Guest Post: Orchestrator 2012 SP1

DamianFlynn 340x340

Damian Flynn, (Cloud and Datacenter MVP), has been working in IT since 1993. He has worked as an engineer and administrator for multinational’s in manufacturing and services sectors where he has dealt with large and complex IT infrastructures. With experience spanning from digital data collection networks, Telco and VoIP based technologies, he is currently specialising in Networking and Server Virtualisation (VMware ESX, Hyper-V), focusing on Cloud, Core Infrastructure and Datacenter Management/Automation. Damian is currently "Corporate Infrastructure Architect" with Lionbridge Technologies based in Ireland, while also serving as a director for a Wireless ISP.

Damian is active in many MS Programs, and a member of the MS Windows Futures Council, a Blogger, and Co-Author of "Microsoft Private Cloud Computing", "Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V Installation and Configuration", numerous technical articles, and can be found at many events presenting on various technologies.

With the release of System Centre Orchestrator 2012 SP1, included with the product are even more activities which extend the reach of this unique tool to enable yet more automation possibilities. Now you have the added ability to integrate with FTP services anywhere, automate your Azure subscription and integrate with REST services, while gaining enhancements in most of the already available packs ranging from Active Directory and Exchange all the way to VMWare!

But, what if this is not enough? What if you need to create an activity to interact with a different product which has yet to be provided? Then you join to active and growing community on codeplex and start to create your own, sharing and learning with others as you progress. Currently home to over a dozen free packs, extending the reach even further to solutions such as Team Foundation Server, SharePoint, and even activities to automate Orchestrator itself!

clip_image002I’m delighted to announce today that yet another pack has made its way to codeplex, this time providing a set of activities to automate Forefront Identity Manager, Synchronisation services. Activities include the ability to enable the enumeration of published Management Agents and Run Profiles, Checking the status of the last active profile, and launching any new Run Profiles, waiting for its completion before returning the job stats so you can process accordingly.

If you feel the urge to join this growing community, or just want to try out these interesting packs, you will be greeted with welcome from an active community, delighted to help and enhance your experience.

Those of you up for a challenge, can of course download the free open-source code for any Pack on codeplex, and armed with the Orchestrator development kit you can be compiling and creating packs of your own ready to share.