Any VMware admins? Or IT admins

[Too Late]

I have just been placed in a 3rd line VMware contract which I really wanted as my previous contract was up. Good location, great day rate and exactly what I was after.

3 weeks in get approached by my new manager about helping out the automation team for vrealize. With having only worked with Vorchestrator I said I don't mind helping out.

I am now finding myself in a position that I am being moved into the automation team and replaced with another contractor in the 3rd line team

I'm not sure how I feel about it and if it's a positive move.

Any thoughts?
This is only my second contact so still finding my way

Thanks
N

[Carl_Manchester]

Good, experienced automation specialists can earn up to £850 p/d at the moment.

Manager is doing you a favour.

Learn to learn Perl, Powershell and BASH while you are at it.

[TurricanII]

As a contractor you make your own way. If you don't like the new contract then make sure the next contract is closer towards your preferred area. Just see it a great experience for now.

[shtu]

Very good experience, and will put you in demand on the really large environments, as that's where the real benefit of investing in automation pays off.

[Vaud]

It's positive. Automation is in high demand.

[willisit]

Echo the above; automation is HUGE right now.

[Too Late]

Thought i would post back!

So i am now in the automation team. Work has been slow and i have been building out a test enviroment deployment of vRA. They seem to have a huge IAAS and PAAS environment with SCCM but are trying to do everything in vRA.

My old team, the vmware team seem to hold the keys to lots of the estate and now i am hitting road blocks when fixing or troubleshooting issues with vmware tickets which i have raised, being taken away and passed to the vmware team without my knowledge. These are all for operational issues for the vRA or vRB estate. I seem to find myself in the middle of a battle between the Automation team and the rest of what makes up IT in the company. I am also finding people resenting automation and what can be achieved with it. I automated ESXi builds with Altris in my last role and no one seems to want to automate bare metal builds even through they seem to do 5+ a week.

I was informed in my move i would be the middle man linking automation andthe vmware team together, since the move the vmware team have cut me and all my rights. Any work have to involve the vmware team and include them either shadowing my work or doing it without me. Its all very strange.

Also my contract is due for renewal in the next few days.. and i havent heard anything, i have been chasing the agent and the company and neither seem to know whats going on with it.

[willisit]

Interesting. Automation would usually sit within the VMware estate - though these days things do get shunted around. I also understand why automation gets peoples backs up - it saves time and resource... why do you need all those VMware chaps building hosts when the tool does it for "free"? If you're enjoying it, you won't find it hard getting another contract...

[theboss]

willisit said:

Interesting. Automation would usually sit within the VMware estate - though these days things do get shunted around. I also understand why automation gets peoples backs up - it saves time and resource... why do you need all those VMware chaps building hosts when the tool does it for "free"? If you're enjoying it, you won't find it hard getting another contract...

Exactly - the guys who oppose it are scared stless when they see how somebody with the infrastructure and dev skills combined can walk in and replace a whole bunch of them effortlessly.

The days are numbered for anyone in a production Windows sysadmin/infastructure role who isn't inclined to start understanding and using powershell and APIs at the minimum.

Edited by theboss on Friday 4th November 11:54

[joe_90]

Also look into devops, learn about CI/CD and dev ops scripting with things like Ansible.

We now run a full CD with RancherOS and Rancher Server with docker containers, the world is moving away from VM. I would not even entertain using VM/EsX or windows machines any more. Stripped back Linux OS servers that are started in seconds and deployed in seconds are what works now, horizontal elasticity is key.

I get lots of people applying for a devops role, without the skills but are really keen to have the chance to learn the skills. Sysadmins and the like are in panic mode of how the world is changing, it used to be such a safe space. It's interesting.

Edited by joe_90 on Saturday 5th November 20:51