14 DAY TRIAL // Two new add-ons for System Center Orchestrator 2012 are now available for download and testing to early adopters.
The System Center Orchestrator 2012 Integration Pack for VMWare vSphere and System Center Orchestrator 2012 Integration Pack for IBM Tivoli Netcool/OMNIbus went live on the Microsoft Download Center and can be grabbed free of charge.
Both downloads are in Beta testing phase, just as it is the case with System Center Orchestrator 2012, which System Center customers might be more familiar under the Opalis brand. Microsoft introduced the new Orchestrator component to System Center 2012 after it acquired Opalis.
Adam Hall, Senior Technical Product Manager, enumerated some of the changes in System Center Orchestrator 2012 Integration Pack for VMware vSphere:
“•The Get Hosts activity now returns, in the published data, the state of the Host in the cluster, such as running or maintenance mode.
•The Clone VM activity now does not show the datastore or hosts in object's subscription list which aren’t available. Previously all datastores / hosts were returned, now only the available ones are returned.
•New timeout field added to the options menu for all VMware vSphere activities. If no value is given, this will default to 100 seconds.
•Support added for ESX 4.1 and as a result adding support for Windows 7 Guest Operating Systems.”
The VMware vSphere IP can be used to bridge Orchestrator with VMware vSphere server in order to automate a range of management actions.
Similarly, the IBM Tivoli Netcool/OMNIbus IP can be used to leverage Orchestrator 2012 in order to automate IBM Tivoli Netcool/OMNIbus tasks.
Hall also highlighted some new features in the System Center Orchestrator 2012 Integration Pack for IBM Tivoli Netcool/OMNIbus:
“•Activities support connection to IBM Tivoli Netcool/OMNIbus v7.3
•All activities can connect to the Netcool Object Server using an SSL Connection.
•All features now use the same logging framework. There is no longer a requirement for Java specific logging information.
•All activities now publish UTC fields in two formats; the original long timestamp (1269986359), and the OIS standard format (M/d/yyyy h:m:s tt).”
System Center Orchestrator 2012 Integration Pack for VMware vSphere Beta is available for download here.
System Center Orchestrator 2012 Integration Pack for IBM Tivoli Netcool/OMNIbus is available for download here.