VRealize Orchestrator is an important component in every vCloud Director environment. A nice example on how to use the service catalog extension to offer tenants a self-service password reset capability can be found here: This is a very powerful extensibility mechanism, because it enables service providers to offer all sorts of services, even beyond typical Infrastructure-as-a-Service functionality. When a user requests a service backed by a vRO workflow, the UI will automatically create a form based on the input parameters of the workflow. It’s possible to publish vRealize Orchestrator workflows as services into the library. VCloud Director 9 introduced a new mechanism to extend the service library for tenant. VCloud Director 9 Service Library Extension A detailed description of the vCloud Director API Extensions can be found in this whitepaper: The API call in background will again send AMQP messages to the message bus, which makes vRealize Orchestrator a perfect recipient component. These services then can be consumed by tenants by calling the REST API. With the API Extensions it is possible to publish additional service offerings into the vCloud Director REST API. VCloud Director API Extensions powered by vRO Workflows In combination with the vCloud Director plugin this is a powerful solution to use vRO workflows being triggered by vCD, then facilitate external integration, and (in case of blocking tasks), send a response back to vCloud Director. VRealize Orchestrator ships with an AMQP Plugin that can send and receive messages, and provides trigger that can start workflows when a message is received. These can be used for example to call a workflow that adds a newly deployed vApp to a monitoring system. ![]() Notifications message are just send to the message bus, without any impact on the process in vCD. An example could be an additional approval step before deploying a new vApp. Blocking Tasks let vCloud Director pause a process at a certain state, send a message to the AMQP bus, and wait for a response message before continuing. vCloud Director triggers vRO Workflows during Blocking Tasks and NotificationsĪ powerful extensiblity mechanism of vCloud Director is it’s ability to send and receive AMQP messages, as part of blocking tasks or notifications. So workflows in vRO can be used to simplify the integration with external systems, to add additional logic, or integrate other external systems into the overall process. The vCD Plugin for vRealize Orchestrator takes care of the authentication against vCD, and the mapping of inventory objects to the REST API. For example, a workflow to automatically provision a new vApp from the catalog could be triggered from a Continous Integration / Continous Delivery pipeline. It is also possible to use vRealize Orchestrator and its own REST API or other plugins to integrate and consume vCloud Director services automatically. Workflows can be built to automate complex processes, like an end-to-end onboarding of a new tenant as provider. The images below show the vCloud Director inventory in vRealize Orchestrator and the workflow library. It also comes with a huge library of workflows for individual tasks, which either can be used as they are, or as building blocks for more complex custom workflows. The vCloud Director Plugin for vRealize Orchestrator builds a wrapper around this REST API, and exposes inventory objects and their attributes and methods into the workflows. This API can be used to automate tasks that otherwise would have to be done manually using the web-based UI of vCloud Director. VCloud Director provides a comprehensive REST API, on both, provider and tenant level. ![]() Automating vCloud Director using the vCD Plugin for vRealize Orchestrator It is the first of a series of articles, which will explain more details about how to use, operate and develop scalable and reliable vRealize Orchestrator workflows in a vCloud Director context. This article shows these scenarios, and explains the APIs, tools and techniques used for the integration. There are different scenarios in which vRealize Orchestrator can be used in combination with vCloud Director. The complete Extensibility Framework of vCloud Director is layed out in this article: vCloud Director (vCD) provides different APIs and mechanisms that can be used to extend the service offerings, integrate it with external systems, and automate configuration and consumption tasks. Its open APIs and plugins for many protocols and systems also make it a flexible integration tool. ![]() VMware vRealize Orchestrator (vRO) is a powerful workflow engine that can be used in versatile ways to automate tasks and complex processes.
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