vCAC and Orchestrator VM deployment automation

[CHJamey]

Orchestrator 5.5.1 inside of vCAC 6 appliance

Hello.  It has been a while since I've used Orchestrator and I would like to set up a fully automated VM deployment vCAC and vCO environment but I'm not sure the way I want to do it is the best way.  Would anyone be able to give some guidance or suggestions?

In my mind, this is how it would work.

Process Flow...

User in department 1 logs into vCAC and fills out a vCO workflow form with fields that I can use to determine how the VM should be built(key fields like storage speed for VM disk datastore placement, etc) and the approval process it should go through(key field would be dept). 

Fields(parameters)...

Username- would like to get this from orchestrator logged in credentials if possible

Department-dropdown

VMName-string    

#CPU-string

AmountRam-string

StorageSpeed-dropdown(ssd, sas, sata)

Environment-dropdown(prod, dev, stage, test)

ServerFunction-dropdown(iis, apache, mssql, postgres, etc..)

Backup-boolean

Schema Flow...

1.  Have one workflow to gather information from user.

2.  Have a decision object(s) somehow to decide which datastore to place the vm on and where it should go for approval

3.  Have a second workflow to accept the inputs from the decision object and first workflow.

I have read some helpful forums and post and will continue to work on this.  Practice will surely help as well.

Thanks in advance for any input or direction you can give!

[CHJamey]

Anyone have input on this?  I will also hit up our Vmware TAM to see if he can get me a good resource as well.

Thanks

[cdecanini_]

You have mainly 2 options to achieve what you want:

-1- Use the standard IaaS request and add some fields there (works ok for static ones), then use the vCAC IaaS plug-in / extensibility to run a vCO workflow at a given state of the lifecycle (i.e machineProvisioned) to do any adjustments / things that IaaS cannot do for you.

-2- Use Advanced Service Designer to start your vCO workflow. In this case I would advise the vCO workflow to leverage the vCAC plug-in to start an IaaS request (more here: How to use and extend the workflow "Request a catalog item" from the vCAC plug-in for vCO)

then once completed you can do any post processing in the main vCO workflow you started.

If you have a pure vCO background -2- will be easier for you but you may find less resources online since the vCAC plug-in is quite recent (released after vCAC 6.0).

[CHJamey]

Ok thanks for the suggestions cdecanini_.  I'll check it out and post back with a progress update at some point.

[CHJamey]

Hi cdecanini_.  Since I last updated this ticket, I have made some good progress.  Instead of using orchestrator, I have decided to use the vCAC Designer, vcac blueprints, custom properties and powercli scripts to do the automation.  I posted this on a different question I have open but wanted to run this by you as well to see what you think.

Some background...

1.  Each datastore holds certain OS types.  Each datastore is only given access to certain hosts per cluster.

2.  We have sas, sata and ssd datastores and we want to give the option of choosing the speed of the datastore to deploy to.

3.  We have dev and prod clusters.

4.  We will have small, medium and large vms.

A couple config possibilities...

1.  Have a blueprint for each OS\Evironment\Size\Speed.  Like "Deploy Large SAS Windows Development VMs" and "Deploy Small SATA Windows Development VMs".

***Disadvantage of this is tons of blueprints.

2.  Instead of having so many blueprints, I can have different blueprint profiles for each configuration.  Then use custom properties to have the user choose OS, Environment, Storage Speed and VM Size by determining which build profiles to use in a script.  Could I determine which build profiles to use during a build process, based on user input, by passing in the properties\variables to a powershell script in a "build in progress stub" and then use logic to determine which build profile should be used for the specific vm build?  Maybe even determine which storage profile to use in the blueprint as well for the different builds?

Thanks in advance for any help you can provide!

Jamey

[cdecanini_]

Having blueprint profiles that can be selected is a good option. I would definitely do it with a vCO workflow since vCO is becoming the standard vCAC workflow engine.