VMware vRealize orchestrator is a fantastic tool to do so infinity number of tasks.

Depends on the task you want to do orchestrator can be easy to use because of already created an provided with appliance ready to use workflows. If you want to achieve more, sometimes it can be trickier but at the end it is not an extremely hard to use.

Unfortunately, from my observations orchestrator is not really frequently used in datacenters (at least in central Europe).

As I conducted some presentations with vRealize Orchestrator (also on VMUG), during my presentation I always asked who of audience is actually uses this great tooI. Usually it was few percent. And as a reason was the difficulty and lack of VMware administrators who are really interested of using Orchestrator.

Orchestrator is currently part of the vRealize Automation (the heart of it) and as an Automation is more and more frequently used in the cloud. For that reason I am sure also Orchestrator will gain more popularity.

This article and the following one purpose is to show the beginners how easy is to start with Orchestrator and to create useful workflow to create and automatically delete the snapshot.

And the jewel in the crown, I always trying to underline is that Orchestrator (similarly as vSphere Client) use vCenter API. This means that if something is not implemented in vSphere Client doesn’t means it is not existing. Fantastic example is possibility to create clone from snapshot. No possibility to do this by using vSphere Client, but relatively easy to do in vRealize Orchestrator.

I hope this article will bring you a little closer to vRealize Orchestrator with some very basic but useful example. But firstly, let’s do a quick review of the latest version (as it is for December 2020):

Release 8.2: https://docs.vmware.com/en/vRealize-Orchestrator/8.2/rn/VMware-vRealize-Orchestrator-82-Release-Notes.html

With no surprise, Orchestrator is based on photon appliance. Resource requirements is 4CPU and 12GB RAM.

https://www.vmware.com/in/products/vrealize-orchestrator.html

For purpose of this article, Orchestrator is deployed as a single instance. But it can be installed with more sophisticated architecture.

vRealize Orchestrator can be used with vSphere vCenter license as well as with vRealize Automation license. vRealize Automation license allows you to use it in conjunction with Automation of course, but what is more important, your tenant customers can run Orchestrator workloads.

For simple usage with vCenter (as you probably has a vCenter license) no additional fee is required.

Installaton

You can download vRealize Orchestrator from the same place as vCenter or ESXi image. The newest image O11N_VA-8.2.0.12949-16995073_OVF10 is in OVA format.

Before you start with Orchestrator installation, please think carefully where you want to install it. Orchestrator will need to communicate with vCenter of course, but also with NTP server (! I will back to this later on), AD/LDAP, DNS and other components its need to orchestrate (maybe switches byt using ssh or storage systems). Just to give an ovierwiev of the default plug-ins that comes with appliance (info. from 8.2 release notes article):

The following plug-ins are installed by default with vRealize Orchestrator 8.2

• vRealize Orchestrator vCenter Server Plug-In 6.5.0
• vRealize Orchestrator Mail Plug-In 7.0.3
• vRealize Orchestrator SQL Plug-In 1.1.5
• vRealize Orchestrator SSH Plug-In 7.2.0
• vRealize Orchestrator SOAP Plug-In 2.0.2
• vRealize Orchestrator HTTP-REST Plug-In 2.3.8
• vRealize Orchestrator Plug-In for Microsoft Active Directory 3.0.11
• vRealize Orchestrator AMQP Plug-In 1.0.4
• vRealize Orchestrator SNMP Plug-In 1.0.3
• vRealize Orchestrator PowerShell Plug-In 1.0.18
• vRealize Orchestrator Multi-Node Plug-In 8.2.0
• vRealize Orchestrator Dynamic Types 1.3.6
• vRealize Orchestrator vCloud Suite API (vAPI) Plug-In  7.5.2

OVA deployment is rather straightforward. One additional step is Kubernetes internal cluster addresses (which is filled by default) which can be surprised if this is your first time installation of version 8.

Other things that you have to be aware of (also info. from product release notes):

Important: For security reasons, the password expiry of the root account of the vRealize Orchestrator Appliance is set to 365 days. To increase the expiry time for an account, log in to the vRealize Orchestrator Appliance as root, and run the following command:

passwd -x number_of_days name_of_account

To make your vRealize Orchestrator Appliance root password last forever, run the following command:

passwd -x 99999 root

After you deploy and startup one important step is to check installation log file: /var/log/bootstrap/ firstboot.log. If the last lines are similar to the below one you than are fine.

==> firstboot.log <==
ui                         Started  Healthy   1/1      0.0 %  0 MB
vco                        Started  Healthy   1/1      0.0 %  0 MB      0 GB

vaconfig.prelude.vmware.com/prelude-vaconfig patched
TERM environment variable not set.

If not, please reexamine the log. Common error is lack of connectivity to NTP server.  NTP server must be accessible and well configured in your infrastructure.

Please also check this thread: https://communities.vmware.com/t5/vRealize-Orchestrator/vRO-8-0-8-1-setup-issue/m-p/2298802

Do not try to fix broken installation. I have found that it is easier to redeploy OVA image than trying to fix appliance.

After installation you should remember in your bookmarks the following links:

• https://your_orchestrator_fqdn/vco-controlcenter
• https://your_orchestrator_fqdn/orchestration-ui

First Is the administration of the Orchestrator. You need to reconfigure it.

The other one is the client where you will (hopefully) play around with your workflows.

Important: do not try to access Orchestrator by using IP address.

Control center look:

One of the first step should be to setup the authentication provider:

In my case I chose vSphere.

Check and confirm certificate:

Next step is to validate configuration. Probably validation at this stage will show you that you have to restart Orchestartor.

After restart all validation steps should be fine.

And that’s all with the installation.

I hope at this stage you have running Orchestrator and you can follow the next steps with your great, first workflow.

Additional information:

https://communities.vmware.com/t5/vRealize-Orchestrator/vRO-8-0-8-1-setup-issue/m-p/2298802

Service Unavailable – try to reach Orchestrator by using URL.

Fantastic HOL: HOL-2121-06-CMP – Getting Started with vRealize Orchestrator