Today was the DFW VMUG. I definitely learned a lot, although the sessions covering the VMworld announcments weren’t very useful for me, because I already watched the keynote and paid attention to what went on.

I definitely agree with the keynote speakers that IT is definitely changing. I disagree with some of their thoughts about what that means. I think that there will be a tech as disruptive as vMotion again, but I also know that tech is not the biggest way to improve an organization. Look at how most companies reacted to VMware - they did a lot of the same processes, just with fewer physical boxes. When I worked for Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, both as a knowledge worker and in IT, I saw how many inefficiences were driven by doing things around a model that was relevant anymore. At the time, it was how most of the business processes were driven by how things would be done when an org had a mainframe. I think server virtualization and the automation accompanying it means that many orgs need to re-evaluate processes. I know “cloud” means processes have to be reexamined. That’s not a bad thing. Unfortunately, many orgs may end up throwing out the baby with the bathwater by just green-fielding things in the cloud. Some of the cruft in the processes was built up by finding out what doesn’t work. Please be cautious and careful as you change processes. AND DOCUMENT EVERYTHING!

The PowerCLI/Powershell tips class was great. There’s nothing wrong with using Excel to generate batch files - I used Excel to create scripts to feed into a terminal emulator to speed up repetitive data entry before.

It was great meeting Cody Bunch and Nick Weaver. Both guys are really smart, and do a great job of presenting. After playing with Project Razor, I’m excited to see where it is going, because I think it could become a piece of tech in almost every admin’s toolkit.