Mike D’s Blog

Calling all coding hacks!

Back in December, VMware launched the VMware Script-O-Mania contest. The goal of the Script-O-Mania contest is to help our wider community adopt ESXi by providing useful, fun and powerful scripts to manage the ESXi platform. But this isn’t just fun and games – there’s real prizes!

• 1st Prize $2,500
• 2nd Prize $1,000
• 3rd Prize $500

So polish off those scripting skills and get coding. The contest ends on March 15, 2010. You can find full details and submit your entry here.

For anyone that reads this blog they know I love using PowerShell with VMware. Microsoft hits home runs every once in a while. They did it with Windows XP. They did it again with PowerShell. What a beautiful scripting language.

One of the all time gurus of VMware and PowerShell is Hal Rottenberg. Now Hal has a new book coming out and it’s time to click on over and pre-order your copy today. If you’re using VMware and have ever needed to script anything then you’ll want this book. Go get it now.

From Hal’s site on why to buy it.

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As many of you know I just can’t keep my hands out of the different API sets that VMware offers. From Powershell to VIX to Java it’s all there. The product set is incredibly extensible. I was getting back up to speed on our Java API and found out that the new API set was just released as beta. For those of you in love with Java you’ll be happy to know you don’t need AXIS anymore (it was a royal pain to setup). For more information on the beta or to try it out for yourself just continue reading below or go here.

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The new and greatly improved VI Toolkit for Windows has been updated to version 1.5. Below are some videos showing off the new features.

I must say that I really love PowerShell and the VI Toolkit. This thing is so powerful it’s awesome! I got the privilege of doing an informal video interview with Carter Shanklin, Product Manager for the VI Toolkit, when I was out at corporate last week. I’m working on getting that video up on the blog real soon. Carter talks more about the plans for the VI Toolkit and shows off some really nice scripts. I actually shot about 8 hours of video with different people while out there so keep watching the blog for those behind the scenes interviews coming soon.

For the full list of VI Toolkit videos go here.

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