VCP5 Study Guides, Books of Note, and VMUG’s

Posted on April 5, 2013 by Gabriel

 

photo2The title is obviously self explanatory. Now that I am back working in the VMware space 24/7 its time to buckle down and knock my VCP5 out. Yes I am lame and missed the free test opportunity for VCP4 holders. Which reminds me, if you sign up for VMUG Advantage between now and May 15th you get a voucher for the VCP exam, not to mention a whole plethora of other goodies. That right there is a no brainer.

That said, I think the homelab will need a little cleaning up.

One thing I did want to share was what I consider some of the better resources out there for those who are looking at taking the VCP exams.

For starters, every Wednesday at 5:30 PST the #vBrownbag crew get together and host the best free, online, live community discussion around all things VMware. The VCP5 series finished early last year, as well as the VCAP. They are working on the VCDX bootcamps right now. There are also a lot of technology specific presentations around performance analytics and the various networking, storage, and advanced VMware technologies (VXLAN, vCloud,Clustering ect).  I’ve presented in the past and the people involved are highly knowledgeable. Many of the presenters are VCDX holders who are taking time out of their schedules to give back to the community. Go check out the main vBrownbag site. I’ll be reviewing all the VCP5 Sessions which are listed here:

BrownBag Follow-Up: VCP5 with Gregg Robertson

BrownBag Follow-Up: VCP5 Objective 1

BrownBag Follow-Up – VCP5 Obj. 2 Networking w/ Scott Lowe

BrownBag Follow-Up – VCP5 Objective 3: Storage

BrownBag Follow-Up – VCP5 Objective 3: Storage

BrownBag – VCP5 Objective 5 (David Davis) Follow-Up

BrownBag Follow-Up – VCP5 Objective 6 w/ Josh Atwell

BrownBag Follow-Up – VCP5 Objective 7 with @btobia

 

Also, my buddies Jason Langer and Josh Coen have been putting together a top notch VCP exam blueprint: http://www.virtuallanger.com/vcp5/ there is also one for VCAP-DCD/DCA that are worth checking out.

Other highly valuable resources for study are Simon Longs VCP5 practice exams and and Eric Sieberts super overview of all the new stuff in vSphere 5

One more handy goody is Forbes Guthries awesome vReference Cards.  I usually have a blow up version printed and hanging near my desk for quick reference.  Forbes also is the co-author of what I’ve always referred to as the vSphere Design Bible: vSphere Design which he co-authored with Scott Lowe

And while I’m in a spreading the linkage goodness mood, let me throw in other resources I’ve found valuable from a book standpoint:

Cody Bunch’s Automating vSphere with VMware Orchestrator Book and Mostafa Khalil’s most excellent Storage Implementation in vSphere 5

Well that’s it for now. Just had a week of mega awesomeness learning about the SimpliVity Omnicube. I can’t wait to dive deeper into a platform that I find absolutely amazing. Game changer gets thrown around a lot in the technology sphere, but this is one case where its absolutely valid. If you want a live demo of the Omnicube click here to sign up. Also if any of you are going to be at the San Diego VMUG on April 30th or the Silicon Valley VMUG on May 1st, come by and see me at the Simplivity booth. These are both User Conferences that will have a lot of great information to give back to the community.

Posted in Omnicube, Storage & Virtualization, VCP, VMUG, VMWare | 2 Comments

vExpert Weekly Digest – Episode 1

Posted on April 1, 2013 by Gabriel

vExpert-Weekly-Ep1As an FYI, the first edition of the vExpert Weekly Digest is up for your reading pleasure on Flipboard. This is a project I’m working on to gather posts from other vExperts across the globe and put together a neat magazine style posting using Flipboards new Magazine function. You can check out Episode 1 here. It’s still a work in progress as I am working to gather all the vExpert blogs into one single repository to draw from, a task which has been a little more time consuming than I initially thought.

Oh well, I still like the idea and its gathered a lot of interest on the vExpert forums. If you want your blog included in the listing shoot me an email, or DM, or post on the vExpert forum thread.

Posted in vExpert, vExpert-Weekly | Leave a comment

Globally Federated & Hyperconverged

Posted on April 1, 2013 by Gabriel

infinitySo I have hinted at some changes that were to be taking place in my near term future. For the last year I have been working as a Sales Engineer with Emulex, covering the South Western Territory and focusing primarily on IO Storage & Networking product technologies for Data Centers large and small. I’ve written about my move into the Sales Engineering side of Information Technology, and how I perceive the functions of the role and its place in the IT Sales cycle. Emulex was a great first starting off point for me primarily because as a company that wasn’t a lead-in technology, it allowed me to view from an somewhat impartial standpoint how the larger OEM companies operate. The joke was that we were Switzerland. So while one day I would be working alongside HP, the next it could be IBM, or Dell, or EMC.

For now, my time with Emulex has come to a close. The reasons were many, but ultimately I believe that I wanted to focus more on the technologies that I am most passionate about, Virtualization & Storage. So, I have accepted a position with SimpliVity as the Solutions Architect for the West. I will be working much in the same capacity that I was with Emulex, except the technological focus will be geared towards the Virtualization and Storage spaces, and the product is a leading technology, instead of a secondary one.

Globally Federated & Hyperconverged

omnicube-global

I have always had a keen interest in disruptive technologies that challenged the status quo and the traditional way of thinking for many who work in the IT field. I felt the same way about the Equallogic platform when I first started using it in 2006/2007 and XIV in 2009.The same goes for VMware with ESX/ESXi. For me the SimpliVity solution is a similar disruptive force.

So, what is SimpliVity you may ask? The term that gets thrown about most commonly is “Data Center in a Box”, but I believe that this technology goes well and above that line of thinking. Think of it as a globally federated  converged infrastructure building block. Take a quick glance at this ESG  write-up last year for the analysts take.

At the heart of the SimpliVity solution is the Omnicube, a 2U Data Center appliance with a primary focus of providing a highly available federated storage and compute platform with a key goal of being simple to deploy, configure, and manage. The additional benefits lies in the fact that data is compressed and de-duplicated. And while many other platforms make those same claims, how SimpliVity approaches those two technological facets is unique.

One nice thing about the new position is that my focus will be directly on Virtualization and Storage technologies, and this is going to allow me to blog more regularly on those technologies. I never really got the chance to go that route with my last position, so this is yet another thing I am thankful for in making the transition. I’m sure that I will have much more to expound upon in the coming months as I start to ramp up with the team. For now I am very happy and very excited to be joining a very talented team full of highly accomplished professionals and working with technologies that truly excite me.

Posted in Sales Engineering, SimpliVity, Storage, Storage & Virtualization, VMWare | 3 Comments

One year past, a leap forward.

Posted on March 23, 2013 by Gabriel

GiantLeap-2So for the last year I’ve been working as a Sales Engineer with a IO manufacturer. This was my first position on the “Dark Side”, working day to day in the sales environment in support of the account management team both inside and out. Additionally the role required a good amount of end user and channel/partner education. It’s interesting working for a technology company where your product is not the leading position but auxiliary to the overall solution. There are many moving parts in what I would consider Enterprise-Class data center deployments and upgrades. In many instances a solution will require input from various vendors who ultimately work together to provide the winning combination of technologies. Its a very interesting and complex space to work in.

My role required me to step well outside my immediate comfort zone compared to my previous jobs within the Information Technology spectrum. Having worked on the end user side for roughly 15 years, you get used to a certain level of consistency and expectation of results. Sure you may get challenged when something breaks but for the most part, the days can be routine and much of what you mange is within your immediate control. When you transition to the sales side, nearly all of that control is lost, and the level of control you can exert upon the process of is limited to what you can deliver. Sometimes you can deliver a significant value or contribution that leads to closing the deal. Other times you are simply along for the ride, beholden to higher powers. It can be a little unnerving at times.

For me it was a pretty significant change to a new career path that I had decided that I wanted to transition to. While I won’t go into all the details (this is a drama free zone), my first year in this new career presented some significant challenges that I think were significant and uncommon in the industry as a whole.

Leaping Forward

So the impetus for today’s post is that I am now moving on from my current role. This was something that I was not necessarily seeking, sometimes opportunities come before you and they are simply too good to pass up. While I cannot divulge the name of the company I am moving to just yet, I can say that I will be going back to my roots, and my true passion: Storage & Virtualization.  I will be working with a lead-in technology, and not an auxiliary piece. To say that I’m excited about this would be an understatement. This is also what I would consider a highly disruptive technology that will challenge perceptions and the status quo.

I must say that I am very grateful to my previous employer for taking a chance on an unknown quantity, and providing me with the ability to learn a great deal. So watch this space in the coming weeks as I should be able to “go-live” with more specifics. It’s a very exciting time for me.

 

Posted in Enterprise Tech, Sales Engineering, Storage, Virtualization | Leave a comment

The Magic Is The Community: vExpert 2013

Posted on March 21, 2013 by Gabriel

COMMUNITYSo vExpert submission time is here again. If your RSS feed is as active as mine you probably saw 100 posts by various other vExpert bloggers about the opening day to submit your profile for the VMware vExpert program.I just finished processing my own submission, and during the course of the day I was listening to the VMware Communities podcast #224 with John Mark Troyer and Mathew Brender. The line that stuck out to me the most was when Mathew said:

“The Magic is the Community”.

That resonated with me, because I feel that it perfectly captures the essence of what the vExpert community is. There is a certain kind of magic to it, be it the amazing tools, scripts, and blog posts that the vExperts produce, or if its just the sheer willingness to help out people who are seeking information. The vExpert community performs a common good for the VMware and virtualization community at large.

One aspect that was mentioned on the podcast was what it meant to be nominated and selected as a vExpert, and how it impacted you in your current role/job. I wanted to answer that.

I Guess It Depends on Where You Work

Funny thing, when I got my vExpert nomination acceptance for 2012 I was working as a Sr. Network Administrator for a Medical Devices manufacturer. The IT team that managed the main server, network, and storage systems was a pretty tight team of 10 people. My primary role was Storage and Virtualization and that was what I was interested in. When I told my co-workers that I had been accepted they had simply no reaction (except the one guy who knew a little bit about VMware) but everyone else was simply indifferent.

Now when I transitioned into the Sales Engineering space and started interfacing with people who worked in the Virtualization environment, especially within the product marketing and technical marketing groups, they immediately understood the value and purpose of the vExpert program.

vExperts – The vFraternity

Now for me, the desire to become a vExpert came from my interactions with the many people I met at VMworld 2011, see: How a love of bacon and a trip to VMware opened the world of Twitter to Me.  This past year for VMworld 2012, I went as a vExpert and it really amplified the VMworld experience, I would say the same thing for VMware PEX as well. It’s more than the chance to go to the CTO event, and its more than the vExpert/VCDX reception. It was the ability to meet other vExperts that I had interacted with over the year, and it was the sense of camaraderie. As someone who was in the military for 6 years there are very few experiences outside of the military or say professional sports that create the kind of fraternity, for us it’s a vFraternity.

Even with other vExpert members that I had never met before, I felt completely comfortable to walk up, introduce myself, and know that we would at least have a common thread of discussion that we could draw upon and discuss. I think when it comes to groups of technical people, there is a sense of uneasy discomfort that can permeate a room. I see it at the VMUG events, where there is a hesitancy for that first person to perk up and ask a question. It’s only when two or three other people chime in that the heads start to nod, and others feel more comfortable to inject their thoughts into the conversation. With the vExpert community, you don’t necessarily have that, because I think that a lot of the people who have the desire to enter the program, are the types who will be the first to raise their hand and speak at a VMUG.

I think thats why I enjoy the vExpert community so much, because I’m usually the first to raise my hand to speak too.

Thankful

I do want to say, I hope that I do get to be a vExpert again this year. This past year was tough because of the position I had didn’t allow me to fully dive deep into pure VMware and Virtualization technologies. Thats all about to change (hint hint post to come soon), but I do want to take this space to say that I am truly thankful and grateful for having the opportunity to be one this past year. I’ve met so many just truly amazing people and have had a blast in the process. I hope that my contributions to the community are worthy.

Posted in vExpert, VMWare | 1 Comment

VMworld 2013 – Call for papers is now open

Posted on March 13, 2013 by Gabriel


vmworld2013With VMware PEX just having ended a few weeks ago, it’s now time to start focusing on this years VMworld 2013 which will be held once again at Moscone Center in San Francisco and Barcelona Spain.

Last year was the first year I had submitted a session and like many of my fellow compatriots I got the “Your session was either too vague, too vendor specific, …” email. Still the awesome thing about the plethora of rejection letters that went out was that the good ole folks over at Professional VMware built up the “Unconference” with the vBrownbag Tech Talks which were an amazing success.

I’ll have to ping @cody_bunch, @Josh_Atwell and @sixfootdad to get the scoop on this years TechTalk schedule and efforts, but usually that process takes place after everyone gets their rejection letter. Still watch this space for more information.

So will I submit a session again? You’re damn right I will, I just have to lay it out a little more strategically this year. Oh and to what will be the big roll out this year? I could tell you, but I’d have to kill you. Or you can take a guess and look at past VMworlds to see what the big deal is every 12 months.

Posted in VMWare, VMworld | Leave a comment

CloudCred: Team vExperts

Posted on March 12, 2013 by Gabriel

 

logo vExperts we are assembling a CloudCred team of unparalleled awesomeness.  (btw, it helps if you link it)

Cloud Cred is a professional peer-based ranking system that makes it easy to identify the most credible, up-to-date and follow-worthy experts on cloud computing. Participants earn points for activities that demonstrate cloud knowledge, which is expressed as a numerical Cloud Cred score and a level of mastery. Achieving a certain Cloud Cred score also unlocks various rewards and incentives.