Thrifty Admin Blog

RVTools Automation

Super Simple RVTools Automation Script

Here is a very simple RVTools Automation script written in PowerShell.  For anyone not familiar with RVTools, it’s a fantastic tool for managing your vSphere environment and available for free by Rob de Vey at RobWare. RVTools is a tool that displays a ton of data about your vSphere environment...

DevOps Engineer Responsibilities

DevOps Engineer Responsibilities

A DevOps engineer responsibilities are mostly concerned about successfully automating code releases into production.  They work on a continuous deployment cycle and try to avoid any problems to IT systems in the approach. In the modern age of continuous deployment, DevOps engineers are a critical part of IT since they...

VyOS Basic COnfiguration for a Home Lab

VyOS Configuration and Installation

This post will cover the VyOS configuration for a home lab using a standard Zone layout. The installation and configuration should take about 1 hour. What is VyOS? VyOS is a forked version of the Vyatta router that was bought by AT&T in 2017. Since it was bought, Vyatta is...

MS Hyper-V Laptop Lab

Free Windows Hypervisor Lab on your Laptop

Ever want to get more hands on experience with new technology but couldn’t afford the costs of an expensive home lab. Here’s what I did to build a Windows Hypervisor Lab on your Laptop for free!  I can now can build out very complicated DevOps configurations all within my virtual...

Best Hosted Hypervisor for Home Lab

Best Hosted Hypervisor for Home Lab

Do you want to learn more about new technologies?  Then you need a personal lab.  Let’s review what your options are to install the best hosted hypervisor for your home lab. If you support IT for a living, learning new technologies becomes a big part of your life.  The best...

Saltstack Introduction

SaltStack Architecture and Getting Started with Salt

This article will focus on SaltStack Architecture and how you can use it in your environment.  I will cover the SaltStack overall design, steps to install it, and just some of the way you can use it in your environment. The SaltStack Architecture is easy to learn and install, especially...

How to Teach your team to be more Agile

What is an Agile Team?

A lot of people have been asking lately, “what is an agile team” and “how can I teach my team to be more agile”?  Strangely very few people really know what agile truly means.  In this article, I will tell you exact what it is and how you can become...

VMware NSX Overview

Overview of VMware NSX Architecture

VMware NSX Architecture is simply an added product that allows you to install and manage virtual networking and security devices inside your existing VMware cloud.  VMware acquired this technology from Nicira in 2012. This acquisition launched VMware into the software-defined networking (SDN) business and cemented their position as the number...