Caution: Articles written for technical not grammatical accuracy, If poor grammar offends you proceed with caution ;-)

Many of you are looking to kick the tires on the SovLabs vRO plugins for vRA 7.3, but don’t know where to begin. If that’s you, then you are in luck. In this article I’m going to walk you through everything you need to know to install the plugin. Before we begin please make sure you have visited the SovLabs Trial registration site so you have the installation bits and a trial key.

Patching vRA 7.3

Before we just go an drop in the plugin we need to prepare vRA. To do this we must first apply two hotfixes. One for the vRA appliance and one for vRO.

* I’m running vRA 7.3.0.536 Build 5610496 and I did not have to apply the updates.

You can download the vRA 7.3 hotfix here

You can download the vRA 7.3 vRO Cafe plug-in patch here

Installing the vRA 7.3 hotfix

Once you have downloaded the updaterepo ISO file, mount it to your vRA appliance virtual machine.

Login to the vRA VAMI interface at https://{your_vRA_FQDN}:5480 Navigate to the Update tab and then select the Settings button at the top. Under Update Repository choose Use CDROM Updates and click Save Settings.

5. Select the Status button at the top.

6. Click Check Updates then Install Updates if needed.

Install vRA 7.3 vRO Cafe Plug-in patch

Unzip the downloaded file. Login to the vRO Control Center If you get a 503 Service Unavailable ssh into the appliance and run service vco-configurator start If you want it to always be loaded also run chkconfig vco-configurator on Login using administrator and the password you set for vRA during the install. Go to Manage Plug-Ins select browse, choose o11nplugin-vcaccafe.dar and select Install. Restart the appliance. Once finished restarting ensure are service are running by logging into the vRA VAMI, going to Services tab and making sure all service show Registered.

Installing the SovLabs vRO Plugin

I wish I could tell you all you needed to do was to install the SovLabs .dar file, but there are a few other items you need to configure before we can actually install the .dar in the vRO Control Center. In an effort to not re-invent the wheel I’m going to send you to the SovLabs documentation page as they have done a fantastic job at documenting all that you need to do. You can find the instructions here.

Once you get them installed come on back and I will be go over how to use the different modules included with the plug-in.