We recently interviewed a few VMware Certified Instructors (VCIs) to get their best advice for students and to learn more about their experience teaching classes for VMware Education Services. We pulled the best (and surprisingly honest) responses below. Hope you enjoy!
What one thing do you wish every student came to class knowing?
“That the fundamental, original reason for virtualization that made it so compelling is higher utilization of the hardware, which translates to saving money. Everything else is gravy.” – Rick Stauder
What question do you answer in every single class?
“VMware vSphere is not an expensive platform for the purchase and maintenance costs. The stability and performance of your business is much more expensive to you.” – Maxim Fomin
What’s your funniest training story?
“Not real funny, but memorable: I was in the middle of lecturing on Network Health Check when a student in the back row pulls out his cell phone and makes a call. I wasn’t sure how to handle that so I just stopped lecturing and looked at him. The rest of the class turned and looked at him too. He seemed oblivious to us. Finally, he hung up, looked up to see us all staring and he said ‘I’m sorry. But you just solved my problem. We couldn’t figure out a network problem. While you were talking it came to me to check the MTU. Yup, that was the problem. Thank you!’” – Rick Enright
What do you do when you need to learn something new?
“One of the advantages of VMware is that it offers many resources where instructors can view information about new issues we want to learn and even share with students, many of which are found in the VCI portal. The publicly accessible VMware portal is very comprehensive. I also make use of VMware communities where you can share experiences with other professionals worldwide and in some cases attend courses taught by other instructors to acquire the knowledge that, at the moment, I am looking for.” – Nelson Carrilo
What’s the best thing about teaching VMware?
“Bringing all my experiences of 35 years in IT to the table: system administration, networking, storage management and, when it comes to prioritizing resources, political diplomacy. You need it all to teach VMware. Specialization is for bees in the colony. Let the new hires be “IT generalists;” but to work with VMware, you need real depth in many areas. You can’t say “I don’t do Linux,” or “I let the network guys worry about VLANs,” or “the Storage Admins just give me LUNs.” You need it all…” – Rick Stauder
How can students get the most out of their time in a class?
“The best way for students to get more out of their time in class is to be actively engaged. Ask questions, share your experiences with the group, and get involved. As an instructor I love the dialogue and participation. It makes the class better. This is especially important if the class is online.” – Rick Crisci
What’s the first question you’re asked in class?
“Access to wifi please? :)” – Karl Novak
What would you like to ask a VMware Certified Instructor?
