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
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
I couldn’t get a lot done with the web interface. I have several virtual machines on the server at home and instead use VM Ware workstation on my laptop to connect to them and make changes. I’m not using any advanced enterprise features of course, just the free version of v sphere. Cheers Chris Turner Sent from mobile.
On 23 Oct 2019, at 02:16, Kelly Prescott <kprescott@coolip.net> wrote:
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
_______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list -- blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org To unsubscribe send an email to blind-sysadmins-leave@lists.hodgsonfamily.org
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
_______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list -- blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org To unsubscribe send an email to blind-sysadmins-leave@lists.hodgsonfamily.org
Hi, I agree with you in the context of the PowerShell tools on vSphere, but have you looked into something like Terraform to provide infrastructure as code? The tasks you want to accomplish have an easier workflow in something like Terraform than in PowerShell in my opinion, although these days I don't go near ESX and do everything in the cloud, so there may be some annoying features using the vSphere provider. In terms of the console access any CLI tool is going to struggle with this, however it can be worked round. In the case of Azure VMs I have VM extensions that write out files to a storage account which I can view, and I have also done a solution which ran a DSC job on the host as part of the provisioning and the deployment job didn't finish until the DSC job had completed. I realise again this is very cloud based and I don't know how the APIs work on the vSphere side so experimentation may be required there. In my view one problem with the PowerShell tools for a lot of these platforms is it gives you current status on an action, and there are tools to perform specific actions, but it isn't declarative in that you give it an end goal and it will not know how to get there. The magic in something like Terraform (and the cloud specific stack languages) is that it knows dependencies between the different components so can work out the order to run transactions. I wasn't going to reply to this thread as I didn't really have anything constructive to write, but hopefully this may have given you something to look into. Andrew. ________________________________________ From: Darragh Ó Héiligh [d@digitaldarragh.com] Sent: 23 October 2019 09:07 To: Blind sysadmins list 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
_______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list -- blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org To unsubscribe send an email to blind-sysadmins-leave@lists.hodgsonfamily.org _______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list -- blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org To unsubscribe send an email to blind-sysadmins-leave@lists.hodgsonfamily.org
Terraform, ansible and other workflow management tools will help, but no matter what you do, it is going to require more work on your side. The interface simply does not provide enough screen reader access to be efficient for us. I did not go down that road as I think Chris was just wanting one-shot tasks, but even with the provided example, it looks like the task may be repeated. Most of the stuff I do requires more initial work then simply clicking on something, but if I repeat it at all, then my extra work pays off in faster task completion. It is rare that complicated admin tasks just "work" out of the box. I usually have to work around one problem or another. Again, that is just the life of a blind system/network/infrastructure admin. -----Original Message----- From: Andrew Hodgson <andrew@hodgson.io> Sent: Wednesday, October 23, 2019 5:39 AM To: Blind sysadmins list <blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org> Subject: [Blind-sysadmins] Re: VSphere. Hi, I agree with you in the context of the PowerShell tools on vSphere, but have you looked into something like Terraform to provide infrastructure as code? The tasks you want to accomplish have an easier workflow in something like Terraform than in PowerShell in my opinion, although these days I don't go near ESX and do everything in the cloud, so there may be some annoying features using the vSphere provider. In terms of the console access any CLI tool is going to struggle with this, however it can be worked round. In the case of Azure VMs I have VM extensions that write out files to a storage account which I can view, and I have also done a solution which ran a DSC job on the host as part of the provisioning and the deployment job didn't finish until the DSC job had completed. I realise again this is very cloud based and I don't know how the APIs work on the vSphere side so experimentation may be required there. In my view one problem with the PowerShell tools for a lot of these platforms is it gives you current status on an action, and there are tools to perform specific actions, but it isn't declarative in that you give it an end goal and it will not know how to get there. The magic in something like Terraform (and the cloud specific stack languages) is that it knows dependencies between the different components so can work out the order to run transactions. I wasn't going to reply to this thread as I didn't really have anything constructive to write, but hopefully this may have given you something to look into. Andrew. ________________________________________ From: Darragh Ó Héiligh [d@digitaldarragh.com] Sent: 23 October 2019 09:07 To: Blind sysadmins list 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
_______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list -- blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org To unsubscribe send an email to blind-sysadmins-leave@lists.hodgsonfamily.org _______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list -- blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org To unsubscribe send an email to blind-sysadmins-leave@lists.hodgsonfamily.org _______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list -- blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org To unsubscribe send an email to blind-sysadmins-leave@lists.hodgsonfamily.org
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
_______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list -- blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org To unsubscribe send an email to blind-sysadmins-leave@lists.hodgsonfamily.org _______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list -- blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org To unsubscribe send an email to blind-sysadmins-leave@lists.hodgsonfamily.org
I did not address the bottom of your message. I never claimed it was more efficient, I just claim it can be done without using the UI. The UI does not function well with screen readers, so I resort to the automation interface. Also, It is true that process and status information is hard to get to, but again it is there, you just need to ask for it. If VMWare would make the interface completely accessible, we would not have a problem, but I don't see that happening, so I work around it. As you use PowerShell, you know it has tab completion, so take advantage of it. Also, make aliases for long command strings you use and you wont have to retype them every time. Again, I am not claiming this is easy, but If you are a blind sysadmin, it is not easy! -----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
_______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list -- blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org To unsubscribe send an email to blind-sysadmins-leave@lists.hodgsonfamily.org _______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list -- blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org To unsubscribe send an email to blind-sysadmins-leave@lists.hodgsonfamily.org
participants (5)
-
Andrew Hodgson -
Chris T -
Darragh Ó Héiligh -
Kelly Prescott -
kprescott＠coolip.net