I recently asked on twitter if the latest version of VMware’s Orchestrator, vRealize Orchestrator 6.0.1, would work with vCenter 5.5. I have not upgraded my hosts or vCenter to version 6 yet, but I wanted to save a step of having to upgrade vCenter Orchestrator to vRealize Orchestrator later if at all possible. I was directed to the VMware Product Interoperability Matrix. I selected VMware vRealize Orchestrator (Management Products), version 6.0.1 in step 1 and VMware vCenter Server (vCenter Server) and added it in step 2.

Great! Unfortunately, after 2 days of trying to get it working, I was unable to get things working as I desired. The vRO instance would register with vCenter but I couldn’t activate vRO workflows on VMs through the vSphere clients (Web Client and Client, the C#/thick version). In fact, the vCenter Orchestrator plugin didn’t even appear! Finally, someone suggested I add the Web Client to the interoperability matrix – VMware vSphere Web Client (Clients) – and the chart now explains a bit more:

While vRealize Orchestrator will work just fine with vCenter Server 5.1 and above, it will only install a working plug-in with vSphere 6’s Web Client. Let’s see what happens with vCenter Orchestrator:As you can see, each version of Orchestrator’s Plugin is tied to a specific version of the Web Client. Make sure that you match the appropriate version of Orchestrator  to both vCenter and the Web Client products on the Interoperability Matrix. If you are unsure what update level of vCenter you are running, and you use the same version of Web Client as you do vCenter, refer to KB2057466.

Links and Credit

I recommend following everyone in these twitter conversations, everyone was extremely helpful and are good people. Thanks a lot to everyone who helped me out!

• https://twitter.com/rnelson0/status/582973915649163267
• https://twitter.com/_stump/status/582994159058866176