I have to agree that VMWare is far from the most accessible piece of software out there, but its certainly doable. I manage a VMWare environment with about 35 ESX hosts and about 700 VMS, and I'm very effective. It all boils down to learning good techniques. True, ESX and ESXI don't support sound, but if you're working in a Windows environment with mainly Windows guests you will be hopefully using a screen reader with good RDP support so sound isn't an issue anyway. When I build a new VM, I build the VM in VMWare's Workstation product that does support sound, and will install guest OS's for you. So I build the OS, install the screen reader, get RDP working then upload the completed VM to the esx environment and then just use RDP to admin the machine from there on out. All of our templates have a screen reader on them with RDP support enabled and configured so when I do day to day deployments I just clone a template, find out the IP address from the VIC, log in using RDP, and I'm good to go. So its all doable, it just takes working out some different techniques.
Get to know your screen reader well, know its mouse support, make sure you're on the latest version, and the VIC should work reasonably. I think the only scripting I use regularly is a command to always move me back to the treeview of VMs. Also, VMWare has a Powershell interface available that actually is pretty good about duplicating all functions of the VIC via commandline. One of the annoying things is that the Update Manager component has no accessibility at all, but that's all available using PowerCLI and that's how I update the ESX hosts. Another thing that's annoying is finding VMs in the VIC. Again PowerCLI to the rescue, if I know the name of the VM, I just punch it into PowerCLI and away I go. I can move VMs around, change resource pools all from there and many times I just use the VIC to monitor tasks. I could do that from PowerCLI too but I'm too lazy to learn the commands.
Ryan
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org [mailto:blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org] On Behalf Of John Heim
Sent: Monday, April 09, 2012 10:25 AM
To: Blind sysadmins list
Subject: Re: [Blind-sysadmins] any show stoppers
Esx and esxi do not support sound. In other words, you can't make a virtual
machine with a sound card. There is no screen reader for esx or esxi. The
remote GUI interface has major accessibility problemms. And there is no
talking or serial console install. I asked about an accessible install on
the VMWare web site and all the answers I got were lame. I ended up getting
sighted assistance for the install. However, it may be possible for a blind
person to do an esx/esxi install via the automatic installation tool.
In other words, you will have problems installing esx or esxi, you'll have
trouble creating virtual machines, and once you create them, they'll be
difficult to use. Other than that, its fine.
In all seriousness, I have an esxi machine at home. I built it specifically
to learn about VMWare esx and esxi. I had to get help with the install but
if I had it to do over again, I would try the automatic install feature. I
also spent a lot of time learning how to create virtual machines. The remote
GUI is not totally impossible to navigate with jaws. But there are parts of
it that are very, very difficult. Maybe if you used it every day you could
get to be proficient enough to be productive but I doubt it. I manage the
virtual machines on my esxi server via editing the text config files
themselves. Once you have the virtual machine up and running, you will have
to operate it remotely. The VMWare people would say that that's the whole
point of esx and esxi. Esx and esxi are for servers off in the cloud
somewhere. If you want a desktop machine, use Workstation. But while
operating a machine remotely is easy in linux, it is somewhat of a greater
challenge in Windows. Of course, maybe you already do a lot of remote
Windows system administration and that won't be a problem for you. But I
don't know how you get your accessibility tools installed on a Windows
virtual machine in order to access it remotely.
The way I did it was to configured a USB port on the virtual machine and
then plugged a USB headset into the host. That gave me speech on the virtual
machine. So I was operating the virtual machine remotely but the headset was
physically connected to the host. The only reason I was able to do that was
that my remote machine was not very remote. It was only about 5 feet from
the esxi host. I am not sure if that makes sense. If you want a clearer
explanation, let me know.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Brian Moore"