I was reading through some of the posts on The VNTN Community Forums and I am always attracted to the scripted or automating posts.  Have I mentioned that scripting and automation are one of my favorite things?   That question is, of course, rhetorical if you know me and the answer is YES!  I came across a specific thread from someone that was looking for a solution to image his ESX servers complete with the VM’s that he would need.  A fellow community member mentioned that he should take a look at Kickstart for building or installing the VMware ESX host.  It was his answer that made me stop and reflect for a second about the initial request:  “I’m on a very tight schedule here — a few days — and I really don’t have time for a lengthy learning phase.  Is there some way to shortcut the process?  Is there perhaps an ESX tool to generate a Kickstart script that recreates this ESX?”

I just do not get that but, yet I do.  It seems more and more administrators these days are looking for any shortcuts or tools they can find that will just do the work for them rather than take the time to learn it to begin with.  I work for a software vendor and while from a business point of view this is a great thing, I can’t help wonder how many administrators out there really take the time or really have the time to gain in depth knowledge on the systems that they maintain and support on a day to day basis?  Don’t get me wrong, I am fully aware of the situation that when out of nowhere the manager wearing the suit shows up and commands that a solution be ready for an issue right now on technology that you, the administrator, have no real experience with.   This is a situation that I am sure most people working in the field have come across at least once if not certainly more often than that.

I realize that in this uncertain economy cost cutting measures are in place to help a company get through this recession and a lot of the time those cost cutting measures are in the form of people, staff and or training. As the economy get worse, the staffs gets smaller, the administrators end up finding themselves supporting a wider, greater variety of application and or systems.  The “Jack of all trades, master of none” syndrome if you will.  I guess if I really think about it, this is pretty much what you will find in most IT shops across the country and or even the world.  Consultants would be the people that have really mastered the skill by gaining knowledge or have just done it over and over so many times that it is second nature.

I started out in Virtualization just after the turn of the century and have been eating, sleeping, and drinking virtualization since that very first proof of concept and then moving forward and never looking back.  Sometimes you forget what things are like for others in the industry and it is good to reflect on that sometimes.  At first thought you would think, if you are going to use a technology you should spend the time to really learn and master that technology.  In the real world, that is not always the case nor is it always possible.  This question and answer on the forum really made me reflect on the ways of the world and some of my thoughts from reading the forum.

ESX, Kickstart, Scripted Installs, Steve Beaver, virtualization, vmware

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 19th, 2009 at 8:43 am and is filed under Virtual Tech. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.