AUTOMATION

To quote the release notes for the latest version of vCO/vRO Multi-node Plugin: The VMware vCenter Orchestrator Multi-Node Plug-In allows organizations to manage environments with multiple vCenter Orchestrator server instances. As organizations increase their level of automation, they often find the need to deploy multiple Orchestrator instances. With the VMware vCenter Orchestrator Multi-Node Plug-In, administrators have a more efficient way to manage multiple Orchestrator instances from a central point. The plug-in allows administrators to log in to a master Orchestrator server to view the inventories and workflows of remote Orchestrator servers, and to trigger workflows remotely.

To add a Windows Server 2012 R2 PowerShell host using Basic Authentication only, follow these steps. Ensure that the Windows Firewall service is running (it doesn’t matter if the firewall is enabled or disabled, it should always be running! That’s a general rule, not just for this). On the PowerShell host open a command prompt (*NOT* PowerShell console) as administrator and run the quickconfig command - you can re-run it if it’s already been run - but make sure it has.

I am aware that that’s not a catchy blog post title. In fact, it doesn’t even really describe the problem or solution very well - for that I need to go into a little bit more depth! Suppose I have configured a Reservation with two Networks ticked (“192.168.1.0-VLAN1” and “192.168.10.0-VLAN10”). As you can see in the screenshot below, each of the networks has a Network Profile created and assigned with a network pool to provide IP addressing for the VMs.

With the release of vCAC 6.1 there have been some great improvements in the setup of the clustered vCAC appliances - none of the previous copying of configuration files between appliances - just a simple wizard to do it all for you. In my opinion this is superb. You’ll need to have deployed a load balancer of some sort - vCAC 6.0 build-out to distributed model – Part 3.1: Configure Load Balancing with vCNS or vCAC 6.

As a PowerShell fan I find using the vCO PowerShell plugin makes my life a whole lot easier. What isn’t easy however, is the configuration of vCO and a PowerShell jump host. Having done it a few times, this is my method for ensuring a secure working connection using HTTPS and Kerberos. Configure the Orchestrator Appliance Since we’re planning on using Kerberos authentication, we’d better ensure that the time is correct AND syncs to the same source as the domain.