Interesting solution for sharing vCenter Orchestrator Workflows has been developed by ByteLife. The solution can convert vCO packages into versionable source code in XML and back. Even if vCO is one of the less known products of VMware vSphere and even I'm not a vCO expert AT ALL, this solution has took my attention as it allows to publicly exchange vCO workflows between VMware users, and create a public exchange of vCO solutions. A little bit like we can see through the VMware Virtual appliance Marketplace. Quite innovative because until now there wasn't any solutions available to exchange vCO workflows as far as I know.
The solution uses Github as a distribution solution, but this is not the only possibility as any similar source code storing solution can be used which uses DVCS browsing and management such as Bitbucket, Kiln, SCM-Manager and Rhodecode.
Features of vFLOWer:
- Retrieve vCO content source code in XML format from remote version control repositories and build a binary vCO package to be imported into vCO.
- Publish vCO content source code in XML format to remote version control repositories by unpacking/converting exported binary vCO packages.
If you want to start using the vFLOWer toolkit, there are some pre-requisites to full fill first. Also, depending on which platform you're working on (Windows, Linux, MAC) the procedures may vary:
- Apache AntTM. Tested with version 1.9.3. https://ant.apache.org.
- Oracle Java
- SE Development Kit. Tested with JDKTM 1.7.0.45 for Windows.
- OpenSSL. Needed for vCO packages retrieval only. Tested with OpenSSL 1.0.1e for Windows.
- Git command-line client – Download. Tested with Git 1.8.5.2 for Windows
- VMware vCenter Orchestrator client
I recommend going through the user guide PDF available at ByteLife website here.
vFLOWer Toolkit is publicly available at GitHub: https://github.com/ByteLife/vFLOWer
Source: Bytelife – Janek Gridin.
