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Feb
27thVMware & Puppet : One More Step ForwardI wake up everyday committed to not doing things the same old way. That is why my title has that funny word ‘Automation’ in it. I am tasked with finding a way to make what is fragile, expensive, risky, and complex; easier to manage. While most of what I am working on at VMware is not ready for the light of day. There are some things that have come out of our work that would have a greater benefit being in the public space. If you are even an infrequent reader of this blog (which given my posts lately, is everyone) you know that I am a huge fan of PuppetLabs. More than that I am a huge fan of automation using DevOps-style toolsets enabled by community development. Right now I belong to an amazing team of crazy talented engineers. I rarely go a week without seeing something that makes me wish I was capable of doing a backflip. I am proud to announce that today some of that magic is now being put in a place for everyone. Today VMware and PuppetLabs are releasing the first set of modules for managing VMware environments. This brings a bunch of new features for the first time: Management for the vCenter Appliance /w Complete initialization – Just point as a VM that was deployed from the OVF and it will standup vCenter. Datacenter and Cluster configuration – HA, DRS, and more. The one caveat being EVC (but coming soon) ESXi Host – [...]
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Feb
1stStuff to see : Puppet, PEX, and moreI know it has been a while since i have posted. I have been deeply engrossed in my work here at VMware and hopefully will have some extremely cool things to show for it later this year. But I am coming out of the basement for a couple of cool things in the month of February. First I will be doing the keynote for the Toronto VMUG next week. Go here to register and view the great sessions and more that will be available. I will be presenting on Cloud + Automation and giving my perspective on why this is such an awesome time to be diving into automation. I am also going to be co-presenting a session at VMware Partner Exchange 2013 alongside Nigel Kersten (CTO PuppetLabs) on some exciting new stuff from VMware and PuppetLabs. This is a must-attend session as we will be presenting some extremely cool never-before-seen stuff with a live demo . The session info is: ‘VPN1298 – Next Round of Cloud Configuration Automation Using Puppet and VMware’ and it takes place at 2pm on Wednesday. I also have some forthcoming stuff for the community as a whole in the next couple months around some code my team and I have been working on. This year is going to be a busy one for VMware cloud and automation. .nick
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Sep
13thChange of pace : My next career experiment
Every year I get a little older and a little wiser. And the one thing I am realizing about myself is that I thrive on challenges. My natural element is breaking problems down and creating answers. I live for that first 5 minutes after success when you can look back and see a pattern of effort paying off. Which is why I look back at my time at EMC and feel so good about what has happened. I have made a great many friends. I have worked with people that have influenced me greatly. I have made my small dent in the technology world where I could. And beyond all that I have had a blast doing it all. And it would be very easy to stay comfortable and contribute where I am. But, I have been presented with an opportunity to move the ball in a way I have not before. Life is a sequence of opportunities, challenges, and empty-time in between. It is how you handle each of those moments over a long period of time that shapes who you become. This new change for me is both a major challenge and an extremely important opportunity to shape who I become. Which is why I am announcing that I have accepted a position with VMware as an Automation Architect in Cloud Infrastructure and Services. This position presents some very unique challenges and I am joining an amazing team of rockstars. I have very specific challenges in this role [...]
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Nov
7thFor Advanced Users : UBERAlign API / CLI / Powershell
From the beginning I knew some UBERAlign users would want to go into power user mode. The UBERAlign Console was designed to allow for easy use for the average Joe. But, there are people out there with the desire, guts, and ability to script and automate that want more. So this post will inform you on two other options for UBERAlign. 1. The CLI Each vAligner is a Ubuntu Linux VM. On the VM is a set of binary files that do all work. One is a startup file for initializing, one is a daemon for accepting new jobs via the REST API, and the final is the actual magic behind the scenes. From the beginning UBERAlign was designed to be run from the command line. In fact back months ago the vSpecialist actually got a copy of this to try out and help me test. So for those that do not want to use the Console here are some reasons and instructions on how to run alignment, reclaim, and alignment+reclaim jobs manually. Some of the reasons you may want to do this: Hate MS Windows – Since the console is a .Net WPF app some Mac users (@mcowger) have already asked how to skip using a Windows VM. VM size is too big – If the VM is more than 50% of the size of the datastore then a snapshot of it can potentially cause an out of space issue if it grows to full size (which and align [...]
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Nov
3rdStraighten up with a new UBER tool : Presenting UBERAlign
NOTICE: For more info on UBERAlign Advanced (API / CLI / Powershell) features also read the new post here: http://nickapedia.com/2011/11/07/for-advanced-users-uberalign-api-cli-powershell/ You know how in cartoons they show a small snowball rolling down a hill until it grows into a massive beast of a snow boulder? Well, that is kind of how my most recent UBER project has gone. I know it is a been a little while since I have released a tool for the community and I am hopefully making that up with my newest creation: UBERAlign. The idea of creating this came from the lack of a decent free alignment tool out there for VMware admins. Most every other one at there was either something you had to purchase or you had to be a customer of the vender to get access to it. And even after getting access these tools were either (in my opinion) limited in what they did, how they did it, or had become obsolete in a console-less vSphere 5 architecture. For those they don’t know, alignment with Virtual Machine disks on top of Storage Arrays has been a performance issue for a long time. I won’t go into long detail explaining the problem or the benefits to alignment. There are great posts by Duncan (http://www.yellow-bricks.com/2010/04/08/aligning-your-vms-virtual-harddisks/) and Kevin(http://www.blueshiftblog.com/?p=300) on what the issues are and some of the tools available. So my goal in creating UBERAlign was to once and for all create a free and powerful tool resolve this issue for everyone in the VMware [...]
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Sep
14thVMware Workstation 2011 : w00tJust a quick blog post but I wanted mention that VMware has just release the new VMware Workstation 2011 and Fusion 4. Basically 100% of the projects I do on Nickapedia.com have been done on VMware Workstation. I have done the big-Windows 7 machine running Workstation with virtual ESX/vCenter for over a year now. And I was just getting ready to pull the trigger on moving to more of a white box design when I got invited to the BETA for both of these products. The new changes with Workstation have changed me back to staying with the current model for my current lab. Some of the big cool stuff I am excited about: It now supports the ability to run 64-Bit OS’s inside a virtualized ESXi VM inside Workstation. This was the biggest issue I had and the primary driver for me to want to move to a whitebox. New UI – it rocks, it is easier to use, more options, and so cool. Remote connection – now I can be running VM’s on Workstation on any of my big machines and connect from my main workstation. This is so slick for extending lab environments across machines. I am so appreciative of the work of the VMware Workstation & Fusion (I have a Macbook Air now also) teams. I can’t wait to upgrade my BETA to the new release. Check out more and download a 30-day trial here: http://blogs.vmware.com/workstation/2011/09/vmware-workstation-8-now-available-worldwide.html .nick
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