Let's be honest, most IT engineers are autodidacts out of necessity. Our industry isn't mature compared to most of the professions that exist today. Computer Science was first offered as a degree in 1962 in the US, and Network Science is flatly ancient, but generalized IT infrastructure support only became a schooled …

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Note: This post integrates several automation tools at once. My objective is to provide some well-documented, concrete examples of executable Ansible Playbooks, D2 Diagrams, and best practice to illustrate ways to make good documentation easy. Note: All code examples in this blog post are structured in a format to be …

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Let's do something a bit more stereotypical when we talk about IT diagramming - building Network Diagrams with D2. D2's OSS layout engines (Dagre, ELK) are both centered around hierarchical layouts, which was a bit part of why we needed to hack D2 to get vSphere diagrams to draw. Here, it quickly becomes our best …

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In a previous post we tested methods to illustrate documentation as-code with Terrastruct's D2 language. Documentation is good for infrastructure engineers in a variety of scenarios practically speaking, but we often forget the value of building consumer confidence. This may vary based on culture! My experiences are …

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Documentation is always important, but always takes too much time Ever had an issue where a new installation is completed, but there's just no time to update the ol' Visio diagrams? Manually composed diagrams always possess a certain art to them, but the hours per unit of documentation isn't always worthwhile …

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Ansible is a fantastic tool for Linux-based and NOS-based automation. Have you seen this error before? 1"changed": false, "msg": "Failed to connect to the host via ssh: Host key verification failed." When you use Ansible with SSH transport (as opposed to an API), you rely on the SSH key trust …

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In a previous post, we covered how to create a virtual machine from a VM template in vSphere using Python and the REST API as an example of service-agnostic methods to invoke infrastructure resources. VMware's PowerCLI is a fantastic tool, but it's not for me. Tweaking or porting functionality from PowerCLI to other …

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VMware introduced RESTful APIs with their vSphere 7.0 release train; migrating from the old MOB APIs is a welcome choice. REST clients provide a powerful tool for automating processes, but it's important to embody reliable practices when interacting with infrastructure. The neat thing about published and documented …

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Distributed Virtual Port-Groups (dvPGs) in vSphere are a powerful tool for controlling network traffic behavior. vSphere Distributed Switches (vDS) are non-transitive Layer 2 proxies and provide us the ability to modify packets in-flight in a variety of complex ways. Note: Cisco UCS implements something similar with …

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Let's take a look at the new lifecycle management process for vCenter. The old process via the VAMI was easy to execute - the industry is upping the ante with automated pre- and post-testing. Cisco's NX-OS installer is another example - complex procedures (in Cisco's case, sequential PGA or microcode updates) invite …

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