If you’d like to enter the VMware scripting contest that Carter announced the other day, but don’t have any good ideas to get going, here is a thread I started a while back that has some good ones in it.
VMware Communities: Call for script ideas
I’m also personally sitting on a ton of ideas for other stuff that I may or may not get to during the process of writing my book. If you’d like to explore what can or can’t be done, or bounce ideas off of me (and the rest of the community), go ahead and post in the VITK forums.
(As Carter reminded me—I’m a judge. I probably shouldn’t be having private conversations on this topic with people. 
)
Hal, VMware is extending the community with a new portal called VI:OPS http://vpp-dev-1.vmware.com/
One of the core principles of this community is automation of proven practices - and your ideas on scripting fall firmly into that area.
Do you think you can group your scripts into categories like “deployment / configuration” or “operations” or “monitoring”? If you think who would use these scripts, is it always the VCP / VMware admin or could it be an Ops guy on the bridge?
Cheers
Steve
I saw that portal a while ago. I don’t know if I had it on my brain subconsciously or if it was just my ITIL training coming out but I am organizing the chapters of my book around host and VM lifecycles and the titles are “Deployment & Configuration”, “Maintenance & Operations”, and so on. Of course that stuff in my book won’t be making it to the web, however I’m posting snippets on my blog from time to time and I am sure that there will be plenty left over when the book is out that it would be a shame not to make available.
As far as Ops guys, sure…
Feel free to post snippets over on the VI:OPS site
We are about to post some standard operating procedures on there, the aim being to publish a core set of SOPs that folks can check they have handed off to Ops… so that the VCP/admin can spend more time on scripting… 
What’s the timeline for the book?
Oh, you know…”when it’s done”. This is my first book. I’m still getting the hang of the schedule thing.
[...] If you need a script idea for the VMWare contest check out Hal’s blog post [...]