Plugins

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PowerShell & vCO: Roadmap for next version of PowerSSHell-Plugin

In August I released the first technical preview of my PowerSSHell-Plugin for vCO, which allows you to run Powershell-Commands directly from within workflows.

For the next version (release date: soon  :mrgreen:) I plan following updates:

  • More Examples (Workflows & Actions) in the Package
  • Documentation (what’s this?)
  • Authentication via Public-Key

Support for Queueing Powershell-Commands to a certain server and maintaining a single connection (this fits to the updated Personal License for the necessary PowerShell Server)

For more information and the download óf the current version, visit http://www.vcoportal.de/powersshell-plugin/

If you have some further ideas, feature requests or found some bugs, join the discussion on http://getsatisfaction.com/vcoportal!

If you need to buy some powershell-inside licences, contact me for a discount voucher!

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Welcome back, Perspectives! (or: How to provide webbased UI for vCO without programming?)

VMware Labs published the Perspectives Plugin for vCO. It allows you to provide a webinterface for users to start and monitor Workflows. It is quite flexible, you can define different “perspectives” (list of workflows) for different user groups. And the best: All of this can be done without programming any single line of HTML/JavaScript-Code (The setup itself is again done by Workflows).

To download the Perspectives Plugin:
http://labs.vmware.com/flings/perspectives-plug-in-for-vcenter-orchestrator

The Documentation:
http://labs.vmware.com/download/141/

For a further description and configuration example:
http://www.vcoteam.info/newsflash/vmware-labs-released-the-perspectives-plug-in.html
http://www.vcoteam.info/learn-vco/getting-started-with-perspectives-webview.html

To get an overview which Perspectives you already have created and which Workflows are provided in each, go to the Inventory-Tab of your vCO-(Smart-)Client to get a nice tree-view:

Be aware, that (as all Flings from VMware Labs) the Plugin is under Technical Preview License and therefore not supported.

For other alternatives to provide users a webbased interface to the Orchestrator, read this discussion…

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

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

A lot of things are going on around vCenter Orchestrator: A new training is availableCody’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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Wanted: Tester for Preview of my PowerSSHell-Plugin for vCO

I’m looking for Tester for my first Plugin for the Orchestrator: The PowerSSHell-Plugin for vCO

It allows you to execute Powershell Cmdlets and -Scripts from within workflows, without struggle with Security Context or painful parsing output text-data because it leverages the PowerShell SSH Server of powershell|inside and provides object-oriented results.

PowerSSHell-Plugin for Orchestrator - Architecture

So please Download the Plugin (it’s free, yet 😎 :-D), give it a try and share your comments on http://getsatisfaction.com/vcoportal

I’m looking forward to your feedback to create a further roadmap for the Plugin!