VMware Cloud Community
ESXi35
Contributor
Contributor

vCloud Director and Self Service Portal

Hi

I'm trying to collate information related to the vCloud Director. I'm bit confused on a statement stating that the vCloud Director has a Self Service Portal which is available for the end users to choose the vAPP/Template from the available catalogue.

My question is,,Should I need vCenter Orchestrator available for providing such facility or is it inbuilt with vCloud Director ?

Immediate attention on this question would be much appreciated.

Cheers

VSK

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5 Replies
brsockel
Hot Shot
Hot Shot

It is built in.

The install will create a management web console and a web console for each org you create.  You create a shared catalog that gets shared across multiple orgs, or you can create an individual catalog for each org.

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JoshBonczkowski
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

vCloud Director provides the UIs you need. vCenter Orchestrator is still useful for automation, but you do not need it to provide users a UI. I'm starting to use vCO to provision customers within vCD. This allows our staff to input and provision the customers as has been specified by many teams for consistency.

The two can be used nicely in conjunction, but if you just care about the UI itself, vCD is all you need to get started.

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ESXi35
Contributor
Contributor

Thanks for your replies.

When vCD by itself can perform the operation like deploying a vAPP within an organisation, what would be the advantage/benefits of having a vCO again ?

Will it not increase the complexity as we can do the same task using two different ways ?

Also, it attracts additional cost to the final bill !

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cdecanini_
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

vCenter Orchestrator is used to provide further automation and integration vCloud provides. For example instead of clicking / filling fields in vCloud Director a vCO workflow can do this automatically. It can also automate the carving of resources in vCenter for vCloud Director or automatically trigger  tasks such as making a copy of your vApps.

Also vCenter Orchestrator can react to vCD 1.5 blocking tasks and events to perform pre-operation tasks (i.e a technical task such as adding a windows host in a domain or an approval) and post operation tasks (i.e adding deleting the computer account when a VM in your vApp is deleted).

vCenter Orchestrator has the most complete adapters for vCenter, vCloud Director and many other adapters such as, Microsoft AD update manager, generic REST and SOAP adapters allowing to manage several external systems.

And as far as cost is concerned, vCenter Orchestrator comes free with vCenter. There is definitely a requirement to invest time in creating your specific workflows but once done this will save a lot of time versus doing manual tasks that are often the source of errors.

For further information check this article and the vCloud Reference Architecture (Architecting a VMware vCloud and Operating a VMware vCloud).

Christophe.

If my answer resolved or helped you, please mark it as Correct or Helpful to award points. Thank you! Visit http://www.vcoteam.info & http://blogs.vmware.com/orchestrator for vCenter Orchestrator tips and tutorials - @vCOTeam on Twitter
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nnmansoori
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Dears, I have a question, I have VDI environment, with ESXi 5, vCenter 5 and View Conenction Server 5, I have installed vCloud Director 1.5, but there is no option for VMware View Connection serve joining the vCloud Director, I need to know, is there any way, we have a end User Service Portal so users can login, and order their vDesktop creation with their requested specifications, and the vDesktop wil be added to the View Connection Server pool automatically and will be created and also the entitlement and everything will be done automatically.

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