Book Image

Building VMware Software-Defined Data Centers

By : Valentin Hamburger
Book Image

Building VMware Software-Defined Data Centers

By: Valentin Hamburger

Overview of this book

VMware offers the industry-leading software-defined data center (SDDC) architecture that combines compute, storage, networking, and management offerings into a single unified platform. This book uses the most up-to-date, cutting-edge VMware products to help you deliver a complete unified hybrid cloud experience within your infrastructure. It will help you build a unified hybrid cloud based on SDDC architecture and practices to deliver a fully virtualized infrastructure with cost-effective IT outcomes. In the process, you will use some of the most advanced VMware products such as VSphere, VCloud, and NSX. You will learn how to use vSphere virtualization in a software-defined approach, which will help you to achieve a fully-virtualized infrastructure and to extend this infrastructure for compute, network, and storage-related data center services. You will also learn how to use EVO:RAIL. Next, you will see how to provision applications and IT services on private clouds or IaaS with seamless accessibility and mobility across the hybrid environment. This book will ensure you develop an SDDC approach for your datacenter that fulfills your organization's needs and tremendously boosts your agility and flexibility. It will also teach you how to draft, design, and deploy toolsets and software to automate your datacenter and speed up IT delivery to meet your lines of businesses demands. At the end, you will build unified hybrid clouds that dramatically boost your IT outcomes.
Table of Contents (18 chapters)
Building VMware Software-Defined Data Centers
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewer
www.PacktPub.com
Preface

Chapter 6. vRealize Orchestrator

All infrastructure automation needs a central element which controls the rest of the infrastructure. In a VMware SDDC, this role is fulfilled by vRO.

But vRO does way more than controlling the virtual components of the SDDC. It can be used to control literally anything with an API and a description of how to use it. In a typical data center, there is almost never a greenfield installation possible. This means even if everything is restarted from scratch, there is almost always some service, process, or tool which requires integration. Be it for billing, for monitoring, or just for simple IP address management, integration is key.

Probably one of the best arguments for vRO is its price. VMware includes vRO in every vCenter license, without any additional charge.

Note

More documentation, plugins, and info about vRO can be found here: http://www.vmware.com/products/vrealize-orchestrator.html

Besides that, it is a mature and versatile orchestration platform, which...