Book Image

VMware vRealize Orchestrator Essentials

By : Langenhan
Book Image

VMware vRealize Orchestrator Essentials

By: Langenhan

Overview of this book

The automation of virtual environments has become the focus of many endeavors. VMware vRealize Orchestrator is a tool that enables you to automate not only your VMware environments, but also the surrounding hardware and software infrastructure. Orchestrator is also a central tool in the VMware cloud initiative and is extensively used by products such as vRealize Automation. In this book, you will learn how Orchestrator is able to help you automate your complete VMware infrastructure as well as its surrounding hardware and software. After deploying and configuring the vRealize Orchestrator appliance, you will learn how to run the existing workflows that are a part of the Orchestrator library. You will also see how the vSphere Web Client integration of Orchestrator reduces the time you spend on your daily admin tasks. The main aspect here is to learn how to create new workflows from existing ones. You will also look at how you can create completely new workflows. This includes learning about JavaScript and using presentation features to improve the layout and user friendliness of your workflows. Toward the end, you will learn to check for errors in your workflows and debug them. By the time you're done with the book, you'll be proficient in managing your workflows.
Table of Contents (11 chapters)
10
Index

Linking presentations


Until now, we used fixed values in the presentation properties. We will now link properties to parameters.

To do this, we will create an array of strings that is filled with the operating system names and link them as a list for selection, as follows:

  1. Edit the InstallFreshVM workflow.

  2. Add a new array of strings in the attributes and name it GuestOS. Enter Windows 7 and SLES 11 as values.

  3. Now, click on Presentation, select the vmGuestOsName, and add the Predefined list of elements property.

  4. The property looks a bit different. For starters, it's yellow, which indicates that it's a linked property. Click on Help editing OGNL, .
  5. From all the values that fit the input parameter type (string), select the array that you have just created and click on Accept.

  6. Now, save and run the workflow.

The linking of properties is quite useful. Just think about the fact that you can use inputs to alter the Properties settings.