vCenter Orchestrator Workflows

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KapsZ28

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I only just started using Orchestrator and was wondering what good workflows are out there that I could use? The standard workflows already have quite a bit, but I am sure there are some cool things I haven't even thought of. It doesn't have to be limited to just vCenter. Like right now I setup a workflow for our NOC to easily be able to create AD accounts, OUs, etc without ever going into Active Directory. One of my goals is to keep people off of the Windows servers. I would rather automate anything they may need to do. Well, right now what they do with VMware is limited as they don't really even deploy any VMs at this time. Hopefully using Orchestrator can change all that.
 
vcoteam.info

party on. :)

Orchestrator can do ~anything~ - it's the most powerful product VMware has ever made, and never charged a cent for.
 
Cool. I will definitely check it out. I do have a question about using vCO to create dvPortGroups. Maybe the issue I am having is something that needs to be setup first as I never understood why it works this way.

For "Teaming and Failover" we always use "Route based on physical NIC load". What I never understood is why with dvSwitches it always defaults to "Route based on originating virtual port" when you create a new port group. Yet when using a Standard vSwitch, the port groups always default to the value in the vSwitch.

So the first question is, can this be changed so that all dvPortGroups default to whatever Teaming Policy I want? If not, is there a way to incorporate the Teaming Policy into the workflow for creating a new dvPortGroup? I see there is a workflow for creating a dvPortGroup and also a separate workflow for setting the teaming options. I would like that all to be done in one shot.
 
You'd have to combine them into a custom workflow - I've done similar things with the AD workflows for "Create user and add to given security group/OU" by blending several workflows. It's a bit of javascripting :)
 
Eh, that sucks. Javascript is not my thing. Without javascript, is there a way to combine workflows so once workflow 1 complets, workflow 2 starts automatically?
 
Sure, but you'll still have to add a touch of code to connect things most of the time. It's not hard - and you're not writing the complete script, generally just a bit of "this=that" for the parts to work, or updating the layout for the initial inputs.

Don't be afraid of it - it's very little actual code, and more just assignments that can't be done graphically :)

edit: Clone one of the workflows, drag the second one in on the graphical designer, and start connecting!
 
I apologize, but where exactly do you drag the workflows to? All the workflows I am working on have been cloned. I created a new folder structure. Company Name>Active Direct, VMware, etc. I am using the vCenter Orchestrator Client and see the workflows on the lefthand side in the tree called Workflows. I am also in the Design view. If I try to drag a workflow, nothing at all happens.
 
I don't know. This vCO is driving me crazy. It seems like PowerCLI may be easier. I can't even figure out how to create a simple dvPortGroup with VLAN and teaming options. First I created a workflow to create the dvPortGroup. That was fairly simple. I was then going to use the workflow "Update distributed virtual port group" to set the VLAN and Teaming options and try to combine the two workflows. One thing I am looking to do is limit the amount of information our techs need to enter by using attributes and populating the correct information. My main issue with the "Update" workflow is that it keeps changing the name of the port group. Seems the only way to avoid this would be to allow that field to be editable and delete the name of the dvSwitch that it is adding to the end.

Example:

dvSwitch is called "Production"
dvPortGroup is called "Test-Port-Group"

When running the "Update" workflow it changes the name to "Test-Port-Group (Production)."

So instead of using the "Update distributed virtual port group" workflow, I am trying to use the "Set Teaming Options" workflow in conjunction with the workflow for creating a new dvPortGroup. Running the "Set Teaming Options" on its own is easy. Simply select the port group and the rest is done in the background. When creating a new workflow that contains both the create and teaming options workflow, along with an Action, it doesn't work. The closet action I can find is "getDvPortgroupConfigProperty". That doesn't seem to be the right action. I simply want to "getDvPortgroupName" or in PowerCli "Get-VDPortGroup". But that action doesn't seem to exist in vCO. Maybe it can be created, but it is just getting more and more complicated.
 
Almost got mine set up. I'll dig in as soon as I do (haven't run a home lab in a long time).
 
I got a little bit closer with the dvPortgroups. Part of the issue was I thought an action item needed to be added in between creating the port group and modifying it. Here is what I have that is working.



When I run this workflow, it creates the port group and then updates the teaming options without any problems.

So I took it a step further.



Updating the VLAN never works.

This is the workflow for the teaming options that does work.



And this is the workflow for updating the VLAN that doesn't work.



Below is the error I am getting when trying to run the VLAN workflow.

[2015-01-19 17:41:03.555] ReferenceError: "vlanID" is not defined. (Workflow:Set VLAN / Update dvPortgroup (item1)#15)
Click to expand...
As far as I can tell, all the inputs look to be correct. I did pull the javascript code from another workflow to run the VLAN commands. I wish they had a workflow that was just for updating the VLAN on a distribute port group.
 
Any other ideas on how I can get the VLAN workflow working? Or is there a workflow out there already that I can download? :D
 
Is the workflow prompting you for a vlan id? The error seems to indicate that input parameter is null.
 
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