Skytap Product Tips and Tricks

I’ve had the unique opportunity to work with Skytap both as a customer and as a Skytap employee, and in my 10+ years of experience doing so, there are a few tips and tricks I’ve learned to work efficiently, manage usage and best collaborate with team members. Whether you’ve also been a Skytap user for years or are new to the platform, you’re in the right place.

At Skytap Academy Live, I held a session sharing my top six tips and tricks. Watch the 10 minute session video below for a demonstration of each, then keep reading below to find links to additional resources.

#1 Leveraging templates

Use cases for creating and using templates for Skytap environment workloads can vary a great deal, but all workloads can benefit from the value of a template. While some templates can be created and destroyed based on needs at a moment’s notice, others serve 24/7 availability. 

#2 Sharing portals  

Sharing portals are a great way to collaborate with your solutions externally. You can limit authority to who has access to what. Additionally, you can get insights into usage and don’t have to set up emulators or additional means of connectivity with the portal approach.

#3 JSON, XML

Append JSON at the end of a URL or an element then hit enter and it will give you additional insight. It can be very helpful and show you ways to leverage Skytap’s API and automate certain aspects of your work in Skytap.

#4 Auto shutdown

You can configure auto-shutdown to automatically shut down or suspend an environment after all of its VMs have been idle for a period of time. This helps you control RAM usage for your account. 

#5 Enabling notifications

Email notifications can help you monitor your personal Metered RAM and storage usage at various thresholds (for example, when you reach 50% of your storage usage limit). You can also set up email notifications to be alerted when a VM has been left running. 

#6 Rest API quick start  

The Skytap REST API allows you to automate almost any action that you can perform in the Skytap web interface. Resources for starting can be found in Skytap’s help documentation along with cited examples that take you to github repositories. 


Click here to watch more content from Skytap Academy Live and stay tuned for our next live event.

Meet the author:
Randy Courtright – Cloud Solutions Architect at Skytap

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