cannot add a property to a sealed object: ….

But there are enough other functions for lots of nice use-cases in vCO. Enjoy! :mrgreen: