Though I openly profess my love for Opalis, I got to say there are still much room for improvements and if you ask me … the first thing in my mind would be documentation.
Yes, we were given powerful orchestration objects that integrates with different management systems but what lacks is the documentation on how to set things up. Well, I am not going to whine alot here but to concentrate on just blogging on how to get Opalis to integrate with SCVMM.
Out of the box, the SCVMM Integration Packs offers a rich set of VMM functionalities ranging from creating VM to Remove VM as depicted below.
Now in my previous postings, I have shared with you on installing Opalis and deploying Integration Packs. This posting basically revolves around getting those Integration Packs to work and I am going to start with SCVMM, not that this is the first that I have tried but the first that actually gave me some time to crack my head and get it working !
Now in essence there are a couple of ways to integrate Opalis with SCVMM;
- Connect via WinRM (Remote)
- Connect locally (Requires VMM Console to be installed in the Action Servers)
Approach 1: Win RM
The first approach requires you to configure a couple of things on VMM Server as well as your Action Server.
- In your VMM Server, Open your command prompt and run the following command
winrm quickconfig
- Then launch Windows Powershell and run the following command
set-executionpolicy –ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned
- Now for each of your Action Servers, run the following command in the command prompt
winrm quickconfig
- And followed by
WinRM set winrm/config/client @{TrustedHosts="RemoteHost"}
RemoteHost = FQDN of your VMM Server
- Once that is done, launch the Opalis client console and goto Options –> System Center Virtual Machine Manager
- In the Prerequisites configuration click Add and enter the necessary information.
- Computer Name = VMM Server name
- User: User Account which has administrator rights on VMM
- Domain:AD Domain
- Password: User Password
- VMM Server = VMM Server name
(Leave others as default)
- Now lets get it rolling … to test whether your connection works drag an object from the VMM IP to the workbench and try to connect
- Now many of you might be wondering, how come my account does not have enough rights to access VMM (especially that account is the VMM admin !!!)
- Now let’s revisit the connection page again … this time remove the user credentials …
- And if we try things again … and this time it works … so much for entering the user credentials eh.
- Now I try to make a logical explanation behind this and yet I still can’t find any that makes sense … but hey … .as long as it works right !
Approach 2: Connecting Locally
- Unlike the previous approach, you just need to have VMM console installed in the Action Server and you are clear to go.
- You do not need to set WinRM configurations on your VMM as well as your Action Servers to do so.
- Nevertheless, the “rule” for setting up the connection settings to VMM still applies …
Hope this gets you guys rolling and have fun exploring Opalis-SCVMM !
