VMware introduced RESTful APIs with their vSphere 7.0 release train; migrating from the old MOB APIs is a welcome choice. REST clients provide a powerful tool for automating processes, but it's important to embody reliable practices when interacting with infrastructure. The neat thing about published and documented …

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Have you ever heard someone say "I'm not a coder" at work? The IT industry is changing again. Our humble origins began as polymaths moved from adjacent industries and created a new world from scratch. The pioneering phase led to unique opportunities, creating our transport protocols, programming languages, …

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Why should an infrastructure engineer leverage REST APIs? I'm sure most IT workers have at least heard of REST APIs, or heard a sales pitch where a vendor insists that while a requested functionality doesn't exist, you could build it yourself by "using the API". Or, participate in discussions where people …

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Continuous Delivery: No Rest for the Wicked Now that we have: A method to generate Desired State Configurations, by defining Declaratively what the device config should be, and combining it with what a device config should have A method to apply configurations automatically, without PuTTY Copy-Pasting We now can …

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Don't Reinvent the Wheel: Ansible Playbooks Writing your own code isn't always the answer Often, communities such as Python will contribute code of substantially higher quality than what you/I can create individually. This is OK. In nearly every case, dyed-in-the-wool traditionalist programmers will consume …

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So far, most API invocations, at least in terms of what you need to do, are pretty simple to execute. Then again, just about every other administrative function on a computer is, as well. For example: Clicking a button Typing in a command or variable Interacting with a programmable interface is as simple as any other …

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Let's be realistic about the API craze - it seems everything has one, and everybody is talking about API consumption in their environment as if they've invented fire. Here are a few things to know about APIs that could have been communicated better: Writing code to consume an API is easy. Most of the time, a cURL …

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Let's answer the big question: "What's the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything?" Kidding, it's easier to cover the question: "Why automate?" So let's get started! Here I'm going to start a few easy and quick ways to benefit from automation, with a slight networking …

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