The following are the changes from the First edition:

Orchestrator is VMware's central effort in Automation and Orchestrator.

Orchestrator started its life as Virtual Service Orchestrator (VS-O) with a small company named Dunes in Lausanne, Switzerland. In 2007, VMware bought Dunes, renaming the product as VMware Orchestrator (VMO), and then introduced Orchestrator into vSphere 4.0 as vCenter Orchestrator (vCO). Orchestrator's first stage debut was with VMware Lifecycle Manager, which used Orchestrator to automate the virtual infrastructure life cycle. Orchestrator itself never really received the spotlight until the recent launch of VMware vCloud Automation Center (vCAC). In the beginning, vCAC used Orchestrator only as an extension, but with version 6.1, it became the central tool for automation.

Version 7 replaced the old configuration elements and came up with a fresh and wonderful way to configure things the Control Center. Also, lots of features were reworked on and new ones were made more accessible. The most important step was to reduce the number of Orchestrator installations to two: the Orchestrator appliance and the vRA integrated Orchestrator version.

As I already said, if you’re a total beginner with Orchestrator, work through the vRealize Orchestrator Essentials book first, which is more like a classroom that starts and develops your starting skills. Also refer to the upgrade link of the vRealize Orchestrator Essentials book (http://langenhan.info/vRO-Essential_update.pdf) for vRO7.

If you plan to use vRealize Automation, it's is best to start with Chapter 13, Working with vRealize Automation , before diving deeper. vRealize Automation just leverages Orchestrator workflows and plugins. Check out Chapter 1, Installing and Configuring Orchestrator .

If you plan to automate your vSphere infrastructure, you can dive straight into Chapter 13, Installing and Configuring Orchestrator , and then check out Chapter 12, Working with vSphere . Then I would start looking at the different plugins.

If you would like to improve your existing skills, check out Chapter 4, Programming Skills , to Chapter 8, Better Workflows and optimized working . 

Chapter 1, Installing and Configuring Orchestrator , shows you how to install, configure, and access Orchestrator.

Chapter 2, Optimizing Orchestrator Configuration , dives into more specialized tasks such as tuning the Orchestrator appliance, changing certificates and dealing with logs.

Chapter 3, Distributed Design,  focuses on Clusters, distributed Orchestrator setups and loadbalancing.

Chapter 4, Programming Skills , contains all the little secrets that you need to know to make Orchestrator programming easier.

Chapter 5, Visual Programming , introduces and dives into the visual programming of Orchestrator.

Chapter 6, Advanced Programming , dives into more advanced operations such complex Java objects, JSON and other items that will add value to your workflows.

Chapter 7, Interacting with Orchestrator , focuses on how to interact with Orchestrator. We will use PowerShell, REST, and PHP to interact with workflows.

Chapter 8, Better Workflows and Optimized Working , dives into resources, configurations, packages, and more for optimizing your workflows.

Chapter 9, Essential Plugins , deals with the most plugins used, such as e-mail, files, SSH and REST.

Chapter 10, Built-in Plugins , dives into all the other plugins that are preinstalled in Orchestrator.

Chapter 11, Additional Plugins , takes a look at NSX, Horizon, Replication, SRM and vROPS plugins.

Chapter 12, Working with vSphere , is a full chapter dedicated to all things vSphere (vCenter).

Chapter 13, Working with vRealize Automation , dives into how to use Orchestrator in vRealize Automation.

This book covers a lot of ground and discusses the interactions with a lot of other infrastructure services such as Active Directory (AD), e-mail, the vSphere infrastructure, and vRealize Automation.

You can use this book with Orchestrator versions 5.0, 5.1, and 5.5 and with the renamed version, vRealize Orchestrator (5.5.2.x, 6.x, 7.x, and newer).

The requirements differ from chapter to chapter. For Chapter 1, Installing and Configuring Orchestrator , and Chapter 2, Optimizing Orchestrator Configuration , you just require some space on your virtual infrastructure to deploy Orchestrator and maybe a working vCenter. Chapter 3, Distributed Design , requires more space and a loadbalancer or NSX. For Chapter 7, Interacting with Orchestrator , you may need a web server. Chapter 9, Essential Plugins , requires SSH, e-mail and a REST host; however, in the examples we will use easily accessible methods. Chapter 10, Build-in Plugins , is about SQL, PowerShell (Windows host), Active Directory SNMP, and AMQP, so there is some requirement for these services; again, I will provide some easy ways to handle this. Chapter 11, Additional Plugins , deals with NSX, Horizon, Replication, SRM, and vROPS. I will provide links that will help you set them up, but you will need to provide the infrastructure. Chapter 12, Working with vSphere , is about vCenter, and you should have that already. The last Chapter 13, Working with vRealize Automation , is about vRealize Automation. You will need to install and configure it in order to use it. This is much easier and straightforward in vRA7 than in all the other versions.

Some readers might not have all the resources or infrastructure to rebuild or play with some of the recipes; however, I sometimes have been in the same boat. I used the following little mini lab.

My mini lab is a Shuttle XPC-SZ170R8 with an i7 4 GHz and 64 GB using 1 TB SSD and 3 TB HHD.

My base VMs in my domain Mylab.local look like this:

For the vSphere Replication, SRM, and Horizon recipes I used extra setups.

This book addresses intermediate and advanced VMware enthusiast. You should have some know-how about Orchestrator. An absolute beginner should take a look at the vRealize Orchestrator Essentials book.

All workflows, actions, and so on that you can find in this book are also available for download. The example package that contains more than 140 workflows and actions is available for download. Simply follow these instructions:

Navigate to https://www.packtpub.com/virtualization-and-cloud/vmware-vrealize-orchestrator-cookbook-second-edition. 

Click on Code Files and download the example package.

Follow the recipe, Working with packages, in Chapter 4, Programming Skills , to upload the example package into your Orchestrator.

All example workflows can be found in the Orchestrator Cookbook 2ndEdition folder and the actions can be found in the com.packtpub.Orchestrator-Cookbook2ndEditor modules.

In this book, you will find a number of styles of text that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles, and an explanation of their meaning.

Code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles are shown as follows: All example workflows can be found in the folder Orchestrator Cookbook 2ndEdition.

A block of code is set as follows:

var current = new Date(); 
return current

When we wish to draw your attention to a particular part of a code block, the relevant lines or items are set in bold:

configurationElement.setAttributeWithKey(Key, Value);

New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, for example, in menus or dialog boxes, appear in the text like this: "After selecting Create project, you'll be brought to the Editor Window"

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