I’ve discovered a real cool German start-up and did a little interview with the director Andreas Wilke about their new automation appliance.
The ptecs automation appliance is not a product. It’s a collection of our best practices how we automate the daily needed tasks inside a VMware environment in the form of a VMware appliance. We are using the perl vSphere SDK Toolkit and developed two integrated modules:
- ptecs VMware AutoInstall: Fully automated pxe installation of esx hosts with network and software configuration.
- ptecs VMware Toolkit: LifeCycle Management, Snapshot Management, Datastore Management and automated Management for Virtual Machines.
- Seamless integration of both modules inside the VMware vSphere Client as Plug-in.
We are able to automate all tasks the VMware SDK API delivers. Our main target is to reduce the daily workload of VMware administrators with automation of these tasks inside a VMware environment. In future we want to migrate the perl tasks to Orchestrator. At this time we want to implement a ESXi automated installation, a Health Check and a chargeback module.
Andreas has also posted some real cool videos at YouTube which gives you an insight at the paap virtual appliance. More information can be found on the ptecs website: http://www.ptecs.de next year.
