Working with the vRA-integrated Orchestrator
by Daniel Langenhan
VMware vRealize Orchestrator Cookbook - Second Edition
- VMware vRealize Orchestrator Cookbook Second Edition
- VMware vRealize Orchestrator Cookbook Second Edition
- Credits
- About the Author
- About the Reviewers
- www.PacktPub.com
- Preface
- 1. Installing and Configuring Orchestrator
- 2. Optimizing Orchestrator Configuration
- Introduction
- Tuning the appliance
- Tuning Java
- Configuring the Kerberos authentication
- Configuring access to the local filesystem
- Configuring the Orchestrator service SSL certificate
- Orchestrator log files
- Redirecting Orchestrator logs to an external server
- Backup and recovery
- Control Center titbits
- 3. Distributed Design
- Introduction
- Building an Orchestrator cluster
- Load-balancing Orchestrator
- Upgrading a cluster
- Managing remote Orchestrators
- Synchronizing Orchestrator elements between Orchestrator servers
- 4. Programming Skills
- Introduction
- Version control
- Changing elements in a workflow
- Importing and exporting Orchestrator elements
- Working with packages
- Workflow auto documentation
- Resuming failed workflows
- Using the workflow debugging function
- Undelete workflows and actions
- Scheduling workflows
- Sync presentation settings
- Locking elements
- 5. Visual Programming
- 6. Advanced Programming
- Introduction
- JavaScript complex variables
- Working with JSON
- JavaScript special statements
- Turning strings into objects
- Working with the API
- Creating actions
- Waiting tasks
- Sending and waiting for custom events
- Using asynchronous workflows
- Scripting with workflow tokens
- Working with user interactions
- 7. Interacting with Orchestrator
- Introduction
- User management
- User preferences
- Using Orchestrator though the vSphere Web Client
- Accessing Orchestrator REST API
- Accessing the Control Center via the REST plugin
- Running Orchestrator workflows using PowerShell
- Using PHP to access the REST API
- 8. Better Workflows and Optimized Working
- 9. Essential Plugins
- 10. Built-in Plugins
- Introduction
- Working with XML
- Working with SQL (JDBC)
- Working with SQL (SQL plugin)
- Working with PowerShell
- Working with SOAP
- Working with Active Directory
- Working with SNMP
- Working with AMQP
- 11. Additional Plugins
- 12. Working with vSphere
- 13. Working with vRealize Automation
- Introduction
- Working with the vRA-integrated Orchestrator
- Automating a vRA instance in Orchestrator
- Configuring an external Orchestrator in vRA
- Adding Orchestrator as an infrastructure endpoint
- Adding an Orchestrator endpoint
- Integrating Orchestrator workflows as XaaS Blueprints
- Managing AD users with vRA
- Using the Event Manager to start workflows
In this recipe, we explore the vRA-integrated Orchestrator. We will have a closer look at what is integrated and how it is working.
You need Java installed to start the Orchestrator Client and access the vRA shell (root access).
I have split this recipe into several small independent sections.
To start the Orchestrator Client, follow these steps:
- Open a web browser and enter the IP or FQDN of the vRA appliance.
- Click on the vRealize Orchestrator Client link.
- Enter
[IP or FQDN of the vRA appliance]:8281as Host name and[email protected]as User name with the corresponding password and click on Login.
The Orchestrator Control Center is by default switched off to conserve resources since it is only needed during configuration and to install plugins. To switch it on, you need to login to the vRA and execute the following command:
Service vco-configurator start
Also see the example workflows 13.01.1 Start vRA vRO Control Center and 13.01.2 Stop vRA vRO Control Center.
If we decide to use an external Orchestrator, we can give the vRA appliance some resources back by disabling the startup of the Orchestrator Services:
- Log in to the vRA appliance as root.
- Run the following script, line by line:
chkconfig vco-server off service vco-server stop chkconfig vco-configurator off service vco-configurator stop
This will stop and disable the services for Orchestrator and the Orchestrator Configurator.
The vRA appliance comes with an installed and configured vRO instance. The integrated instance is pretty well balanced and does everything you need. With vRA7.1, when you add vRA nodes to a cluster, the integrated Orchestrator will also be added as nodes.
The direction for vRA/vRO clusters is definitely towards using the embedded version.
Please also check the Configuring an external Orchestrator in vRA recipe in this chapter for more information on external Orchestrator installations.
The registered Orchestrator administrator group is vcoadmins, which contains the following user: [email protected].
The database that Orchestrator uses is the one vRA uses.
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vRA 7.x and above dynamically generates and encrypts the vcac user password upon installation. The following steps will show how to obtain that password, allowing you to connect things such as PGAdmin to the DB:
- Login to vRA as root.
- In the
/etc/vcac/server.xmlfile, look for password, for example:password="s2enc~3g5DjU8zn4/0akhnM0uSUheiZZyGagt0dEdjg=" - Run the following command:
vcac-config prop-util -d --p "s2enc~3g5DjU8zn4/0akhnM0uSUheiZZyGagt0dEdjg=" - The result will be the password for the connection to the database, which you can access by the following command:
psql -U vcac -p 5433 -h localhost -d vcac
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