Introduction

Automation has changed since the arrival of Orchestrator. Before tools such as vCloud Director or vRA, Orchestrator was the main tool for automating vCenter resources. In fact you may remember VMware Life Cycle Manager (LCM) which was the first such product based on Orchestrator.

Tip

With version 6.2 of vCloud Automation Center (vCAC), the product has been renamed to vRealize Automation. However, you will find the name vCAC all across the API.

Now, vRA is the central cornerstone in the VMware automation effort. vRealize Orchestrator (vRO) is used by vRA to interact with and automate VMware and non-VMware products and infrastructure elements.

Throughout the various vRA interactions, the role of Orchestrator has changed substantially. Orchestrator started off as an extension to vCAC and became a central part of vRA. The following list only focuses on the changes that influence Orchestrator:

• In vCAC 5.x, Orchestrator was only an extension of the IaaS life cycle. Orchestrator...