can Powershell on Google Cloud manage LINUX instance? - powershell

Just to have 100% clarity, does the announcement https://cloudplatform.googleblog.com/2016/09/running-Powershell-on-Google-Cloud-SDK.html mean that PowerShell can be used to manage Google Cloud resources/instances independent of the actually installed operating system (i.e. Linux OS)?

Yes. The PowerShell cmdlets are a wrapper for gcloud, which is a cross-platform CLI for managing Google Cloud Platform resources.

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OS Supporting Bluemix

If I were to setup IBM Bluemix local, what are the operating systems that can support the Bluemix software?
Been trying to look for answers in the internet but always end up frustrated because I can't find any answer. Even Bluemix site did not mention what is the OS requirement in setting up Bluemix.
Bluemix Local is not a software product that you can install in your own operating system. It runs in your environment but it is still a subscription.
The Bluemix Local install is only performed by IBM and it is an automated deployment of many virtual servers. It is also a managed offering, meaning that you don't have access to the operating system on those virtual machines. All the maintenance tasks are executed by IBM through a secure connection and a mechanism called Relay.
I guess you probably saw this link before, but the infrastructure requirements are described here: https://console.ng.bluemix.net/docs/local/index.html#localinfra
I think you may need Bluemix Support team to help you build the Bluemix local environment, Bluemix local is a cloud platform as a service that need to build on your infrastructure as a service.

VMWare VCenter connection using REST API

We are developing an application in which we need to integrate different cloud services. We need to connect to VmWare VCenter server and should do the provisioning. Is there any Rest API calls to execute the task?
Thanks.....
Since this question was asked and answered VMware has released a vCenter REST API for version 6.5:
The VMware vSphere Automation SDKs provide support for your client application infrastructure with services to perform management operations in your vSphere environment. The vSphere Automation SDK for REST also contains samples to demonstrate how to use the new APIs.
The version 6.5 SDK enables programmatic access to the following
services:
Session management
Tagging
Content Library
Virtual Machines
vCenter Server Appliance management
Read more:
vSphere Automation SDK for REST 6.5 Release Notes
http://creativeview.co.uk/VMware-vCenter-REST-API-Part-1/
Currently, the vSphere API is largely SOAP based.
The simplest way to consume our API is via one of the existing SDKs.
For example, you can use the Python SDK (https://github.com/vmware/pyvmomi) to perform most vSphere functions via the Python library.
Alternatively, you can use a configuration management platform like Chef via the vSphere specific plugin. For Chef, there is a vSphere Knife: https://github.com/chef-partners/knife-vsphere
If you tell us more about the problem you are trying to solve and the tools you are using, we can give you a more detailed answer.

What's a difference between Azure PowerShell commandlets and Command-Line Tools?

What are the differences between Azure PowerShell Commandlets and Command-Line Tools?
is there a difference in capabilities?
are new versions published at around the same time?
is one of them the 'preferred' way to manage Azure resources?
I am interested in managing web sites, VMs and cloud services from developer's machine and also from Ci server (TeamCity/MSBuild - starting / stopping VMs).
I've noticed that Command-Line Tools is just a small ~5MB download while PowerShell commandlets have several dependencies (~22MB) and June 2013 version still relies on Azure SDK 1.8 October 2012.
The PowerShell cmdlets work only in PowerShell (on Windows machines). They're great for automating several concurrent tasks (i.e. scripting out an entire environment), or carrying out single tasks.
The command-line tools are cross platform tools (work on Windows, Linux, etc.) These are written in node.js. They're not as good for scripting multiple actions, but are great for developers that prefer the command line to execute tasks (instead of going to the Azure management portal).
As far as I can tell, they are not on a synced release schedule. You can follow the progress of each via their github.com repositories (https://github.com/WindowsAzure/azure-sdk-tools-xplat and https://github.com/WindowsAzure/azure-sdk-tools).
It appears that Powershell is a wrapper for the node tools. If you get an error in PS it will reference a .js file.
To test this simply allow your authentication token to expire without a login. The error message in the .json file it sends you to indicates a failure in a Javascript file.
The release schedule for WIndows Azure PowerShell and the command line tools are both approximately once every 3 weeks. You can get the latest from the github repo at any time (as shown above).

csmanage or powershell commandlets, which one to choose?

After looking around for some information about managing my azure app i found csmanage and powershell commandlets. What are the difference between these applications and which one to choose?
The basis of Windows Azure Services management is REST API and beauty of using REST API is that you can wrap REST in any programming language as longs as there is networking and security infrastructure available. Most of the tools you mentioned above are using REST API underneath and using Windows Azure Service Management API. CSMANAGE and PowerShell Cmdlets are using Windows Azure Service Management API to manager Windows Azure subscriptions. You can learn more about Service Management API here.
There is also another tool call WAPMMC (Windows Azure Platform Management Tool (MMC) which is also built upon Service Management API.
Besides it there are 3rd party tools which are built using Service management API i.e. Cerebrata Powershell cmdlets.
Comparing all of above, I would say Windows Azure Powershell Cmdlets is the most powerful tool among all of these and it has been updated with bug fixes and many more features added frequently. To use it in your machine you just need to download powershell cmdlets and Windows Azure SDK in your machine as these are required.
http://wappowershell.codeplex.com/
Recently I also found a Java based tool called Burp to use REST API directly from its shell to manage Windows Azure subscription. There is no need for .net framework or Azure SDK. You just need a machine with Java runtime and Burp. I have added a blog on this regard here.
I think it depends on what you're more comfortable with. I don't think the CSManage tool is being updated that much any longer (maybe at all - unsure). The PowerShell cmdlets get a lot of attention - both from Microsoft and partners like Cerebrata.
My vote - learn PowerShell and go with the PowerShell cmdlets for working with your Windows Azure apps. Small learning curve and well worth it.

Can one use VMWare vCloud API in its own datacenter

Currently we're building a small datacenter. For the Infrastructure-as-a-Service part I'm planning to use VMWare vSphere. I know VMWare is pushing its vCloud API so my question is: how can I install and use this API within my own datacenter?
If you are going to use vSphere I strongly advise you to examine PowerCLI. PowerCLI is snapin to Powershell. With PowerCLI you have wonders of Powershell and tools which you can use to automate / manage almost any aspect of vSphere.
vCloud API is currently at beta and it's targeted to vCloud Service Director. It's currently private beta.
Right now VMware is expecting this to be implemented by the service providers themselves. For example BlueLock, Terramark and Hosting.com have implementations provided by the companies' implementations of vCloud Express.