If there is something that I did right from the beginning of my IT career, it was automation and integration. Coming from a development background, it was natural for me to script or develop small tools to automate most of the manual tasks that our team had to accomplish. It was the mid-1990s and this required using a combination of scripting and programming languages.

Later, the IT field evolved by providing Application Programming Interfaces to get information and perform remote operations. Simpler scripting languages were released to make these easily consumable, and virtualization provided the agility that was missing in the automation of a lot of datacenter operations.

Streamlining these operations as modular, reusable, and highly available workflows is what VMware vRealize Orchestrator brought to the equation.

After being prominently used not only by service providers to build their public cloud offerings, but also by various enterprises for their private cloud, Orchestrator is fast becoming a core component of several VMware Software-Defined Data Center capabilities such as self-service provisioning, custom services authoring, DevOps, and automatic remediation. The Orchestrator workflows that power these can be leveraged to design your own custom automation and integrations.

In 2014, Daniel Langenhan wrote VMware vRealize Orchestrator Cookbook. This is the most comprehensive book to date that covers Orchestrator. With Orchestrator being used more broadly within different IT job roles, a need for an entry-level book arose. This is now being covered by VMware vRealize Orchestrator Essentials. It explains the Orchestrator architecture and steps through its installation, configuration, workflow design, and packaging from a newcomer's perspective. By leveraging it, you will get to grips with the basics of Orchestrator and be ready to implement your own automation and integrations.

I have been working with Daniel Langenhan for the past six years, and I am delighted that he managed to share the great amount of knowledge and experience that he acquired by delivering orchestration solutions to our customers so that you can unleash the power of Orchestrator.

I wish you all the best for your workflow designs and deployments.

Christophe Decanini

Consulting Architect

VMware Global Technical and Professional Services

Office of the CTO Ambassador

@vCOTeam / vCOTeam.info