I’ve recently added VI:OPS to my rss reader. The amount of high quality documents/articles released over the last couple of days really amazed me. For those that don’t know VI:OPS:
If you look at the existing forums and resources, they are very focused on the products and technology from VMware with most users being VCPs / VMware administrators. However, there are some topics that aren’t covered in the existing forums (such as Availability) and the purely technical focus of the existing topics is not relevant to a whole other field of professionals that have different challenges with virtualization, like the Operations team.
To bridge this gap, we created VI:OPS to widen the discussion beyond pure, deep technical by adding five topics that VMware staff, partners and customers talk about all the time but where there is no online collaboration facility for these topics.
In short, VI:OPS focuses more on procedures and processes. A great example is this article by Rob Ford: Implementing ITIL V3 Capacity Management in a VMware environment. This is were VI:OPS clearly differentiates from the VMTN Community. I guess you could say that VI:OPS guides you towards operational readiness where VMTN is more educational in terms of technology and troubleshooting.
One of the best articles this week was written by Rodney Haywood aka Rodos. Rodney wrote a great VI:OPS article on Migration Methodologies. The document outlines all necessary steps for a successful migration from physical to virtual. It even includes a description of several migration tools including VMware Converter and Platespin Powerconvert.
Another great read is definitely Steve Chambers document “Initiating the deployment“. This document is still under heavy construction but already contains a wealth of information for Architects, VCPs, Project Leaders and even Managers. It describes the various pre-stages of a virtualization project ranging from Financial Justification to a Project Charter.
And what about these two posts, a library of VMware Visio Stencils and VMware Icons and Diagrams in PPT form. A must have for everyone documenting VI3 or Designing virtual environments.
Now head over to VI:OPS and start reading and of course contribute!
