GitHub’s New ‘Copilot’ Feature Is A Game-Changer If You’re a Developer

You’ve probably heard about Github Copilot by now. Github Copilot is an AI-driven pair programmer who can help write code more efficiently and faster. Here’s a quick review of Copilot.

How to install Copilot?

If you’re using VSCode, then installation is pretty simple as it can just be installed as an extension.

Once installed, you want to make sure you have either an active trial or a subscription. You can manage your subscription from https://github.com/features/copilot


How does it work?

Using Copilot is simple. As you start writing code in either Go/NodeJS/Typescript or Python, it will give you small previews of code snippets. You can even get full functions written by AI. All you need to do is add a comment explaining what this next block of code is supposed to do.

load all tweets of user

As shown above, once you write a comment explaining the next code block, Copilot automaticlaly suggests a python defintion with all of its code. In this case, Copilot handed me all code to retrieve tweets of a specific user.

This was a simple example, so I decided to try out using pymongo for interacting with a MongoDB database and its collection. See what happened this time.

update age of all users to 20

I was pleasantly surprised that Copilot was able to generate code that connects to a MongoDB database, uses a collection, and then sets the age of all users to 20.

It’s impressive that it knows the “custom” MongoDB syntax to query and update something in a collection but also that it has chosen to use update_many() which is different than update_one().

As my last test, I figured it would be worth testing if Copilot can create multiple functions that interact with each other. Of course, it didn’t disappoint. This time I decided I wanted to read something from a database, store it in a Pandas dataframe and then update a column within that dataframe.

function to read from sql database and load to dataframe

read dataframe and update column age


What does it cost?

After you use your 60-day trial, you’ll be charged $10/month or $100/year.

In my opinion, if you write code daily, this is a no-brainer and it seems obvious how it can help you to be more efficient.

vSphere 6.5 is finally GA

Today, VMware finally announces vSphere 6.5 to be GA.

As I’m writing this post, I’m installing ESXi 6.5 GA in my lab:
ESXi 6.5 GA

vSphere 6.5 Release notes
http://pubs.vmware.com/Release_Notes/en/vsphere/65/vsphere-esxi-vcenter-server-65-release-notes.html#whatsnew

What’s New in VMware vSphere 6.5
http://www.vmware.com/content/dam/digitalmarketing/vmware/en/pdf/whitepaper/vsphere/vmw-white-paper-vsphr-whats-new-6-5.pdf

Read More

vSphere HA – VM Monitoring

VM Monitoring comes with three different options. By default it is set to Disabled but you can vm monitoringenable either VM Monitoring Only or VM and Application Monitoring.

In either case, the VM uses VMware Tools to identify the state of the VM and its application and then reboot the VM if necessary.

What is the difference between VM Monitoring Only and VM and Application Monitoring?

VM Monitoring Only utilizes VMware Tools to check regularly for heartbeats and I/O activity from the VMware Tools process. Depending on the Monitoring Sensitivity setting, vSphere HA will  know how often to look for heartbeats and how often the VM should reboot.

VM and Application Monitoring also utilizes VMware Tools and can monitor the VM just like the VM Monitoring Only setting but it can also monitor the application, running on the VM. In order to enable Application Monitoring the application has to support VMware Application Monitoring or use the appropriate SDK.

At a minimum it is best practice to enable VM Monitoring Only to ensure maximum availability for your most important VMs. Note, this setting can be adjusted per VM via VM Overrides in the Cluster Settings

 

Top VMworld 2016 Sessions by Category

The content catalog for this year’s VMworld 2016 in Las Vegas has just been announced.
Even tho the content catalog has been published, the schedule builder won’t be available until July 19th 2016.

Below is a list of sessions which looked very interesting and promising. There are more than 500 sessions available and below are my top sessions.

SDDC – Software Defined Data Center

STO7650 – Software Defined Storage @ VMware Primer
INF8255 – vSphere API 101 – Harnessing the power for the everyday Admin
INF8108 – vCenter Performance Deep Dive
STO9617 – Containers & VVols – a technical deep dive on new technologies that revolutionize storage for vSphere
STO8164 – Benchmarking VAIO-Integrated Caching. Is it Really Faster? How Much, and Why?
Read More

Every year again – Vote for the Top vBlog 2016

Top vBlog 2016
top vblog 2016

This years voting for the Top vBlog 2016 is now open and it is your opportunity to actively support your favorite bloggers. Currently there are more than 300 blogs about VMware and virtualization out there.

If you frequently read blogs and follow bloggers on twitter, go ahead and vote for your favorite blog. As part of the voting, you will need to pick 12 of your favorite blogs out there and then rank them in an order from #1 to #12. Depending on the ranking, the blogs will get points assigned.

All details can be found on Eric Siebert’s blog.

Happy voting everyone