While at Interop ITX 2017, I met with Eric Pulvino from Cumulus Networks and learnt a bit about where Cumulus was heading and what’s new. One of the topics that got my attention was using a CICD pipeline for end to end testing of network configuration changes. Cumulus Linux in a networking operating system (NOS) from Cumulus Networks. At its heart, this is a Debian Jesse distribution with additional networking smarts.

As I write this, I’;m on my way home after attending my first Interop event. The purpose of this post is to detail my experience at Interop ITX 2017 as a first time attendee. Interop Community Interop was designed around the conference, not vendors. This provides a different dynamic to many other conferences, which are at times a week long sales pitch. Instead, the focus is on the attendees and content making it more enjoyable as an engineer.

Over the past few years, Eric Wright has been organising running events called #vfit for conference attendees. The runs are 5 KM in length and suitable for all fitness levels, from sprinters to walkers. Interop ITX 2017 was the first event to put #vfit on the agenda, and it was big. I’;m not going to count the number of people in the picture below, but I estimate attendance to be roughly 1 million.

The Interop ITX fun started last night with Eric Wright taking me out for a wonderful mothers day dinner. We got good and nerdy covering topics from automation to vendor competition. Actual Day 1 The first day of Interop ITX started with a light run from the MGM to the “Welcome to Las Vegas” sign. Testing out the running route for Tuesday and Wednesday vFit runs. On the way to the registration desk, I stumbled upen Chris Wahl heading in the same direction.

During Dell EMC World 2017, I had the chance to chat to Vertiv about who they are and what they do. For the conversation, they chose to discuss their UPS and the benefits it brings, which frankly was underwhelming. Vertiv offers a range of products and services, which we did not discuss at the time. The first question is ‘Who are Vertiv?’;. Vertiv provides infrastructure and services for mission critical systems.

With all the T-shirts and swag handed out, Dell EMC World gets boxed up for another year. Over the four day event we heard announcements for XtremeIO, IoT, Hello Alice, DTUG and others. Many things, this post won’;t be touching on :). I attended the event with vBrownBag to produce Tech Talks and even film some podcasts. The recordings are found on the vBrownBag YouTube Channel. vBrownBag For the event, the vBrownBag crew consisted of Alastair Cooke, Jeremy Powers and Myself.

In October 2016, I took the VCP6-NV exam and failed. While this was not the first exam I have failed, it was eye opening. After seeing the question set, I realized my understanding of the exam was incorrect. I wrote a post In February, I went to retake the exam but due to an issue with the Pearson systems I couldn’;t sit on the day. On the 31st of March I sat the exam for the second time and passed.

When writing scripts for clients, it’;s important to generate good logs. It’;s a common position where a script works perfectly in test. But in production something is askew. Being able to look back at the process and step through after the fact is essential. Usually my logs are written in CSV format. CSV is great for parsing. But, it’;s awful to run in a text file. Due to this, I decided to modify my log function.

Recently I have started to look at the Turbonomic API. Due to my current skill level in Python, I quickly hit a roadblock. The response from an API is in in XML format. Parsing the response in XML slowed things down a little. Which is the focus of the post. How to parse the XML response with Python. After some time I put the pieces together can work with this product through the API.

It’s UserCon time down under. Which means, vBrownBag are presenting tech talks. Following the UserCon theme, we a number of presentations of personal development. As well as technical coverage. Talk schedules are below Sydney Time <th class="column-2"> Topic </th> <th class="column-3"> Presenter </th> 10:50 - 11:05 <td class="column-2"> Considerations for running Tier 1 databases on VSAN </td> <td class="column-3"> Murray Oldfield<br /> @murray_oldfield </td> 11:10 - 11:25 <td class="column-2"> Becoming a Subject Matter Expert </td> <td class="column-3"> Grant Orchard<br /> @grantorchard </td> 12:50 - 13:20 <td class="column-2"> Q&A VMWare Technical Interview </td> <td class="column-3"> Tai Ratcliff<br /> @TaiRatcliff<br /> Scott Norris<br /> @auScottNorris </td> 13:40 - 13:55 <td class="column-2"> Title: Multi Cloud Management and governance with vRealize Automation </td> <td class="column-3"> Scott Norris<br /> @auScottNorris </td> 14:00 - 14:15 <td class="column-2"> The Importance of Mentorship </td> <td class="column-3"> Rebecca Fitzhugh<br /> @RebeccaFitzhugh </td> Melbourne Time <th class="column-2"> Topic </th> <th class="column-3"> Presenter </th> 10:50 - 11:25 <td class="column-2"> NVMe for Beginners </td> <td class="column-3"> Derek Hennessy<br /> @derekhennessy<br /> Craig Waters<br /> @cswaters1 </td> 11:30 - 11:45 <td class="column-2"> Becoming a Subject Matter Expert </td> <td class="column-3"> Grant Orchard<br /> @grantorchard </td> 12:50 - 13:20 <td class="column-2"> Q&A VMWare Technical Interview </td> <td class="column-3"> Tai Ratcliff<br /> @TaiRatcliff<br /> Scott Norris<br /> @auScottNorris </td> 13:40 - 13:55 <td class="column-2"> Title: Multi Cloud Management and governance with vRealize Automation </td> <td class="column-3"> Scott Norris<br /> @auScottNorris </td> 14:00 - 14:15 <td class="column-2"> The Importance of Mentorship </td> <td class="column-3"> Rebecca Fitzhugh<br /> @RebeccaFitzhugh </td>

Roughly a month ago, I received an invite to beta test the PluralSight offline player. At the time, only a Mac client was available. Previously PluralSight had an offline player, and it was awful. Thankfully this has not been the experience with the new player. My daily commute involves a 45-minute train trip each way. This makes up a lot of my personal study and writing time. For this reason, I have a vested interest in an offline player.

PyCharm from JetBrains, is a full featured Python IDE. Which over the last 6 months has been my Python IDE of choice. The official site is: https://www.jetbrains.com/pycharm. I would like to share my experiences, which have mostly been positive. Editions Before jumping into thoughts and experiences, lets preface with the two different editions of PyCharm. Community and Professional. PyCharm Community Edition is the free version. For my usage, it can almost do everything I need.

If you’;re looking at Python to interact with API’;s, it’;s likely that you’;ll use the Requests module. Many platforms also offer SDK’;s to help. Such as, Boto3 which is the AWS Python SDK. Requests is very well documented, both official and community documentation. The official site for Requests is http://docs.python-requests.org/en/master/ In this post, we are going to cover the basics of performing a HTTP GET and working with the data.