In this series we will see how to automate the creation of a tenant in vCAC using vCO. There are multiple tasks to provision a tenant in vCAC, so even though it is an automation product itself, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t look at automating parts of it too. In part 3 we look at installing the vCAC plugin for vCO Navigate to the Configuration webpage, in my case https://localhost:8283/

In this series we will see how to automate the creation of a tenant in vCAC using vCO. There are multiple tasks to provision a tenant in vCAC, so even though it is an automation product itself, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t look at automating parts of it too. In part 2 we will create the AD Users, Groups and OUs to support the vCAC tenant. In this example we will create:

In this series we will see how to automate the creation of a tenant in vCAC using vCO. There are multiple tasks to provision a tenant in vCAC, so even though it is an automation product itself, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t look at automating parts of it too. In parts 1 and 2 we will look at the AD requirements for a tenant. Since most organisations will likely use AD for authentication we will create the minimum users and groups required for a vCAC tenant in a structure that lends itself to further expansion.

It’s pretty disappointing to need to do this, but recently while working with vCNS / vShield 5.5 and automating it via the REST API I have been making extensive use of the vShield 5.5 API Programming Guide. On the whole its a decent document with lots of useful examples, without which I would have been struggling. However, there are numerous mistakes in it, particularly around the URLs required for various API calls.

Need to create a random password in vCO, maybe to be able to create a user account in Active Directory or elsewhere? I created an action for this task which can be reused in any workflow. The code for this is below. There’s one input passwordLength to determine how long you want the password to be. The action can be used in a workflow like so: Alternatively, you can download the action to import into your own vCO install from my vCOModules repository on GitHub, where I’m beginning to store modules of generic actions I use.

Those great guys down in the South West of England, @mpoore, @jeremybowman, @virtualisedreal and @simoneady have kindly invited me down to their next VMUG to present about automation. So I will be talking about some of my experiences in automation projects from the last few years and particularly how to write your own code in a generic way so that it is portable across different projects and systems. It looks like there is plenty of other good content lined up that day so I’d suggest you get down there too.

While using the Create a user group in an organizational unit Active Directory workflow in vCenter Orchestrator 5.5.1 I noticed an unexpected result after the group had been created in AD. Although the group was successfully created, the SamAccountName attribute appeared to have been populated with a seemingly random string and not the name of the group as I would have expected. Apart from being a bit inconsistent for my liking this could have potentially undesired results from applications querying AD using the SamAccountName property.

The agenda for the next London VMUG on Thursday May 15th has been published with the usual wide variety of excellent topics. I highly recommend you attend this event if you have an interest in virtualisation and are able to make it. I’d also like to draw your attention to something called FeedForward. I saw some online conversation around this via Mike Laverick. Essentially, if you have ever thought about presenting at an event like a VMUG, but are not sure where to get started or maybe just looking for some advice on presenting at such an event or want do carry out a dry run, then this might be for you.

Sometimes I’m asked how I manage my own (PowerShell) code, in terms of version control, backups, portability etc. In this presentation I demonstrated how my PowerShell code is typically broken down into functions and then placed into modules. This allows me to make very generic code for granular tasks, typically either to plug a gap missing from the out-of-the-box cmdlets or maybe stringing a few of them together. As a consultant this enables me to build up a toolkit of functions for particular scenarios gained over various different experiences and use them in a modular fashion where needed for each particular project.

I was fortunate enough to receive a preview copy of Networking forVMware Administrators, so bear that in mind when reading this review. However, I found it to be such a useful source of information that I would more than happily purchase my own copy. Having arrived at VMware virtualisation a few years ago from a background in Enterprise IT, this is a book I wish had been available back then.