VMadmin - The One IT Employee You Don't Want to Upset!

As IT convergence continues to gain popularity with everyone from CIOs to System Administrators the role of one (or more) person(s) is quickly becoming THE job you want to have in IT.  For many reasons the VMware Administrator is the one IT job you want if you are a Systems person (Sys Admin, Network Admin, Storage Admin, etc.).  He or she is the Neo in The Matrix who can do it all.  Virtualization is so popular because of how much money it can save the company.  Everyone wins.  From the Doctor carrying a tablet around, visiting patients, updating information with his or her Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) to the person automatically uploading photos to some storage space in the Cloud for sharing on Facebook to the lonely system or application administrator preparing a clone of a VM for a big application upgrade.  Virtualization allows this all to happen while saving money, time, space, and energy. 

A bit of history.  Computers were supposed to make everything easier, more productive and fun!  Then humans came along and ruined it.  Today computer systems can be very complex and expensive to manage. Open Systems took away the sleek beauty of one mainframe and exploded it into a massive array of little pieces at a much lower price.  Now everyone is into computers.  From their smartphone to their fancy MacBook Air or iPad tablet sitting at Panera Bread trying to appear more intellectual than they might be.

Virtualization is the next logical step in a constantly evolving electronic ecosystem.  Which brings me back to our ultimate warrior called the VM Admin.  Thanks to this push for convergence driven by budget issues and new energy initiatives comes someone who sits squarely in the middle of the data center spectrum.

There is the Network which has traditionally been managed by the Network Administrator.  Then Cisco comes along with the Unified Computing System - an awesome blade technology platform for hosting virtual machine. Wait a second.  Isn't Cisco a Networking company?  The lines between Network and Server have faded into one device.  When Sun Microsystems used to advertise "The Network is the Computer" they were spot on.  That was back in the 1990s!  The VM Admin is a key player in setting up virtual switches (vSwitch) distributed or not, virtual port groups (distributed or not), and mapping those to virtual local area networks (VLANs).  Of course the VM Admin needs to work with the traditional Network Administrator to ensure settings (static and dynamic) are compatible.

There is the Storage Administrator.  At one time the second highest paying job in IT (next to DBA). Then along comes Compellent with their vSphere client plugin to help vMotion migrating VMs to their storage array.  Now the VM Admin can do all these storage activities:

• Provision, resize or expand volumes as business needs demand
• Configure storage and VM hosts
• Replicate VM datastore volumes for disaster recovery
• Clone volumes to accelerate test and development
• View virtual storage statistics

Last but not least the traditional System Administrator falls to the mighty VM Admin.  What, you used to be called a Windows Admin or a Unix Systems Administrator?  That's SO 2000 and late.  Need to set up a cluster of three nodes for a new application?  Don't call the Unix admin.  It'll take him or her weeks to set it up.  Call the VM admin - done in an hour.  Now, let's go to lunch.  Need to clone a production host to test out some patches or a software upgrade?  Windows admin says I'll need a few days to work out licensing, installation, hardening, etc.  VM admin says it's already done.  Have you ever lost hardware on a critical server?  VM admin yawns as he watches all the VMs automatically migrate to another host in the cluster.   Need to add more memory to that server?  Let me put in an request for change, explain myself at the change meeting, prepare for the change, create a backout plan, schedule it for Sunday at 2am, drive in, make the change, lose much needed beauty sleep then cautiously ask the application owner to test out the application.  The VM admin was done dynamically adding 2G of memory before the original question was asked. Nuff said.

Here are the list of traditional IT jobs that are being slowly consumed by one super admin - the VM Admin:

Backup Administrator
Storage Administrator
Unix Administrator
Linux Administrator
Windows Administrator
Network Administrator
Security Administrator
Business Continuity Professional
Disaster Recovery Planner
<Your Job Title Here>

It's not over yet.  You still need that expertise when you need to rebuild a Linux Kernel or troubleshoot a core dump.  The VM admin builds the house that IT lives in.  It's still up to the traditional admin to manage the details.  The convergence of roles in the data center aren't over yet.  Not by a long shot.  So forget all that HP-UX training you went to out in Fullerton, CA.  You need to upgrade your skills today.  So download that Mastering VMware vSphere electronic book to your tablet, register for the exam online and tweet a friend about it.