Automating VSphere With VMware vCenter Orchestrator: Technology Hands-on

Unleash the Power of vCenter Orchestrator to Automate Tasks and Improve Efficiency

 

Today, VMware administrators are responsible for far more infrastructure, servers, and services than ever before. To succeed, they must take full advantage of opportunities to automate and orchestrate their vSphere environments. In Automating vSphere with VMware vCenter Orchestrator , three-time vExpert Cody Bunch shows how to utilize VMware vCenter Orchestrator (vCO) 4.2 to achieve far higher levels of operational efficiency and effectiveness.

 

Bunch reveals what vCO can do, walks through each step of installation and configuration, explains how its &;moving parts&; work together, and thoroughly introduces both plug-ins and workflows. Building on this core knowledge, he presents several start-to-finish case studies showing how to use vCO to address real-world challenges ranging from provisioning to snapshots, cluster management to decommissioning.

 

Whatever your VMware virtualization environment, this book will help you do more with less, save time, eliminate errors, and improve both performance and reliability.

 

Coverage includes

• Understanding how vCO fits into your environment and identifying your best opportunities to use it
• Choosing the right installation scenario and efficiently managing the vCO installation process
• Configuring vCO: services, passwords, networking, LDAP, databases, SSL, licensing, plug-ins, backup, and more
• Interacting with vCO through actions, packages, plug-ins, web views, resources, and workflows
• Automating manual tasks with vCO&;s extensive workflow library
• Creating sophisticated workflows with drag-and-drop components and JavaScript
• Using plug-ins to control infrastructure within and around your vSphere environment
• Bringing consistency to VM provisioning, overcoming &;VM sprawl&; and resource contention, and simplifying support
• Optimizing VM lifecycle management, all the way through decommissioning
• Automating all snapshot monitoring processes and components
• Exporting logs, finding/deleting orphaned files, and performing other day-to-day tasks
• Efficiently conducting mass VM migrations
• Quickly adding vCenter hosts and clusters, configuring shared storage, and adding hosts to new clusters
• Using vCO and third-party plug-ins to gain &;private cloud&; benefits and flexibility

 

Networking/Virtualization

 

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Cody Bunch is a private cloud architect hailing from the hill country just outside San Antonio, Texas. Cody was recognized as a VMware vExpert in 2009, 2010, and 2011 and has been involved in the VMware community since late 2007. Cody has also spoken on virtualization and automation at VMworld 2011 and the Virtualization Congress 2009. Cody shares his nuts-and-bolts operations and automation guidance on his website ProfessionalVMware.com.