vRealize Orchestrator - useful tips and commands

This week I have worked with one my customer on vRealize Orchestrator (vRO) Proof of Concept. vRealize Orchestrator is a pretty good tool for data center orchestration but it is a very hidden tool and customers usually do not know they are entitled to use such great way how to automate and orchestrate not only their infrastructure but almost anything.

Here are some good vRO resources

• vRO Video Tutorials
• vRO 3rd party Plugins - link1, link2, link3.

And here are some of my technical notes from the PoC.

TCP Ports

• VRO Server Service is running on port 8281. This is the port where vRO Client has to connect. Direct access is https://[VRO-HOSTNAME]:8281/vco/

vRO Client login

• VRO Server Control is running on port 8283. This is the port where vRO Orchestrator Control Center is running.  Direct access is https://[VRO-HOSTNAME]:8283/vco-controlcenter/

vRealize Orchestrator Control Center

• VRO VAMI (Virtual Appliance Management Interface) is running on port 5480

Network configuration from the console or over ssh session
/opt/vmware/share/vami/vami_config_net

Reset vRO Authentication
/var/lib/vco/tools/configuration-cli/bin/vro-configure.sh reset-authentication

Restart vRO Configurator service
service vco-configurator restart

Restart vRO Server service
service vco-server restart

vRO 7.4 configuration synchronization across cluster nodes
(source)
In vRO 7.4 there are changes in regards to the way the configuration synchronization is done. Configuration changes done through the control center are going to be "permanent" and going to be replicated to the other nodes as well. Changes done manually like through editing a file by a text editor are going to be overwritten with the latest configuration.
Therefore if you make manual changes like editing the js-io-rights file you need to execute the following CLI command to apply the changes to the latest configuration which going to be replicated.
you should do the following

1. stop the control center
2. make manual changes
3. execute /var/lib/vco/tools/configuration-cli/bin/vro-configure.sh sync-local
4. start control center

Time considerations
Time on vRO and Authentication Provider (vCenter/PSC, vRealize Automation/vIDM) must be in sync otherwise you will see error message like "Server returned 'request expired' less than 0 seconds after request was issued". This issue occurs due to a time skew between vCenter Server and the vSphere Replication Appliance.

You should use NTP or sync time with the host. If you want to synchronize vRO time with host use this command from Guest OS
vmware-toolbox-cmd timesync enable
to disable time sync with host use this command
vmware-toolbox-cmd timesync disable