Hi,
looking for some insight on potential of vSphere Orchestrator to assist in a particular use case.
Background:-
- at present we have a lab environment were we deploy vApps for demonstration and testing purposes. We create a "master" vApp and then publish these in a catalog to our end users for consumption. When the end users request a vApp from the catalog we clone the master in the background and dynamically create a new port group and allocate a VLAN for this new vApp instance. A present we use custom PowerShell to do deliver this capability. We want to move away from this method if possible as there is many moving parts. It introduces many complexities in the maintenance of the infrastructure.
We want to use a standard tool set to provide this capability to allow simplified management and maintenance. We have been testing Orchestrator in a lab environment and we have built a set of workflows enabling the flexibility we need. The final piece in the puzzle is dynamic VLAN allocation to a vApp. If possible we want to reserve a pool of VLAN's for example 500 to 1000. These can be used for vApp creation and VM isolation. When the vApp gets deleted the VLAN gets added back into the pool. At present we store the VLAN values external to Orchestrator and then pull them in when needed (not or ideal solution). If possible we would like everything to be contained within Orchestrator / vCenter. I am aware this can be done within vCloud but this introduces additional moving parts that we do not want.
Has anyone tried to use Orchestrator in this way before? Any feedback or insight would be greatly appreciated.
Regards
Ruairi
