Author Archives: Alan

About Alan

Alan Renouf has a role of Automation Frameworks Product Manager at VMware responsible for providing the architects and operators of the cloud infrastructure with the toolkits/frameworks and command-line interfaces they require to build a fully automated software-defined datacenter. Alan is a frequent blogger at http://blogs.vmware.com/vipowershell and has a personal blog at http://virtu-al.net. You can follow Alan on twitter as @alanrenouf.

Automation Tip 2–Find your standards

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Often there are standardizations you can identify which will cover 90% of your needs, these could be templates, blueprints or workflows that you can provide and reuse over and over again.

 
If you don’t have these you will receive different requests from every consumer which require ongoing management, customization and troubleshooting removing from speed and cost of the automated deployment and undoing any of the great work you have put into an automated system.

 

Make sure you find the sweet-spot that delivers the right amount of flexibility but covers the internal needs of the consumers of your automation, this could be the consumers of applications or infrastructure alike.

 

More Automation tips

More tips from this series created by myself and Thomas Corfmat for a session at VMworld 2013 can be found below (updated as published), if you have a login for VMworld.com you can also watch the full session here.

 

Automation Tip 1 – Measure It!

Automation Tip 2 – Find your standards

Automation Tip 3 – Its all about people

Automation Tip 4 – Select the right mix of people

Automation Tip 5 – Simplify, Don’t automate a broken process

Automation Tip 6 – Automate incrementally

Automation Tip 7 – Testing

Automation Tip 8 – Documentation

Automation Tip 9 – End to end automation

Automation Tip 10 – Follow the “Automation Triangle”

Automation Tip 1–Measure It!

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As part of the “Automating the SDDC, Where do I start?” Session which Thomas Corfmat and I presented at VMworld we wanted to give some general Automation tips which can be used as best practices and guidelines to make sure you are thinking about the right things when automating your systems, we have 10 of these in total which will be posted on this blog in 10 separate blog posts, so lets get going with number 1.

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Automation–its not just a tick box!

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During VMworld 2013 I presented together with Thomas Corfmat a session entitled “Automating the Software Defined Datacenter, How do I get started?” this was meant as a introduction on how someone who was interested in automation could start with VMware products and what they could achieve.

One of the first things we mentioned in this session is that there is no one size fits all, there isn’t one tick box that you can click and then suddenly “enable automation”, this is a common misconception by the C-Level staff of many organizations as they see automation in a slide deck and want some of it!  Automation is actually a combination of products, workflows and scripts created to give you the specific results you need.

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PowerCLI Group Discussion

VMworld PowerCLI Group Discussion–Part 3–Launching and Using

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Following on from the previous posts in this series, this post will take us through the group discussion held at VMworld this year and expand on the items noted during the session.

This post will focus on what people in the session used PowerCLI for and also the various ways people used to launch the scripts.

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PowerCLI Group Discussion

VMworld PowerCLI Group Discussion–Part 2–Resources

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ResourcesFollowing Part 1 of these posts where we discussed getting started in PowerCLI I now give you Part 2 of the note taking by Nigel Boulton at VMworld in the PowerCLI Group Discussion.

In this part of the session we discussed what resources were available to people using PowerCLI.

As with the previous post I will expand on the notes taken and give you the complete list below.

If you have more resources make sure you add a comment and share them with others.

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NorCal PowerShell User Group–San Francisco

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PowerShell user groups are a great way for people to talk about PowerShell with like minded people and share thoughts, tips and tricks and generally discuss their usage..

If you are in the San Francisco area then now is your chance to get involved, in fact if you are anywhere in the world you can join, they will be transmitting it live over Google hangouts.

How can I RSVP and find out more?

The first meeting in San Francisco has been scheduled for Friday Nov 01 at 6:30 PM on the site below so please go there and signup today!

http://www.meetup.com/Northern-California-Powershell-User-Group/events/143718672/

PowerCLI Group Discussion

VMworld PowerCLI Group Discussion–Part 1–Getting Started

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imageAlways my favorite session at VMworld, the group discussion gives others a chance to share their experience and give their view on a product.

I have hosted a PowerCLI Group Discussion for the past 2 years and have found them a great way to learn and share information.

This year with some great note taking by my beautiful assistant Nigel Boulton I thought it would be useful to type up these notes from the session and share them on my blog.

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Goodbye to VMware Technical Marketing

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Its time for a new challenge! From today I will be leaving Technical Marketing (TM) in VMware and moving into a new role, during my time in TM I have been lucky enough to work with some of the best people in the industry, some which have now moved on from TM and others who still remain.

I have worked on some great projects and presented at numerous VMworlds and VMUGs, it has been great fun and I have really enjoyed my time in TM, but all good things come to an end and its time for me to challenge myself in a new role.  So where am I going?

I will be moving into the Product Management area of VMware and working as The Automation Frameworks Product Manager.

In this role I will be responsible for providing the architects and operators of the cloud infrastructure with the toolkits/frameworks and command-line interfaces they require to build a fully automated software-defined datacenter.

I will be focused on the needs of cloud architects, system administrators, cloud operations with respect to automating day-to-day production and consumption of datacenter infrastructure. This includes defining requirements, strategy, and toolkits for command line interfaces, automation frameworks, and event-driven workflows.

I will be helping to define how VMware infrastructure can be optimized and managed using expected-state configuration management frameworks and will be deeply involved in the entire lifecycle of product development for VMware command line interfaces, work with engineering teams on governance of these interfaces, and work with customers on requirements and development of new offerings around operations automation.

An awesome role as I’m sure you will agree, I’m looking forward to starting and talking to more of the VMware customers about their automation needs from the infrastructure.  I will of course be keeping this blog going and will keep using and working with PowerCLI as part of this role so don’t worry about my PowerCLI content disappearing.

I want to thank you all for following my blog thus far and promise you that you will start to see even more content here as I progress in my career.

VMworld 2013 Barcelona–Where I will be

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After what I think has been my most enjoyable VMworld yet in San Francisco I am fully looking forward to VMworld 2013 Barcelona, I have lots of sessions to present and always enjoy the European VMworld as it seams to me to be slightly more technical, maybe people adjust their slides a little after the announcements from the US VMworld to include more working details or maybe the Europeans are just that little bit more technical, I will let you decide!

If you are attending and wondering where to find me then please do look out for me and say hi at the following places”:

My Sessions Continue reading →