vRealize Orchestrator 8.1

VMware vRealize Orchestrator 8.1

Few days ago, VMware released the latest version of their orchestration application, vRealize Orchestrator 8.1 (O11N_VA-8.1.0.9326-15995344_OVF10.ova, build version 15995344).

A little bit of my history with vRO: after playing with versions 5 to early 7 for few years, I took a pause in using Orchestrator. At the beginning of this year, I accepted the challenge to co-run a VMUG presentation on Orchestrator and I tried one of the first version 8 releases. I have to admit I missed few things from my old vRO days. Among them, the new HTML client felt a little strange with the biggest changes being the missing tree view or the removal of visual binding. I think VMware is on a good track now with this product, and 8.1 looks promising 🙂

vRealize Orchestrator 8.1 New Features

  • Tree View of Hierarchical Folders. vRealize Orchestrator 8.1 reintroduces support for tree views of hierarchical folders, so users can organize, view, and browse their vRealize Orchestrator objects in a hierarchical tree view. Yes, that’s what I’m talking about 🙂
  • Run and Debug Workflow Elements. Users can run and debug an action without having to add the action to a workflow and then having to perform a workflow run.
  • Debug workflow schema. Users can debug a workflow by setting  breakpoints on specific elements in the workflow schema.
  • Push change sets to Git branches. When versioning content in a Git repository, vRealize Orchestrator allows users to select, configure, and push change sets to different branches from a Git repository. As with the previous version 8.0, Git integration can only be used if vRO deployment uses a vRealize Automation license.
  • Multiple Scripting Languages: PowerShell, Node.js, Python. vRealize Orchestrator 8.1 introduces support for following scripting languages: PowerCLI 11/Powershell 6.2, Node.js 12, and Python 3.7. Same as for Git, these new runtimes require a vRealize Automation license.
  • Syslog support. You can configure a logging integration to one or more remote syslog servers. 
  • vSphere 6.7 plug-in API update. The vSphere plug-in API has been updated to support version 6.7.

vRealize Orchestrator 8.1 Default Plug-Ins

  • vRealize Orchestrator vCenter Server Plug-In 6.5.0
  • vRealize Orchestrator Mail Plug-In 7.0.1
  • vRealize Orchestrator SQL Plug-In 1.1.4
  • vRealize Orchestrator SSH Plug-In 7.1.1
  • vRealize Orchestrator SOAP Plug-In 2.0.1
  • vRealize Orchestrator HTTP-REST Plug-In 2.3.5
  • vRealize Orchestrator Plug-In for Microsoft Active Directory 3.0.10
  • vRealize Orchestrator AMQP Plug-In 1.0.4
  • vRealize Orchestrator SNMP Plug-In 1.0.3
  • vRealize Orchestrator PowerShell Plug-In 1.0.14
  • vRealize Orchestrator Multi-Node Plug-In 8.1.0
  • vRealize Orchestrator Dynamic Types 1.3.5
  • vRealize Orchestrator vCloud Suite API (vAPI) Plug-In 7.5.1

You can find more plug-ins for vRealize Orchestrator in the official VMware marketplace.

vRealize Orchestrator 8.1 Resolved Issues

  • Unable to validate an SSH address when configuring a GitLab integration.
  • After migrating vRealize Orchestrator 7.x to 8.0.1, Active Directory takes a long time to show all plug-in folders in the inventory.
  • Workflow Designers cannot run policies created by them in the vRealize Orchestrator Client.
  • Recieving a 401 Unautherized Error after joining a single node to a vRealize Orchestrator High Availability environment.
  • Increasing the size of vRealize Orchestrator Appliance disks is not reflected on the Operating System level.

What’s the next step? See how to Install vRealize Orchestrator 8.1.

Constantin Ghioc

I usually play with vSphere API, Ansible, vRealize Automation, vRealize Orchestrator, and different AWS tools. In my other life I’m a husband and a father, an amateur photographer and a Go enthusiast.

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