If you are interested in how you can work smarter with VMware vSphere, Orchestrator is your answer. If you haven’t heard of Orchestrator you are not alone. Until recently it has been one of VMware’s best kept secrets.
Orchestrator is a workflow tool that comes out of the box with a library of predefined workflows. There are also a large number of 3d party plugins that allow it to coordinate processes across multiple platforms and allow it to integrate with your own applications.
One of the coolest things about Orchestrator is that it allows you to enforce your business logic and best practices around how you manage your vSphere infrastructure. Gone are the days of each admin doing things their own way and occasionally forgetting proper procedure.
The other great thing is that it is FREE. It comes with vCenter so there is no excuse not to use it… Unless you don’t know how to use it.
If you aren’t familiar with Orchestrator, information has been a little tough to come by. That has been changed now with the release of the new book, Automating vSphere: With VMware vCenter Orchestrator . The author, Cody Bunch (website | twitter), is a Private Cloud architect and vExpert. I just purchased my kindle edition and started reading it yesterday. I’m pretty excited to learn more about it and will post a review when I complete it.
*Disclaimer: I work with Cody and am his co-author on two upcoming books, Exam Prep for VCAP5 DCA and Exam Prep for VCAP5 DCD. However any opinion expressed here is my own, for better or worse.
architect, best practices, business logic, dca, dcd, orchestrator, vmware, workflow tool, workflows
This year I had the privilege of work sending me to VMworld in Las Vegas. I have to say that it was quite the experience and much different than any other conference I have been to. There is just a tremendous community and the experience was great.
Lesson #1 Networking. The value of networking here is fantastic. It was great to meet and speak with some of the great bloggers. It was also a great oppurtunity to meet potential job candidates.
Lesson #2 Bring business cards. See #1 above. I learned this too late for this year and instead found myself tearing off pieces of paper. Not very fun or effecient.
Lesson #3 Hands on labs. These were a great oppurtuniy to play with some of the VMware and storage partners technology without having to build your own lab. My time these days is pretty limited so it was great to sit down for an hour at a time and try out some stuff that we might be interested in implementing.
Lesson #4 Speaker job titles. I found that the content of the sessions were directly correlated to what content was covered in the session. Marketing has its place and sometimes has some important info, however I thought the best sessions were from the architect level guys and those outside VMware. Those were the sessions where real world lessons were shared and discussed.
Lesson #5 Lack of sleep. Be prepared for a very whirlwind week and very little sleep. When there wasn’t something official going on there was probably some sort of community event happening. Each day it got tougher and tougher to get up in the morning. Trudge onward though and every minute is worth it.
Lesson #6 Pack light. I was way over packed. Next year I am going to pack much lighter. A duffle bag with a pair of pants, shorts, and a couple of t-shirts is plenty. You get a backpack with your conference pass so you can throw your stuff in it on the way home. Then use the duffle bag for all of the swag. There is lots of swag and your coworkers who did not get to go will appreciate you sharing.
So those are the things that immediately popped in mind as I set down to write this post. I have made a commitment to start blogging regularly again so I will expand on some of these later. If any of you have your own tips please share with everyone in the comments below.
architect, networking, vmware
