10 ways to trigger runbooks from Orchestrator

Editor's Notes

• #5: OrchestratorIn System Center 2012, System Center 2012 SP1, and System Center 2012 R2, the Orchestrator component enables you to automate business processes and IT operations in your data center without scripting or programming. Orchestrator is a feature in System Center 2012. If you already have System Center 2012 installed, and you do not plan to install Windows Azure Pack, use Orchestrator.Service Management Automation (SMA)Automation in Windows Azure Pack enables you to automate processes within the Windows Azure Pack. Because Automation runs Windows PowerShell workflows, you can also use Windows PowerShell cmdlets to run other System Center 2012 components, including Orchestrator. If you are planning to use the Windows Azure Pack, use Automation, and then you can continue to leverage your System Center 2012 installation (if one exists).Orchestrator Service Management Automation (SMA) is a new component that has been added in System Center 2012 R2, and although initially it might seem to be an extension to Orchestrator--which in itself is already part of System Center--it's really a completely separate component.It's also possible for organizations leveraging Windows Azure Pack to integrate their own PowerShell workflows into SMA. PowerShell is the future direction for Microsoft, and with Orchestrator SMA, those PowerShell efforts benefit from the capabilities and scalability (such as multiple SMA runbook servers) formerly possible only with Orchestrator runbooks.Note that SMA automations are not compatible with Orchestrator, and Orchestrator runbooks will not work with SMA.Through sessions on NIC you will see examples of SMA and the usage of Windows Azure Pack and how SMA works.“Most important both IT process automation solutions has in common – start using PowerShell!!!”
• #7: Orchestrator Web Service runs on IIS.Orchestrator Web Service is a OrchestratorRoleTheorchestrator Web service is thecommunicationpointwithother Software products in OrhestratorThe Orchestrator web service must be installed on a server that is running Internet Information Services (IIS). The Orchestrator web service does not have to be available for runbook servers or runbooks to function. If the Orchestrator web service is not available, you cannot run the Orchestration console to start, monitor, or stop runbooks. You can install the web service on multiple IIS servers configured for load balancing to provide high availability and additional capacity.
• #8: Transactional communication with RESTful web services Windows Integrated and Certificate+based AuthenticationOpens Possibilities of Interaction Between Orchestrator Instances
• #9: Service Root URIDefinestherootoftheOdata service. This includestheprotocol to eitheruse http or https. Path to the computer hosting the service and port number.Resource PathThe resourcepathdefinestheresourcesthatyouwant to workwith. This can be a single resource as a runbook or a collectionofrunbooks or a collectionofjobs.Query Options Allowyou to furtherrefinewhich data is returned and how it is ordered.System Query Options are query string parameters a client may specify to control the amount and order of the data that an OData service returns for the resource identified by the URI. 
• #13: Powershell is higglyintegrated in Orchestrator. SinceOrchestrator and Powershellarebuilton.Net Framework, powershell is an exellentmethodofintegratingwithproducts and solutions.Windows PowerShell does not have the ability to use a Service Reference as does a program written using Visual Studio.Instead, you must create an http request that has the required properties and the details of the runbook you want to start. You can parse the response to the request to determine information such as its completion status and the details of the resulting job.If the runbook requires parameters, you must specify the GUID for each parameter and the value to populate it with. This information is included in a Parameters XML element that uses a CDATA to distinguish it from the XML of the request itself. You can retrieve the parameters for a runbook with and their details with a request similar to the following:http://server01.contoso.com:81/Orchestrator2012/Orchestrator.svc/Runbooks(guid'00000000-0000-0000-00000000000000000')/ParametersThe following example shows how to start a runbook using Windows PowerShell. The runbook in this example has two parameters. The values for these two parameters are stored in an array variable before being added to the XML for the request. For a runbook that does not have parameters, you can leave the Parameters element of the request empt
• #15: you must create an http request that has the required properties and the details of the runbook you want to start. You can parse the response to the request to determine information such as its completion status and the details of the resulting job.
• #16: If the runbook requires parameters, you must specify the GUID for each parameter and the value to populate it with. This information is included in a Parameters XML element that uses a CDATA to distinguish it from the XML of the request itself. You can retrieve the parameters for a runbook with and their details with a request similar to the following:
• #19: Automaticallyproviderunbook parametersSelect this option to automatically provide the Orchestrator runbook input parameter values( which assumes that the runbook parameter values are task sequence variables). For example, if a runbook has an input parameter named OSDComputerName, then the OSDComputerName task sequence variable value is passed to the runbook.Specifyexplicit  runbook parametersSelect this option to explicitly provide the Orchestrator runbook input parameters.You must configure the following settings for each input parameter that the Orchestrator runbook requires:
• #20: Unlike the setup in place for web services and stored procedures, the Orchestrator support is not tied to CustomSettings.ini.  Instead, it is designed to run at any point in the task sequence itself by adding a new “Execute Orchestrator Runbook” requests wherever you want them:If that runbook accepts input parameters, you can pass those from the task sequence either explicitly (type in the value you want, using variable substitution if necessary) or implicitly (if the runbook parameter name matches the name of a task sequence variable, the value of that variable will be passed automatically).
• #26: Each running runbook consumes a “slot” in the available runbook throttling limit that’s set for each Runbook Server.For every runbook that is running - every monitor runbook that is active, every runbook and all of the child runbooks that they might call – there is a PolicyModule.exe instance and that is consuming one of those slots in the throttling limit.In addition to the above, realize that you may have multiple monitor runbooks running against the same data source. For example, you may be monitoring Operations Manager for certain conditions like new alerts of a certain type or changes in status of a monitor for a set of computers.t’s highly likely that you will have multiple monitors, each polling the Operations Manager server every 5 seconds, putting additional load on the Operations Manager server because it has to do queries of its data every 5 seconds for 5 or 10 (or maybe more) different monitors. Now repeat this scenario across your other data sources, like Service Manager, Configuration Manager, Virtual Machine Manager, and so on. You begin to see how this might have a performance impact not only on Orchestrator, but on the other systems as well.
• #27: Each running runbook consumes a “slot” in the available runbook throttling limit that’s set for each Runbook Server.For every runbook that is running - every monitor runbook that is active, every runbook and all of the child runbooks that they might call – there is a PolicyModule.exe instance and that is consuming one of those slots in the throttling limit.In addition to the above, realize that you may have multiple monitor runbooks running against the same data source. For example, you may be monitoring Operations Manager for certain conditions like new alerts of a certain type or changes in status of a monitor for a set of computers.t’s highly likely that you will have multiple monitors, each polling the Operations Manager server every 5 seconds, putting additional load on the Operations Manager server because it has to do queries of its data every 5 seconds for 5 or 10 (or maybe more) different monitors. Now repeat this scenario across your other data sources, like Service Manager, Configuration Manager, Virtual Machine Manager, and so on. You begin to see how this might have a performance impact not only on Orchestrator, but on the other systems as well.
• #40: Connect to webserviceusingprogramming Language or scriptinglanguagethat is capableof sending an HTTP request and recieivingitsresponse