How did you guys learn?

[cshells]

Our company is just starting to utilize vRO and the majority of the administration/workflow building will be done by me. My knowledge heavily resides in datacenter administration (vSphere, View, UCS, Nexus). We don't utilize scripts, PowerCLI, or any sort of automation currently. Much of our work is done manually, which isn't very productive. I do have a small amount of programming basics from college, but nothing much. I have started playing around with workflows and just getting familiar with vRO in general. I have come to realize many of the things we will want to automate are going to require a decent amount of JavaScript since many of the default workflows won't meet our needs. I know we can use the defaults as a jump of point and customize from there. I just find myself a bit overwhelmed at times and it becomes discouraging. I have started reading a JS book to become a little more familiar with it, but I was curious how everyone else learned JS and even understanding which APIs are the correct ones to use. I know I can search through the APIs and read about them, I just get a little lost sometimes. Did some of you guys who didn't come from a programming background find this a bit overwhelming?

I know there isn't any secret answer to learning vRO but just playing with it and doing my research. I guess I am looking to see what some of you have used for your best learning resource.

Any help appreciated!

[NuggetGTR]

Yeah can be quiet overwhelming, VMware does offer specific vRO courses which doesn't really go into the finer details of coding or scripting but gives a great foundation to build up from.

Me personally I was similar heavy core vSphere background and only covered scripting back in high school and collage. Most of what I do is self taught and really the best thing to do is work out what you need to automate and start from there. There is no point trying to learn too much. Keep learning one automation task at a time.

I have covered some basics on my blog in the learning vCO series on www.virtualiseme.net.au. vcoteam.info is a great source of information and flowgrab.com has some really good flows that can be downloaded as a starting point.

Where you can utilise plugins do!! these can save allot of time and no point re creating the wheel when its been done before. Where a plugin is not an option go with your strengths. if a task is better done in powershell or your better with powershell, use the powershell host ability and just call powershell scripts.

There is allot of ways to achieve the same end goal, which is the great thing about vCO you dont have to be a gun at programing or scripting to get allot out of it.

Cheers

[cshells]

NuggetGTR, thanks for the info. I have utilized the free learning videos from VMware which did give a good foundation. I will also check out your blog. Oddly, I was googling around after I posted this question last night and stumbled onto one of the best resources I have found yet for learning JavaScript. The site is www.codeacademy.com. I am a very visual learner and this provides information and instructions on the different concepts of JS. It also has an interactive piece at the end of each lesson where you actually code what they are teaching and it checks to make sure you did it correctly. I spent about an hour on it last night and just in that time I picked up more knowledge on JS than I have since I started this journey. I definitely recommend anyone looking to learn JS, go check that site out.

I agree I need to work on one automation tasks at a time. Our first workflow we wanted to automate was deleting some of our snapshots, so I duplicated the "delete old snapshots" workflow and started looking into it. Unfortunately, it looks like I couldn't have picked a more difficult one to start with. The work flow is HUGE and there is a considerable amount of JavaScript that was very overwhelming. I couldn't even figure out exactly what to change in order to customize to our needs. That was my first discouraging moment I realized vRO might be a little more complicated to use than we were up for, but I am determined to figure all of it out. vRO provides endless possibilities for automating almost everything and I believe it would revolutionize some of the way we utilize and interact with our datacenter. I also think vRO/automation is becoming a very sought after skill amongst employers and only growing in the future.

If anyone has anymore resources similar to codeacademy I would be very interested in hearing about those. I think my other biggest challenge is figuring out all the different APIs and how they work.

[holashh]

Hey,

for JS you could start on w3school http://www.w3schools.com/js/default.asp here are examples for all.

As NuggetGTR mean check also plugins, where is lot of things done and you can just use them, eg vCenter, AD, SQL.

I've worked with it almost year, and do not know all, but from last August I am the only person in out company who is responsible for this, my predecessor was KiwiDave here in forum.

Be patience and hold on study, it is fun sometimes and it is anoying in some ways, but more fun .

Cheers.

[cdecanini_]

You can use vCOTeam as a starting point with tutorials, links to other Orchestration / scripting blogs / VMware education videos / Books.

[liyeqing009]

how about your learning, i just start researching about orchestrator.

now i just want to create a plug-in project by the vmware sample(hello world),,how to make the sample used as a plug-in  in orchestrator??

thank you!!

[SeanKohler]

I have come to determine that where the understanding is most crucial is in what each component of vRO does (from the base vRO to each plugin).  Then have something to solve.  Then go at it.  The scripting language will come along as you go forward solving your problem.  And then after you are done with the whole thing, and six months go by solving other problems, you will look back at the original script and say, "What the hell was I thinking?  This is horrible."  Then one day you might decide to gather up the gumption to rewrite the entire thing.

Next up for me is plugin development.  I really want to get into an Eclipse IDE and come up with a vRO plugin that can hold inventory.  Like you, I had some programming in college: though maybe I had a bit more.  I got into the weeds with Assembly and C++ and then followed with Java.  So some of this is just drawing from prior memory of a past college life 10-15 years ago. I signed up for codeschool.com.  The Ruby, GIT, and Java classes there are fun and challenging.  I have a small army of children, so finding the time can be difficult... but life is a journey... it doesn't happen overnight.

I think like anything, it is where you place your interests.  Do you really want to learn programming/scripting for administrative functions? If so, then go get it.  You can do it!

As a more practical side of things, and an area where you can get some immediate wins if you haven't already tried this... Get yourself the "Advanced Rest Client" for Chrome and learn how to send JSON formatted requests into the REST service.  If you want to understand the API, do GETS against it.  Eventually you will want to do a POST... and eventually you will be a master of your world.