VMworld is one of the most anticipated events of the year for many people in the tech world. Engineers and architects from all over the world come together to share, learn, and make new friends. I have been fortunate enough to attend both VMworld 2016 and 2017 and have learned many lessons about how to maximize my time.
There are a few tips you’ll read over and over again. They are definitely worth repeating, though.
I am proud to announce that I have been named a member of the inaugural group of vExpert Cloud. The vExpert program is an award given to community members that contribute via blogs, VMUG, vBrownbag, and other means. Since VMware is such a large product the vExpert team has broken the disciplines up into three additional specialties: NSX, vSAN, and Cloud. This cloud designation is extremely valuable to me as my focus over the past three months has been VMware Cloud Foundation.
VMworld 2017 is upon us and looks to be busy as ever. I’ll be returning to Las Vegas and the place this ride started last year. There has been a LOT happening in my life during the past 50 weeks. I’m proud to say I joined Rackspace in the Specialist Cloud Architecture business, representing VMware products and services. As many of you also know, I joined the vBrownBag crew and will be hanging out at the TechTalk booth as much as possible.
It’s a very common sentiment that 2016 was a bad year. If you pay attention to the news and pop culture this seems accurate. Many of the celebrities I grew up watching and listening to passed away. The election cycle was filled with mud slinging and people on both sides seemed to lose their mind. There were many people in my extended social circle who experienced personal tragedies.
I was one of the lucky ones.
In 2008 I purchased a Dell T110 tower server for my home. I wanted something to run ESXi 4 on so I could run Windows 2003 servers to study for my MCSE. From that point on a home lab has been critical to my success as a technician. It is very common for a technical professional to have some sort of personal space to mess around with.
There are many reasons someone may want to spend hard earned money on a home lab.
The application for vExpert 2017 opened today and go through December 16th. The vExpert program is a VMware advocacy group that recognizes people who give back to the VMware community and promote VMware technology. You can become a vExpert by leading a VMUG, speaking, blogging, and/or tweeting your support of VMware technology.
I can say one of the best things that has happened in my career was being selected as vExpert 2016.
I’m a huge fan of the Full Stack Journey podcast. In the show Scott Lowe investigates the question “Can someone truly be a full stack engineer?”. He and his guests work together to give actionable advice and talk about the benefits of being a full stack engineer vs working in a silo.
The definition of a full stack engineer really hard to pin down. Many people have opinions on the matter and they revolve around some common themes.
I am a regular listener to The Geek Whisperers podcast. If you haven’t listened to them before please check them out here. Trust me, you won’t regret it. The podcast always has a very interesting guest and they talk soft skills and high level concepts with very technical people. A lot of their discussion revolves around career paths, decisions that lead their guest to their current position, and practical advice a listener can implement to change, improve, or develop similar skills.
After a lot of going back and fourth, gnashing my teeth, etc I decided to participate in the #vDM30in30 challenge. I suppose that starting a VCDX design and working to improve my presentation skills wasn’t enough. Add on work responsibilities and family time and I have a challenge ahead of me.
I refuse to let doubt or fear stop me so here I go. In the next month I hope to talk about the following topics (and more!
My first VMworld is coming to an end and has been an amazing experience. I have learned a lot about VMware’s pipeline, dug deep with vendors to learn more about products we are evaluating, and sat in some breakout session with tips that will help me improve our environment today.
Cross cloud services is the most interesting and important development as far as I am concerned. They are using NSX and their other SDDC services to provide a single dashboard with visualization and control of your AWS, Azure, and Google cloud resources.
