Re: [Blind-sysadmins] ESXI update policies.

Ryan, This is very interesting. Can you give me a point in the right direction to speak to these people? I have actually had a lot of problems with the VMWare view web client. Also, the SRM UI isn't exactly great. Regards Darragh Ó Héiligh Fujitsu Offices of the Houses of the Oireachtas, Fredrick Building, South Fredrick Street, Dublin2 Telephone: +353 (1) 618 3559 Email: darragh.oheiligh@oireachtas.ie Internet: http://www.oireachtas.ie From: Ryan Shugart To: Blind sysadmins list , Date: 01/10/2012 15:11 Subject: Re: [Blind-sysadmins] ESXI update policies. Sent by: "Blind-sysadmins" Hi Darragh: Yeah I talked to them about that, and I do a lot of PowerCLI myself. The problem is PowerCLI is designed more for scripting, not so much for day to day use as an admin UI. They've had even normal sighted administrators complain about that, but right now, some things are kind of on the clunky side in the CLI. Granted, they're on the clunky side in the UI too. As far as their accessibility people go, they're there because VMWare has to make their software 508 compliant and all that. They said I'm the first blind admin who has come forward and said there is a problem, so until now they've had no actual blind people to test and confirm the accessibility meets their needs. Since its flex based, I guess they've implemented some stuff Adobe said should work, but well, doesn't in practice. Ryan -----Original Message----- From: Blind-sysadmins [ mailto:blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org] On Behalf Of Darragh OHeiligh Sent: Monday, October 01, 2012 8:04 AM To: Blind sysadmins list Cc: Blind-sysadmins Subject: Re: [Blind-sysadmins] ESXI update policies. Ryan, They have accessibility people? Wow! I didn't know that actually. I have labeled most of the buttons that I've needed in the web UI. One thing I'd love to do is move more toward using the CLI. Just completely ignore the UI. Regards Darragh Ó Héiligh Fujitsu Offices of the Houses of the Oireachtas, Fredrick Building, South Fredrick Street, Dublin2 Telephone: +353 (1) 618 3559 Email: darragh.oheiligh@oireachtas.ie Internet: http://www.oireachtas.ie From: Ryan Shugart To: Blind sysadmins list , Date: 01/10/2012 15:01 Subject: Re: [Blind-sysadmins] ESXI update policies. Sent by: "Blind-sysadmins" Hi Darragh: Your experience is very different than mine, I've found a lot of unlabeled buttons, some controls that didn't read properly, etc. I don't think I'd be anywhere near as productive in the web client than I am in the current VIC, as bad as it is. When I was at VMWorld in August, I met with one of the product managers for the web client and talked with him about my issues, then just last week one of their accessibility people was out at my office and we went through the web client, and she took four pages of notes. We're about to start a 5.1 rollout along with a SRM 5 implementation, we're going to do a side by side upgrade, where we leave the old VCenter host up, and then migrate cluster by cluster to the new environment, so the upgrade as a whole will take several months. Ryan -----Original Message----- From: Blind-sysadmins [ mailto:blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org] On Behalf Of Darragh OHeiligh Sent: Monday, October 01, 2012 7:52 AM To: Blind sysadmins list Subject: Re: [Blind-sysadmins] ESXI update policies. I've had a play with the web client for 5.0 U1 and .... all I can say at the moment is ... Meh. IT's not bad! It's certainly not great! No plans to jump to 5.1 just yet. We have a lot of VMWare services running here such as view, VShield etc so a lot of testing will need to be completed before I upgrade. I'm thinking of getting to it during the last two weeks of December. Regards Darragh Ó Héiligh Fujitsu Offices of the Houses of the Oireachtas, Fredrick Building, South Fredrick Street, Dublin2 Telephone: +353 (1) 618 3559 Email: darragh.oheiligh@oireachtas.ie Internet: http://www.oireachtas.ie From: Ryan Shugart To: Blind sysadmins list , Date: 01/10/2012 14:44 Subject: Re: [Blind-sysadmins] ESXI update policies. Sent by: "Blind-sysadmins" Hi Darragh: We really don't have an ESXI update policy, it's a whenever I get around to it sort of thing. We have ESX hosts located all over the world, and many of them don't have other hosts I can VMotion machines off to or anying like that. Some of those hosts actually have never had updates applied because I can't get a good time to shut down the VMs on them and install patches. The hosts in our main datacenters do get updated every few months, and at that point I just install all available updates. I honestly haven't really gotten the Update Manager interface to work at all with Window-Eyes, so I use an Update Manager module for PowerCLI. That works pretty well, but as I said it doesn't get me the level of control as the GUI updatemanager has, but oh well. We've not had any issues yet. On a similar note, what version of VC are you guys running? Any plans to go to VC 5.1 anytime soon? Have you had a play with the web client? Ryan -----Original Message----- From: Blind-sysadmins [ mailto:blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org] On Behalf Of Darragh OHeiligh Sent: Monday, October 01, 2012 7:10 AM To: Blind sysadmins list Subject: [Blind-sysadmins] ESXI update policies. Hello, I was just wondering, Do you have a policy for updating eSXI hosts? Drawing from their recommendations at the following KB article it would seem that VMware suggest that updates are applied very quickly after release however as we all know, What software prociders suggest and what is viable are two very different things. I applied a patch on Friday to an ESXI cluster that was only four days old. Quite rightly, it was flagged this morning by someone else here as being a possible risk. http://www.vmware.com/support/policies/upgrade.html It just got me thinking, the list for checking and unchecking updates isn't the cleanest thing out there. It's very easy to let an update through that is only out a few days. 1. Do you bother checking release dates? 2. If so, what is your policy? Do you leave updates to settle for a month? 3. If you don't install some updates, What method have you developed to distinguish bleeding edge updates? Thanks. I'm going to be asked about this in a meeting on wednesday so it would be interesting to have others opinions. Of course, I should have caught the patch that was four days old so, it's entirely my fault but as luck would have it, it hasn't caused any problems. Their arguement will be, well, it could have. It hasn't been out in the wild long enough to be tested by the eSXI user base. Regards Darragh Ó Héiligh Fujitsu Offices of the Houses of the Oireachtas, Fredrick Building, South Fredrick Street, Dublin2 Telephone: +353 (1) 618 3559 Email: darragh.oheiligh@oireachtas.ie Internet: http://www.oireachtas.ie Oireachtas email policy and disclaimer. http://www.oireachtas.ie/parliament/about/oireachtasemailpolicyanddisclaimer... Beartas ríomhphoist an Oireachtais agus séanadh. http://www.oireachtas.ie/parliament/ga/eolas/beartasriomhphoistanoireachtais... _______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins _______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins _______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins _______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins _______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins _______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins