What do you use Orchestrator for ??

[bobby311]

I wanted to start a thread to see all the different things that people use Orchestrator for.

I have just started using it and see some potential in some of the default workflows

Post away!

[IamTHEvilONE]

stuff like this: http://www.vcoteam.info/

[cdecanini_]

Some examples of things I have worked on with my team:

vCenter:

• Tons of VM provisioning projects, self service portals, customer onboarding for SP.
• Provisioning of the ESX themselves with PXE boot + adding networks / iSCSI + automated Virtual infrastructure config up to the resource pool
• LUN + datastore creation (no plug-in, using Navisphere command line)
• VM / hosts performance metrics & health checks + graphs
• Sart remediation workflow on alarms
• VM migrations from on vCenter to another
• ESX upgrades using Upgrade manager
• VCB backups load balanced on ESX hosts

vCloud:

• Bulk org / VDC / vApps provisioning / decomissioning
• Hot clone automated vApp backup
• Inter vCloud Director server catalog synchronization

Misc:

• All kind of integrations (mail / SSH / DB / web services / command line) with all kind of applications.
• Post provisionning install / config (VIX).
• Excel Reports
• Database import / exports
• XML processing

And a lot more I forget.

Christophe.

[tschoergez]

Have a deeper look at the discussion  in the comments about possible plugins at vcoteam.info:

http://www.vcoteam.info/vco-features/vco-plug-ins-wish-list.html

Best-of from my experience:

• Deployment, Lifecylce Management (hm, sounds somehow familiar... :smileyconfused:), Order-a-VM,...
• Lab automation (including virtual desktops, and dynamically configured pfsense firewalls between fenced(?) kits)... back in 2005 at old Dunes' times, long before VDI and LabManager and vCloud and stuff
• Templating and updating of stateless Terminal servers
• one-time migrations
• automatical roll-out of complete SAP-stacks (unwrap the physical server, place it into the rack, connect power and a network chord are the only remaining manual tasks...: at the end you have a complete SAP-environment running on an ESX, including Oracle-database and corresponding LUNs on the storage)
• create a web-based portal for Human Resource-department for: user-creation in Active Directory and managing Exchange permissions (not an intuitive use-case, but it works...)

(shameless plug: see more ideas on http://www.vcoportal.de )

Also watch the discussion about "vCO: VMware's sleeper cell?" at

http://communities.vmware.com/message/1712159

Regards,

Joerg (...looking forward to expand the list...)

[cdecanini_]

And our experience has been similar to yours: with getting a full access to the Orchestrated APIs as reusable, modular boxes we have implemented many features that have been since then productized.

One of the first vCO workflow I heard about was to move VMs live from one host to another one live to load balance them (before DRS existed).

I have ben using thin provisioned VMs since vCenter 2 (if I recall well this made in the vCenter UI in version 4).

The more of these features are productized the more vCO can take adavantage of them, combine their power to do more.

Christophe.

[mcfadyenj]

although I don't have anywhere near the experience of the others.

it hasn't taken me long to get mass deployment of environments sorted. I am currently working on a self provisioning portal for SDLC dev environments.

i have to admit its lucky I had alot of time to spend on it, I certainly would want to try and tackle it with only a day a week timeline. It takes some concentrated effort to get it off the ground.