DiscoPosse Review: Automating vSphere with VMware vCenter Orchestrator – Cody Bunch

I can say just one regret came from reading this book, and that is that I didn’t do it sooner! If you are new to the vCenter Orchestrator platform from VMware then this should be the first thing you read.

Cody Bunch’s relaxed yet detailed writing style eases you into the amazing capabilities of vCenter Orchestrator. The book walks through a natural workflow of introduction, installation, working with vCenter Orchestrator and then right into some great examples with the fictional use cases for Amazing Smoothies which gives you some great practical deployment cases.

VMware Press does it once again by bringing great authors and great products together. Make sure that you keep your eyes on Twitter and follow Cody Bunch (www.twitter.com/Cody_Bunch) and VMware Press (www.twitter.com/VMwarePress) for great content.

Don’t Hesitate, Automate

I have been a fan of automation since the moment that I realized I could do it. There are few tasks that are really just one-time tasks and as you get into virtualization you will quickly see that the best strategy comes with a new mindset on how to manage your environment.

We typically dip our toes into virtualization with doing more of the one app to one server methodology and we tend to tread carefully with how much we put into the virtualized environment. Within a short time you will find that the adoption rate rapidly increases and you are officially on the road to server sprawl!

Whether you are early adopters with a long history of virtualization or newcomers to VMware and its great technology, you should invest the time to understand how to best manage your environment. Cody’s book will give you the tools that you need to get your vCenter Orchestrator environment up and running and start you towards adding great automation and lifecycle management to your administrators toolkit.

What about non-Scripters?

The question that most often comes up when I introduce automation is “What happens if I don’t know how to using scripting?” This is a valid question, and the answer is simple: You don’t have to know how to script, you have to know how to test!

Much like PowerCLI and ESXCLI, there are scores of scripts available online and lots of great places to go to get excellent people and resources to guide you to the scripts and packages that you need to do what you need to do.

I could go on about the tool, and the book but I’ll let Cody and VMware Press do the talking for me. Very simply, you should head on over to Amazon here and get your copy on order and I can promise that you won’t be disappointed.

 

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