Automating VMware vSphere - Mastering VMware vSphere 5.5 - page 749

Creating Workflows Is Mostly a Developer's Task

Unfortunately, creating custom workfl ows is probably beyond the reach of most vSphere adminis-
trators. Creating workfl ows and actions requires expertise and experience with web development
languages like JavaScript. If this is something with which you have some knowledge, then download
the vCenter Orchestrator Developer's Guide from VMware's website at www.vmware.com/support/
pubs/orchestrator_pubs.html. h is developer's guide provides more detailed information on
how to create Orchestrator workfl ows.

vCenter Orchestrator is a powerful tool that is capable of creating some complex and highly
interactive workl ows. However, it doesn't give up its secrets easily, and creating workl ows may
be beyond the skills of many vSphere administrators. Fortunately there are more than enough
built-in workl ows to accomplish the majority of common tasks. With a little practice passing
information between existing workl ows, you will be able to do increasingly more complex
tasks.

h e Bottom Line

Identify tools available for automating vSphere. VMware offers a number of differ-
ent solutions for automating your vSphere environment, including vCenter Orchestrator,
PowerCLI, an SDK for Perl, an SDK for web service developers, and shell scripts in VMware
ESXi. Each of these tools has its own advantages and disadvantages.
Master It VMware offers a number of different automation tools. What are some guide-
lines for choosing which automation tool to use?
Create a PowerCLI script for automation. VMware vSphere PowerCLI builds on the
object-oriented PowerShell scripting language to provide administrators with a simple yet
powerful way to automate tasks within the vSphere environment.
Master It If you are familiar with other scripting languages, what would be the biggest
hurdle in learning to use PowerShell and PowerCLI, other than syntax?
Use vCLI to manage ESXi hosts from the command line. VMware's command-line
interface, or vCLI, is the new way of managing an ESXi host using the familiar esxcfg-*
command set. By combining the features of fastpass with vCLI, you can seamlessly manage
multiple hosts using the same command set from a single login.
Master It Have you migrated management and coni guration operations for which you
currently use the ESXi command-line interface to vMA?
Use vCenter in combination with vMA to manage all your hosts. The new version of
vMA can use vCenter as a target. This means that you can manage all of your hosts using
vCLI without having to manually add each host to the fastpass target list.
Master It Use a combination of shell scripting with vCLI commands to execute com-
mands against a number of hosts.
Employ the Perl toolkit and VMware SDK for virtual server operations from the com-
mand line. The vCLI is designed for host management and consequently lacks tools for