I have wanted to get started with vCO for awhile now, but I have not had much of use for it. Justifying the time to deploy and learn a new tool when you don’t have a glaring need for it proves tricky, but recently I was able to carve out some time to learn. One of the biggest hurdles was finding step-by-step deployment guide that worked so I decided to document this process.
The following documentation is for installing the vCenter Orchestrator (vCO) Appliance v5.5.1 with an already deployed vCenter 5.5 server (vCSA in my case). The appliance allows you to run vCO without installing it on a dedicated Windows Server.
1. Search for VMware-vCO-Appliance and download the latest version (VMware-vCO-Appliance-5.5.1.0-1617225_OVF10.ova for this writing)
2. Accept the license terms and save the file locally
3. Connect the vSphere client to your vCenter Server then choose File -> Deploy OVF Template
4. Click the “Browse” button, locate the .OVF downloaded previously and click “Open” then click “Next”
5. Review the template details and click “Next”
6. Accept the license agreement and click “Next”
7. Choose a name and location for this appliance and click “Next”
8. Choose a datastore for the appliance and click “Next”
9. Choose the appropriate disk format (I prefer thin provisioned) and click “Next”
10. Choose the appropriate Destination Network (VM Port Group) and click “Next”
11. Enter passwords for both the root user of the appliance and the password for the configuration interface (‘vmware’ is the username)
- Enter the Hostname, gateway, DNS, IP and subnet mask for the appliance and click “Next”
12. Review the details of the configuration and then click “Finish”
13. Once the appliance has been deployed successfully, click “Close”
14. Right click on the appliance and choose “Open Console”
15. Click the Power button to turn on the VM
16. Boot to “VMware vCenter Orchestrator Appliance”
17. Note the URLs for each function
18. Open a web browser and connect to the URL for Orchestrator Configuration (Port 8283)
19. Login with the username “vmware” and the password entered for the vCO configuration during appliance deployment
20. Click on “Network”
21. Change the “IP address” to the IP used to access vCO and click “Apply changes” in the bottom right corner
22. Click the “SSL Trust Manager” tab, enter the IP or hostname of your vCenter server and click “Import”
23. Once the cert information is displayed, click the “import” link
24.Repeat this process again, this time importing the certificate for SSO. Enter the FQDN of the SSO server with port 7444 and click “Import” then “Import” again once the certificate details are displayed
25. Click on “Authentication” to configure user access
26. For this writing we will use the SSO Authentication method, so change Authentication mode to “SSO Authentication” and click “Advanced settings”
27. Enter the Token and Admin service URLs, the SSO admin username and passwords. Click “Register Orchestrator”
- Token service URL: https://vCenterIPaddress:7444/ims/STSService
- Admin service URL: https://vCenterIPaddress:7444/sso-adminserver/sdk
- Admin user name: administrator@vsphere.local
- Admin password: Password for admin account
28. Once registration completes, choose the vCO Admin – domain and group from the list (These are populated based on your SSO config). Click “Accept Orchestrator Configuration”
29. Click on “Startup Options”
30. Click “Restart the vCO configuration server”
31. Log back in once the server has finished restarting and click “Licenses”
32. Choose “Use vCenter Server license” and enter the host name of the vCenter server, port should be 443, path is /sdk, and for username and password I used the SSO admin. Click “Apply changes” towards the bottom right of the screen
33. Click on “vCenter Server (5.5.1)”
34. Click “New vCenter Server Host” and enter the hostname of the vCenter server, port is 443, path is /sdk, I chose “Session per user” and the username and password for the SSO admin account. Click “Apply changes”
35. Click on “Mail (5.5.1)”
36. Click the check box for “define default values” and enter in the following information and click “Apply changes”
- SMTP host: The address for your mail server
- SMTP Port: Usually 25
- Username and password: If your mail server requires authentication
- From name: Name that vCO emails will appear from
- From address: Email address that vCO emails will appear from
37. Open a new browser window/tab and navigate to https://vCOIPaddress:8281/vco/client/client.jnlp to access the Java web client for vCO. Login as user that is a member of whatever group was chosen in step 27 as a vCO Admin
- At first this did not work and kept reporting “No vCO license available” when I attempted to login. After restarting the service and configuration server through the web interface, I ended up restarting the vCO appliance within vCenter and then I was able to login without issue
38. At this point you’re all setup and ready to start creating workflows
