vcoportal’s PowerSSHell-Plugin: Run Your Powershell-Scripts from Orchestrator-Workflows

Who?

Everybody who has existing Powershell-Scripts and wants to run them from within Orchestrator Workflows.

What?

Run Your existing Powershell (and PowerCLI!) Scripts from within Orchestrator Workflows
Run Powershell Cmdlets from within Orchestrator Workflows
Run them in any Security Context you want (without messing around the Orchestrator-Service’s context)
Forget about parsing the output text: Access the results of Your script in an object-oriented manner

Sounds great, right? There are some caveats: It does not work out-of-the-box and (to avoid any misunderstandings) it does not allow you to write Workflow Scripting-Elements and Actions in Powershell!

How does it work?

The PowerSSHell-Plugin leverages an external (commercial) component: A PowerShell Server from powershell|inside.
On this server the cmdlets or your existing scripts are executed, the call itself and the return objects are transferred via SSH back to your Workflow (see chart below).

The PowerShell Server can run on

a single, central script-server
(with some limitations this could be your Administrator’s Desktop)
on each of your Windows Servers you want to execute scripts locally
on the Orchestrator Server itself

(See on the PowerShell Server homepage how to license the script-server)

How do I use it?

-1. Download, install, setup and start the Powershell Server; Prove its proper functionality e.g. by connecting to it via Putty

1. Download the Plugin and install the Plugin to your Orchestrator Server (via the web-based configuration tool http://your-vco-server:8282, section “Plug-Ins”).

2. Restart the Orchestrator Service.

3. Open the vCO Client, browse to Workflows // vcoportal.de // PowerSSHell // Run Powershell Command, and start the example Workflow.
You can call a single cmdlet (like “stop-service -name SharedAccess” to stop the windows firewall on the target system) as well as calling an existing script (e.g. “c:/psscripts/myMightyExistingScript.ps1 -with someparameter”).

4. Watch the execution on the PowerShell Server (also good for Troubleshooting: The PowerShell Server Console gives more exact error messages than the ones returned to the Workflow!)

5. See the “process results”-Scripting Element to get an idea how to access the results of your script in an objects-oriented way.

What’s next?

The current release of the plugin has a “Technical Preview” state. So right now it’s good enough to execute “fire-and-forget” calls to your existing scripts/cmdlets.

You can also see the API Explorer for details of the results, brought back as an Array of PssObjects with their Array of PssProperty if you want to process the results in your Workflow.

Support & Feedback

For Feedback, Ideas, or if you have some problems with the Plugin, please participate on the PowerSSHell-Plugin for vCO-Discussion on get-satisfaction:

Legal cram

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHOR BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

and, finally…