VMware vRealize Orchestrator 8.9 Release Notes

vRealize Orchestrator 8.9 \| 09 AUG 2022 Check for additions and updates to these release notes.

vRealize Orchestrator 8.9 | 09 AUG 2022

Check for additions and updates to these release notes.

Release Versions

VMware vRealize Orchestrator 8.9\| 09 AUG 2022 vRealize Orchestrator 8.9 Appliance build 20227501 vRealize Orchestrator 8.9 Update Repository build 20227501

VMware vRealize Orchestrator 8.9| 09 AUG 2022

vRealize Orchestrator 8.9 Appliance build 20227501
vRealize Orchestrator 8.9 Update Repository build 20227501

Updates made to this document:

Date	Description of update	Type
08/09/2022	Initial publishing.

What's New in vRealize Orchestrator 8.9

vRealize Orchestrator 8.9 includes new functionality and fixed issues.

vRealize Orchestrator plug-in for vSphere Web Client

The vRealize Orchestrator Plug-in for vSphere Web Client (also known as the vCOIN plug-in) provides integration between vRealize Orchestrator (vRO) and the vSphere Client. The plug-in is supported for standalone vRealize Orchestrator 8.9 instances.

The plug-in enables users logged in to the vSphere Client to run, schedule, and monitor vRealize Orchestrator workflows from within the vSphere Client. With this plug-in, you can select one or more inventory objects and run or schedule a vRealize Orchestrator workflow with its input parameters being automatically pre-populated with the selected context objects.

The vRealize Orchestrator plug-in for vSphere Web Client follows the standard remote plug-in architecture for vSphere plug-ins and comes as a separate service within standalone vRealize Orchestrator deployments. To activate the vCOIN plug-in, your vRealize Orchestrator deployment must use vSphere as its authentication provider.

Learn more about the vRealize Orchestrator Plug-in for vSphere Web Client.

Deploying the vRealize Orchestrator Appliance

The vRealize Orchestrator Appliance is a VMware Photon OS-based appliance distributed as an OVA file. It is prebuilt and preconfigured with an internal PostgreSQL database, and it can be deployed with vCenter Server 6.0 or later.

The vRealize Orchestrator Appliance is a fast, easy to use, and more affordable way to integrate the VMware cloud stack, including vRealize Automation and vCenter Server, with your IT processes and environment.

For instructions about deploying the vRealize Orchestrator Appliance, see Download and Deploy the vRealize Orchestrator Appliance.

For information about configuring the vRealize Orchestrator Appliance server, see Configuring a Standalone vRealize Orchestrator Server.

Upgrading and Migrating vRealize Orchestrator

You can upgrade a standalone or clustered vRealize Orchestrator 8.x deployment to the latest product version by using a mounted ISO image.

For more information about upgrading the vRealize Orchestrator Appliance, see Upgrading vRealize Orchestrator.

You can migrate a standalone vRealize Orchestrator instance authenticated with vSphere or vRealize Automation to vRealize Orchestrator 8.x. Product versions of vRealize Orchestrator 7.x supported for migration include versions 7.3 to 7.6. The migration of clustered vRealize Orchestrator 7.x deployments is not supported.

For more information about migrating the vRealize Orchestrator Appliance, see Migrating vRealize Orchestrator.

Plug-ins Installed with vRealize Orchestrator 8.9

The following plug-ins are installed by default with vRealize Orchestrator 8.9:

vRealize Orchestrator vCenter Server Plug-In 7.0.0
vRealize Orchestrator Mail Plug-In 8.0.1
vRealize Orchestrator SQL Plug-In 1.2.1
vRealize Orchestrator SSH Plug-In 7.6.0
vRealize Orchestrator SOAP Plug-In 2.0.6
vRealize Orchestrator HTTP-REST Plug-In 2.5.0
vRealize Orchestrator Plug-In for Microsoft Active Directory 3.0.13
vRealize Orchestrator AMQP Plug-In 1.0.6
vRealize Orchestrator SNMP Plug-In 1.0.5
vRealize Orchestrator PowerShell Plug-In 1.0.20
vRealize Orchestrator Multi-Node Plug-In 8.9.0
vRealize Orchestrator Dynamic Types 1.3.6
vRealize Orchestrator vCloud Suite API (vAPI) Plug-In 7.5.2
VMware vSphere Update Manager Plug-in 7.0.0
VRealize Orchestrator Auto Deploy Plug-in 7.0.0

Earlier Releases of vRealize Orchestrator

Features and issues from earlier releases of vRealize Orchestrator are described in the release notes for each release. To review release notes for earlier releases of vRealize Orchestrator, click one of the following links:

Resolved Issues

Improvements to the SSH plug-in for vRealize Orchestrator.

The new release of the SSH plug-in for vRealize Orchestrator adds support for the ECDSA algorithm to the list of already available ciphers in the Generate a key pair workflow. This change addresses the default SSH deamon configuration of newer versions of ESXi (7.0.3 and later) that require a stronger encryption algorithm. For more information on changes the changes introduced with the ESXi 7.0.3 release, see the VMware ESXi 7.0 Update 3d Release Notes. For more information on supported key types and sizes, see Generate a Key Pair.
The Cloud Services plug-in package does not get installed in FIPS mode.

The Cloud Services plug-in is obsolete following the introduction of the vRealize Automation plug-in. The Cloud Services plug-in is deprecated and will be removed in the vRealize Orchestrator 8.9.1 release. Consider using the vRealize Automation plug-in for all workloads to vRealize Automation Cloud. Workflow runs and actions will begin to fail if they are still using the Cloud Services plug-in after its removal.

Previously Known Issues

This section contains previously known issues (known issues remaining from earlier releases of vRealize Orchestrator that still exist in the product).

The Storage VSAN workflows of the vCenter Server plug-in do not support adding Solid-State Drive (SSD) disks to an ESXi host.

The Add disks to disk group and Remove disks from disk groups workflows do not support adding SSD disks as capacity disks to ESXi hosts.

No workaround.
Problems handling non-ASCII characters in certain contexts.
Using non-ASCII characters in input parameters results in incorrect behavior in the following situations:
- If you run the SCP put or SCP get workflows from the SSH folder on a file with a name that contains non-ASCII characters, the workflow runs but the name of the resulting file on the destination machine is unreadable.
- If you try to insert non-ASCII characters into variable names, the characters do not appear. This issue occurs for workflow variables and action variables.
No workaround.
The SSH plug-in encounters firewall connectivity issues.

The SSH plug-in cannot connect to a Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) firewall.

Workaround: The SSH plug-in for vRealize Orchestrator 7.1 does not support connectivity to a Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) firewall.
If you experience issues connecting to a SOAP or a REST host, or importing a certificate, you might have to explicitly enable certain versions of SSL or TLS.

For information about this issue, see the Java Secure Socket Extension (JSSE) Reference Guide.

Workaround: For information about explicitly enabling SSLv3 and TLSv1 for outgoing HTTPS connections, see How to enable TLSv1.1 and TLSv1.2 for outgoing HTTPS connections in vRO 6.0.x (KB 2144316).
The SOAP plug-in cannot connect through an authenticated proxy server.

When attempting to run the Add a SOAP host workflow, you encounter an issue with the proxy server authentication.

Workaround: When running the workflow, use a proxy server that does not require authentication.
The vRealize Orchestrator authentication configuration might become invalid if the authentication provider certificate changes or regenerates.

When the SSL certificate of the vRealize Automation or vSphere instance that is configured as the authentication provider in Control Center is changed or regenerated, the vRealize Orchestrator authentication configuration becomes invalid, and the vRealize Orchestrator server cannot start.
Workaround: Import the new authentication provider certificate:
1. Log in to Control Center as root.
2. Click Certificates.
3. Click the Import on the Trusted Certificates tab.
4. Load the SSL certificate from a URL or a file.
5. Click Import.
During the installation of a plug-in in the vRealize Orchestrator Control Center, an error message appears.

When you install a plug-in from the Manage Plug-Ins page in Control Center, the following error message appears: Plug-in 'name_of_the_plug-in' (plug-in_file_name) is not compatible with the current platform version. Supported platform versions are 'names_of_the_supported_versions'. Clicking on the 'Install' button will install it anyway.

Workaround: You can safely ignore this error and proceed with the installation of the plug-in.
Adding values to vCenter Server data object properties of the Array type is not possible.
When vRealize Orchestrator runs scripts, the vCenter Server plug-in converts JavaScript arrays to Java arrays of a fixed size. As a result, you cannot add new values to vCenter Server data objects that take arrays as property values. You can create an object that takes an array as a property if you instantiate that object by passing it a pre-filled array. However, after you instantiate the object, you cannot add values to the array.

For example, the following code does not work:
```
var spec = new VcVirtualMachineConfigSpec();
spec.deviceChange = [];
spec.deviceChange[0] = new VcVirtualDeviceConfigSpec();
System.log(spec.deviceChange[0]);
```
In the above code, vRealize Orchestrator converts the empty spec.deviceChange JavaScript array into the fixed-size Java array VirtualDeviceConfigSpec[] before it calls setDeviceChange(). When calling spec.deviceChange[0] = new VcVirtualDeviceConfigSpec(), vRealize Orchestrator calls getDeviceChange() and the array remains a fixed, empty Java array. Calling spec.deviceChange.add() results in the same behavior.
Workaround: Declare the array as a local variable:
```
var spec = new VcVirtualMachineConfigSpec();
var deviceSpec = [];
deviceSpec[0] = new VcVirtualDeviceConfigSpec();
spec.deviceChange = deviceSpec;
System.log(spec.deviceChange[0]);
```