
Ask HN: Is the private cloud the worst documented thing? - marenkay
Over the past few weeks I&#x27;ve been sampling a lot of hypervisors for running private cloud instances with decent support for control via API.<p>The question comes to mind: could it be that hypervisors and private cloud software is actually the worst documented thing these days?<p>I did sample installations and multi-node setups at my office rack with these:<p>- VMware ESXi
- XenServer
- Debian + Proxmox
- Debian + OpenNebula
- Debian + OpenStack<p>Why these? Well, mainly due to the fact that a key requirement for private clouds is control via API and API tooling is kind of sparse apart from these contenders.<p>Are my contenders just not used that much in real world use cases, or is it just the fact that the missing documentation&#x2F;non-public knowledge results in DevOps nice consulting invoices?
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travem
[Disclosure, I currently work for VMware]

On the VMware side, what kind of documentation are you looking for, and what
kind of capabilities are you looking to expose? VMware has a really broad
portfolio and it can be complex for someone to get started if they are not
already familiar with what is available.

If you want to get hands-on quickly to see what capabilities are available I'd
recommend trying out the free "Hands-on labs" available here -
[http://labs.hol.vmware.com/HOL/catalogs/catalog/681](http://labs.hol.vmware.com/HOL/catalogs/catalog/681)

It may be useful to understand a bit of the high-level overview of which
components play in the portfolio. Probably key items to look at are:

1\. vSphere (comprised of vCenter and ESXi for compute virtualization) 2.a.
Either, vRealize suite (primarily vRealize Automation) 2.b. Or, vSphere
Integrated OpenStack (if you want to use OpenStack instead of vRealize)

API docs are located on [https://code.vmware.com](https://code.vmware.com)
though if you don't have a mental model of the system already it could be
somewhat complex to follow along unaided.

