Twitter Handle: h0bbel
Blog URL: vNinja.net
Current Employer: Seatrans AS
How did you get into IT in the first place?
I'm actually not sure I got into IT, but IT got into me way back when my dad brought home our first Commodore C64 and I've been playing with computers of all sorts ever since. As far as professional IT goes, I got my first real paying job in 1997 when I joined Telenor as a technician doing grunt work like replacing hard drives and client installations for Norway's biggest bank. I quickly moved on to working with servers and more complex solutions. I've been focusing on server and data-center technologies ever since. I spent a couple of years for a few different consulting companies, until I "settled" at Seatrans where I currently work as the Network Manager with responsibility for our shore based infrastructure.
How did you get into working with VMware and becoming a 2011 vExpert?
My first brush with VMware products was in 2000 when I introduced VMware Workstation for a group of developers who instantly implemented it in their day to day testing regime. In 2002 I was introduced to VMware GSX 2.x and the extremely complex and mysterious ESX 2.0 which I truly did not understand at the time. Thankfully that has changed since then, and my real focus on VMware ESX came when I introduced VI3 at Seatrans in 2006, and it has been the main production platform since then.
I started blogging about VMware back in 2004, my previous site added to VMTN in December 2006 and in 2007 my "work" was mentioned in the keynote at TSX-EMEA. Until 2010 those were the highlights of my "career" as a VMware blogger, but something seems to have accelerated when I attended VMworld Europe 2010. This is where the idea for the vSoup Podcast emerged, and it was also the first time I met up with many of the well known people in the VMware Community. VMware somehow figured out that it was time I received the vExpert award for 2011, and I'm very happy to have received it as only the second Norwegian in history.
What would you tell someone who wanted to get a job like yours to do?
To put it simply; Be passionate. Be persistent. Set some goals, and follow them through.
