Characteristics of vmware’s own infra: 4000 non-production srvrs, 500 production, 290 physical hosts, 4 PB storage….nice #vmworld — Viktor van den Berg (@viktoriousss) October 17, 2013 Hope it is all virtualised! ;)

For those that are unaware, VMworld Barcelona is currently going on and with it brings new product updates. In my quest for automation knowledge I’ve become quite interested in vCAC. The unfortunate downside is that (like all “automation” systems, I’m sure) it is quite involved in setting it up. With that in mind I’ve only spent a little bit of time trying to get it going but I’ve learnt one thing, it sure isn’t a next, next, next install!

For some time now I’ve been designing and developing some labs to replace the coming void that will be left by TechNet (please sign the petition!). My efforts have been focused on using VMware Fusion in conjunction with Vagrant and Packer. Both Vagrant and Packer are big deals in the DevOps communities due to the ability to quickly and easily destroy and create lab/dev environments. Due to the rapid rebuilds that can occur heavy automation is a must, and this is where Vagrant really shines.