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New PowerShell Server v5 provides GREAT improvements for PowerSSHell-Plugin

By
Joerg Lew
– September 20, 2011Posted in: Uncategorized

PowerShellInside released a new version 5 of their PowerShell Server. It brings new features…

  • GSSAPI authentication (NTLM)
  • Support for SSH Tunneling
  • New Licensing Options – Easier to manage licensing based on the maximum number of connections.
  • Upgraded FREE Personal Edition – Now with the ability to run as a service and on server operating systems.
  • SCP Secure File Transfer

… and a new licensing model, based on concurrent connections.

This is really GREAT NEWS for the PowerSSHell-Plugin for vCO, because it provides fair licensing for the Orchestrator use-cases.

Impacts for the Plugin:

  • The current version works well with PowerShell Server v5!
  • New features of the server are not represented in the plugin yet.
  • The FREE Personal Edition might fit for your needs now: Because it can run on a Server-OS, as Service, with no limitation to the logged-in user for some Use-Cases this is enough!

The new release adds a bunch of new ideas to the roadmap, so not only stay tuned, but participate on the discussion on http://getsatisfaction.com/vcoportal!

Meanwhile: I can provide you a 20%-Discount Voucher for PowerShell Server-Licenses! If you’re interested, contact me!

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Good read: Custom vs. Generic Plugins for vCO-Integration

By
Joerg Lew
– September 19, 2011Posted in: Integrate vCO, Plugins

Sergio (@sergiosagu) posted a great document in the Orchestrator Plugin SDK-section of the VMware Communities:

“Should I create a new Plugin for vCO…”

…or use one of the generic Plugins for REST or SOAP to create my integration?

It’s absolutely worth reading, even when you don’t plan to integrate with vCO (but “only” develop workflows for your environment), because a lot of points can be transfered to other integration challenges (like integrating databases) as well.

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Upcoming VMware Solution Exchange (VSX) includes a section for vCO-Plugins

By
Joerg Lew
– September 19, 2011Posted in: Uncategorized

Besides all the great announcements at VMworld there was one small one interesting for people (or companies :-D) who integrate with vCenter Orchestrator: VMware plans to open a new marketing platform for Partners, called VMware Solution Exchange (VSX). This (maybe the successor of the Virtual Appliance Marketplace?) will also contain a section about “Partner Plugins” for VMware-Products, including vCenter Orchestrator. See the original post and a short presentation here…

So, additional to all the plugins released by VMware itself you can expect more and more 3rd-party vendors (including me 😎 ) to provide an integration in vCO.Uptime, Radware and Infoblox already published their plugins, more to come soon…

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Content, content, content: VMware releases new and updated old Plugins for vCO

By
Joerg Lew
– September 19, 2011Posted in: Plugins

A lot of things are going on around vCenter Orchestrator: A new training is available,  Cody’s book comes closer and closer, the Orchestrator gets more and more buzz in Reference Architecture Guides, and VMware publishes more and more plugins and a new documentation page. However, not only new stuff like the vCenter 5.0 plugin and the SNMP-Plugin is released, there are also some minor updates on older Plugins:

  • ActiveDirectory-Plugin Version 1.0.1 fixes an issue with a null pointer exception
  • UCS-Plugin 1.0.2 allows https-connections to the UCS Manager
  • vCloud Director-Plugin 1.0.2 fixed some issues, and includes the package with the Sample-Workflows

In the past it was not easy to find all that stuff on VMware’s homepage, but now there is the new Orchestrator Plugin Documentation Portal which also contains links to the downloads and release notes. Let’s hope the Techdoc-Team keeps this updated as the central resource point for vCO-Plugins.

The Orchestrator Documentation itself has been switched to the new system, too. This means, the docs are available for mobile ebook-readers as well. Amazing!
And the structure of the docs has slighty changed: The Developer Guide (more than 300 pages) has been split into the workflow development part, the WebService Client part and the Webviews part.

From a first view, there was no big change in the content (what also was not expected, because vCO get only a Minor Release in vSphere 5 yet).

Same affects the Examples-Package 4.2, only change is the year in the copyright section of the readme.txt :mrgreen:

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New vCloud Architecture Toolkit (vCAT 2.0) contains a bunch of vCO

By
Joerg Lew
– September 9, 2011Posted in: Best-Practices, Uncategorized, Workflow Design

VMware published a new version of the vCloud Architecture Toolkit (vCAT). This  set of documents contains definitions, design and operating recommendations and examples to build Private, Hybrid and Public Clouds with the vSphere Platform and vCloud Director.

vCenter Orchestrator is mentioned in several places, not only as part of the reference architecture, but also with good content about it. There are chapters about Availability, Scalability and Use-Case-Examples for vCO.

Very good reading, even when you don’t plan to use vCloud Director in your environment 😀 . There is enough vCO-related stuff in there for some other articles, so stay tuned…