vRealize Orchestrator Plug-in for vSphere Client - Beta

vRealize Orchestrator Plug-in for vSphere Client - Beta

We are glad to announce vRealize Orchestrator Plug-in for vSphere Client Beta Program is now open!

The brand new Orchestrator plug-in will allow you to execute your vRO workflows directly from the vSphere Client (HTML5-based GUI).

It will replace the old plug-in which was only compatible with vSphere Web Client (Flex-based GUI).

About the Beta Program

This is a private Beta Program, subject to the terms and conditions of the Beta End User License Agreement you have previously accepted.

Thank you for volunteering to participate in this vRealize Orchestrator Plug-in for vSphere Web Client Beta Program. Your evaluation, testing, and feedback will help us improve VMware products.

About vRealize Orchestrator Plug-in for vSphere Client

The vRealize Orchestrator Plug-in provides integration between vRealize Orchestrator and vSphere Client (HTML5-based GUI). It provides functional parity with the legacy vRealize Orchestrator plug-in for vSphere Web Client (Flex-based GUI).

The plug-in enables users logged in to the vSphere Client to run, schedule and monitor Orchestrator workflows from within the vSphere Client. With this plug-in you can select one or more inventory objects and run or schedule an Orchestrator workflow with its input parameters being automatically pre-populated with the selected context objects.

You can define custom set of workflows which can be run on different inventory objects, depending on their type: virtual machines, clusters, datastores etc. With the plug-in you can also monitor the execution of a workflow, re-run a workflow, delete or cancel workflow executions, pause and resume scheduled workflows and answer or cancel workflows which expect user interaction.

The plug-in is supported for VMware vCenter Server Appliance, version 6.7, 6.7 U1 or 6.7 U2 and vRealize Orchestrator, version 7.6. The plug-in requires vSphere authentication for vRealize Orchestrator.

Useful Links

Download vRealize Orchestrator Plug-in for vSphere Client Beta

Install vRealize Orchestrator Plug-in for vSphere Client

Get Started with vRealize Orchestrator Plug-in

Run, Schedule and Monitor Orchestrator Workflows

Notes on vSphere 6.7 U3 and vRO 8.0.1

The Beta plug-in is compatible with vSphere 6.7 Update 3.

The Beta plug-in is compatible with vRO 8.0.1. Note that now both parameters of "Register vCenter Orchestrator as a vCenter Server extension" workflow are mandatory and during plug-in installation you must enter https://<FQDN of vRO appliance> in "External address to advertise this Orchestrator" input.

News

  • New version of the plug-in available at the download location. It contains a bug fix for an issue related to vCenter Server certificates verification.
Comments

Hi vRO Team

we would use this plugin in Productive environment can you give me a timeline when it usable for Production

thx

Joe

I am using vRO 7.3.1 and VCSA 6.7 u3b. The plugin throws an error in HTML5 client stating "Error downloading plug-in. Make sure that the URL is reachable and the registered thumbprint is correct." Then I re-registered by leaving the "External address to advertise this Orchestrator" input blank and it seems to have registered successfully and I can see vRO instances in vRO page in HTML5 client now.

But for some reason the Workflows show 0 workflows. I then looked inside "Workflow runs" and it shows the past runs. When I click on one of the past runs, it shows the run details but I see a red bar at the top stating "Problem in communication with one or more Orchestrator servers" iiliev

Hi joe4VMware

We are considering to release it with vRO 8.3 if there are no change in plans.

Hi shaggy_041086,

Plugin is working with vRO 7.6 and newer. This is because it is using new presentation introduced with vRO Web UI in vRO 7.6

Hi, why I cannot download the plugin? It shows download is not available..

Hi Julius,

Please try again, the download link was broken.

HI,

I've downloaded and implemented this plugin in our environment :

  • VCenter 6.7 Build 15505678
  • VRO 8.1 Build 15962410

During my registration, I filled both Vcenter and External URL option, and plugin appears to work on my Vcenter.

Appears only, because I encounter the same exact problem than shaggy_041086 up there, saying that "Error downloading plug-in. Make sure that the URL is reachable and the registered thumbprint is correct"

There is also a message when I try to run a workflow saying "Problem in communication with one or more Orchestrator servers"

Finally, It still allows me to select an existing workflow that I configured on a VM Folder level, but nothing appears to replace "Select a workflow to see inputs here."

Any help please ?

Thanks

Hello Rsasjol

if you've followed the installation instruction for the Beta plugin Install vRealize Orchestrator Plug-in for vSphere Client, then you have manually deployed the plugin to you vCenter Server and you can ignore the error about downloading the plug-in. It does not impact the plug-in's behavior.

The error "Problem in communication with one or more Orchestrator servers" means there is something wrong with the connection to the vRO or the VC. Please try to find vcoin-related errors in vSphere client logs (found in /var/log/vmware/vsphere-ui/logs/vsphere_client_virgo.log).

Thanks,

Irina

Hi nikol,

First of all, thanks for the answer :

At first, It says to me that I should check certificate thumbprint. I've did it, and everything seems right.

On the other side, my Vcenter says he's unable to download the plugin.

When I've registrered extension in Orchestrator, I've provided this as external url : https://vrorch.domain.local/.

Then, VCenter deduced that the plugin should be downloaded here : https://vrorch.domain.local/vco/vsphere-web-client/vco-plugin.zip

When I manually try to use this URL, it fails with error 404.

On Orchestrator 8.1, what should be an accurate external URL to use ?

Thanks

Hello Rsasjol,

the error for downloading the plug-in is about the old plug-in for the Flex-based vSphere client.

When you run the vRO registration script, please provide these inputs:

      vCenter instance to register...: <the VC's address>

      External address to advertise...: https://<FQDN of vRO appliance>

Irina

Irina,

As soon as I try to Run a Wokflow from Vcenter UI, the window that offers me to choose my workflow is saying, as I've already said, "Problem in communication with one or more Orchestrator servers".

I've followed yor advice by looking at /var/log/vmware/vsphere-ui/logs/vsphere_client_virgo.log

As soon as I hit the windows above, the log files is filled up with Java messages telling :

Server certificate chain is not trusted and thumbprint doesn't match

Hello,

Any further news to share with us ?

Is there anything I miss ?

Thanks for your update 😉

Hello Rsasjol

we identified an issue inside the plugin related to certificate validation. We are working on fixing it and posting a refresh build with the fix.

Thanks!

Hello everyone,

a new version of the vRealize Orchestrator Plug-in for vSphere Client is now available for download. Please download and install it if you currently experience problems with the following symptoms:

  • "Problem in communication with one or more Orchestrator servers" error shown in vSphere Client
  • vSphere Client logs contain errors with message: "Server certificate chain is not trusted and thumbprint doesn't match"

Regards,

Irina Nikolova

Hi Irina,

Thanks for the update. A feedback now.

When I try to use a workflow that I've configured, I have en error like this :

At this stage, wokflow is trying to grab configurations. They contain network informations like subnet mask, gateway, dns information, etc.....

They're named VLAN_301 and VLAN_302, as described below.

Surprisingly, I have 3 new configurations that came alongside these. I suppose this is needed for "plugin machinery"

And unfortunately, this exact workflow works very well in Orchestrator.

Thanks

Hi Rsasjol

the h5_vcoin_plugin... configuration is created by the plug-in indeed, but the remaining ones are not familiar to me - they don't originate from the plug-in itself.

About the workflow issue you are having, it looks like this error comes from the vRO server. Are you seeing it inside the vSphere client?

Thanks,

Irina

Hi,

Ok, let's forget about BatchAction and BatchObject,

About the second screenshot, it was taken inside VCenter.

I used contextual menu to reach "Vrealize Orchestrator\Run Workflow" menu, then select my workflow.

At this stage, input forms appears, and the blue message talinkg about data that cannot be retrieved.

And as I said, the exact same workflow works perfectly within Orchestrator.

One last thing : After selecting my workflow inside VCenter, buttons change to these values :

Thanks 😉

Hello Rsasjol

from the screenshot with the messed-up button labels, it looks like the plug-in cannot loads the necessary labels for your locale. The Beta version supports only English locale. Have you changed the locale of the vSphere Client or the browser locale?

Thanks,

Irina

HI,

To be honest, this locale issue is not really important. We can deal with it later.

Most important is this issue with "Some data cannot be retrieved...." blue banner.

I use this exact wokflow at least 10 times a day for the last 4 weeks, and this message never appeared from within Orchestrator.

Thanks,

Hi,

Do you have any news for this problem ?

Thanks,

Hi Rsasjol,

Can you log a support request for this issue so that the engg team can look at it?

Regards,

Galina

Hi,

I've asked our VMWare manager to open the case.

In the meantime, I slightly changed my approach for this issue.

At first, I supposed It was related to the fact that I were using resources.

So I've decided to build this data on a more conventional way : I've created an action that calls an appliance (Infoblox), builds an array, and populate a dropdown list with networks in it.

Again, It works very fine inside Orchestrator. I've deployed my VM seemlessly a few minutes ago.

Again, it doesn't work when I use the plugin from within VCenter.

This exact action has an array for response, as you'll see in screenshot below.

I hope you'll can help me 😉

By the way, when can we expect a GA on this plugin ?

Thanks 😉

is this plugin ever going to be updated or has it been abandoned?

It will be updated but we have some prioritization issues with this. also there are some challenges with the changes done in both vRO and vSphere platforms. The team is currently working on it to be released.

Hello vRO team,

First off, thank you for your work on this plug-in - even though it’s still in beta, the plug-in is functional and works great for us. Is there a date for the full release?

Thanks again,

Is there any update regarding this? Is the plugin still being developed and are there any plans on a full release?

Hi Team,

I've successfully installed the plugin into my vCenter/vSphere (version 7.0.2) and my personal account is able to add workflows as a context action for the plugin. However, another account is unable to do so and in the logging generates the following alarm: 

[2022-01-06T13:52:24.617+01:00] [ERROR] http-nio-5090-exec-14 com.vmware.vcoin.exceptions.GlobalExceptionHandler Exception handled while processing request for /ui/vcoin-ui/rest/vros/x.x.x.x./configuration: com.vmware.vcoin.exceptions.VcoinException: Failed to save actions configuration to vRealize Orchestrator server

Has anyone else experienced this issue? And if so, found a solution? 

Thanks!

Problem in communication with one or more Orchestrator servers

[2022-05-18T09:54:11.974+03:00] [ERROR] http-nio-5090-exec-13 com.vmware.vcoin.services.impl.VroDataServiceImpl Can't connect to the vRO VRO-server-FQDN server org.springframework.web.client.HttpClientErrorException: 401 Unauthorized

@simonfelix an updated version was recently released here

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‎07-30-2019 12:37 AM
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