I am not going to liken every step specifically here, but I do essentially the same thing at work when I setup a VM. The most manual part would be checking the console. You can run a powershell command that would give you status on the vm and report on it every 10 seconds or so. Advanced, you could simply have the script send you a email when machine build and provisioning is complete. I just wait a few minutes and ask for machine status. There is nothing you are doing that powershell couldn't do, you just need to think a little out of the box. Also, you must be running VCenter, as that is the interface powershell uses. Yes it does cost, but we have licenses at work and for home I joined VMUG and pay $200 per year or so for a complete lab license. If you are really trying to avoid interfaces, you can edit the machine config files directly, but that can get really problematic if you make mistakes. Read the PowerCLI documentation, it can do more than people think it can. -----Original Message----- From: Darragh Ó Héiligh <d@digitaldarragh.com> Sent: Wednesday, October 23, 2019 4:07 AM To: Blind sysadmins list <blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org> Subject: [Blind-sysadmins] Re: VSphere. Kelly, Thanks. But power shell scripts have limitations. Take for example the following sequence of tasks. 1. Create VM from template. 2. Modify that VM using a wizard to modify the host name, IP address, time zone etc. 3. Wait for it to provision. 4. Monitor the status of the provision task. 5. Change the VM to use a different VSwitch. 6. Verify the amount of RAM and CPU cores. 7. Move to the networks tab and verify the VLAN ID for the network you have chosen. 8. Power on the VM 9. Open the console. 10. Use OCR either using Jaws or something like Seeing AI to determine when the template work flow has added the machine to the domain etc. All of these tasks with power shell only would take a lot more time. Sure, if it was a defined workflow or a commonly required task, power shell would be fine. But I'm not sold on it's advantages over a good GUI for day to day administrative tasks with different requirements. I'm open to correction though but specific examples of your requirements and how you accomplish these efficiently would be very appreciated. I'm aware of the advantages of power shell. I use it daily but almost always for repeated tasks. Even for an extremely fast typist, I find power shell to be les efficient than a GUI for one off tasks. Also, information such as the status of background jobs, dependencies etc must besought. It is not there for easy retrieval. -----Original Message----- From: Kelly Prescott <kprescott@coolip.net> Sent: Wednesday 23 October 2019 02:17 To: Blind sysadmins list <blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org> Subject: [Blind-sysadmins] Re: VSphere. I took a job where I have to dive deep into VMWare. I have found the web interface to be about useless, but I have had great luck with powershell. I am now probably better then my sighted team members as I just write scripts to do the things they have to click to do. I have powershell on my LInux systems as well as on my windows systems and the PowerCLI (which is the vmware interface) works fine on either platform. It does take some work, but that is usually the case when access for the blind is involved. On Tue, 22 Oct 2019, Darragh Ó Héiligh wrote:
Hello,
Is there anyone on this list working with VSphere or dabbling from time to time?
I'm still using the installed client but that is fast being removed.
Last time I looked at the HTML5 interface, it wasn't great. So I'm wondering if there have been any improvements and / or is there anyone engaging with VMware?
I don't have any contacts with VMware at the moment. So I cant push any questions any further than standard support channels.
Please don't recommend power shell as an administration tool, this isn't currently viable for my needs.
Thanks
Darragh _______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list -- blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org To unsubscribe send an email to blind-sysadmins-leave@lists.hodgsonfamily.org
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