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.