In part-1 of this series we have configured the vCO settings and added vCenter Server where we will be executing the workflows from vCO.

In this part we will see how to use vCO to execute the workflows. A lot of pre-defined workflows are already integrated in vCO and you can import or create your custom workflows as well.

If you have missed earlier posts of this series click on below link to get started:

Part-1-Installing & Configuring vCO

Login to vSphere Web-Client to get started

1: Open your web-browser and type https://vCenterFQDN:9443/vsphere-client/

2: We will find our vCO server under the vCenter Orchestrator plug-in.

3. Lets start with a very basic workflow of creating a new VM.

Click Workflows and expand the Library to see all the pre-configured workflows.
Expand vCenter –> Virtual Machine Management –> Basic
Right click “Create simple virtual machine”

4. A new window will pop-up where you have to provide the inputs.

First it will ask for the host where this VM will be deployed. Click on “+” sign to add the host and hit next.

5. Under General Parameters, provide a name for the VM and select the folder where this VM will be deployed.

Allocate the Memory and CPU for this VM and select the guest os type and hit next.

6. Under Infrastructure select the Resource Pool and the Datastore where this VM will be deployed by clicking the “+” button in front of the boxes.

Select the appropriate resource pool for this VM. I did not created any resource pool at my vSphere-Infrastructure so I just selected the global option “Resources”

If you have resource pools created in your environment click the arrow button on Resources to select the one. Hit OK after making your selection.

7. Under start/schedule you have option to run this task now or you can schedule for later time.

If you schedule for later time then provide a name for this task and select the Start and finish time for this task. Once you are done click on Finish.

8. At the scheduled time you will see some notification in your vCenter Server about VM has been created. Look at the start time and Initiated by tab. You will see this job was triggered by vcoadmin at 10:25 AM, the same time which I defined in the task scheduler.

Also under Infra-VM directory I can see a new VM by name “vco-wf-test”.

This is an example of executing a very simple task from vCO but vCO is more powerful than this. We will explore and unleash the power of vCO in future posts. Till then Stay Tuned!!!

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