Recently we held a poll regarding the use of scripting in managing your IT environment.   Nearly 90% of respondents are using scripting today and the majority are writing and maintaining their own scripts as well as downloading and reusing existing scripts.  So it comes as no surprise that the ITScripts feature in our upcoming  8.0 release is the most popular reason for users joining the beta.  Beta testers currently have access to seven scripts which include:

• Scripts to disable pesky update pop-ups for vendors like Apple and Adobe.
• Scripts to better support our own tech support needs like collecting console and target logs and packaging them up to send to support.
• Remove Temp Files for machine maintenance and cleanup.
• GetDateTime which is one of our troubleshooting scripts for IT Admins to help diagnose issues in their environment.
• GetShares which will get the system shares off of machines for configuration and audit purposes.

During the beta we are going to be pushing content updates which will include additional scripts and once we release there will be regular content updates with new scripts available.

For those of you who are heavy script writers, ITScripts Pro will include the ability to import your own scripts as well.  This comes with some added features besides just being able to import a script.  We have added the ability to use 8.0 to target machines and provide credentials.  Writing a script to fix an issue locally is one thing, but reproducing this on machines across your environment requires a bit more effort.  Now you will be able to take advantage of Protect’s ability to manage machines agentlessly and incorporate commands we have built into our ITScripts engine to do the targeting and credentials management for the scripts you write as well as ones we provide.

A community site will be available to support our ITScripts feature as well.  The site will provide users with an environment to discuss scripts, share them, and also to provide VMware with feedback on what scripts they would like to see incorporated into the supported script catalog next.  Documentation on how to take advantage of our additional commands and how to properly sign your scripts so they will import into version 8.0 will be available upon release as well.

Please join Rob Junker and myself as we discuss the new ITScripts feature during a live webinar on Tuesday, October 11, 2011 at 10am CDT.

Regards,

Chris Goettl
Customer-Product Owner
SMB Management Solutions
VMware