Blog URL: http://up2v.nl
Twitter handle: @marcelvandenber
Current employer: Conclusion FIT in the Netherlands
How did you get into IT?
As a young boy, I was always attracted to technique. Took apart many old radios and bikes and sometimes did some repairs. Computers like the MSX, Atari and Commodore 64 were hot when I was young. I bought computer magazines and my first ever modem (1200/75 baud) for the MSX computer. Even built a Bulletin Board System, which looked like the current Text graphics on television. I decided to do an IT course combined with a traineeship on a helpdesk. So I am one of a lot of IT-people who did not do a study in IT. In 1990, I started in my first job as an all-round IT-employee. My job was configuring Ultrix
(Digital’s implementation of Unix), system management and all kind of tasks. Even connected personal computers running MS-DOS to UNIX systems using TCP/IP and NFS so we had a shared volume for pc’s. At that time Novell Netware was a start-up company and Windows NT did not exist. Via many years’ experience as system engineer at various companies, I decided for a new role as consultant. Initially I was involved in various migration projects. Doing an Exchange migration project, the next project a Microsoft Windows Server migration etc. Whatever I do I like to do it the best and I noticed I had to focus on a certain
solution. That’s how I became a VMware consultant.
How did you get into working with VMware and becoming a 2011 vExpert?
I first found out about VMware around 5 years ago during a project I did. Soon after I was attending a 4-day VMware course. Before I was doing all sort of projects but since I worked with ESX servers, I decided to focus on ESX as my core competency. Sharing my knowledge and experience has always been natural for me. I like to write articles. So I decided to start sharing my experiences with VMware vSphere by blogging back in February 2009. Soon after
I started publishing about that other hypervisor, storage and third party solutions as well. I am interested in Disaster Recovery solutions so I write about Site Recovery Manager,VirtualSharp ReliableDR and Zerto Virtual Replication.The number of page views per day grew from around 50 in the beginning to around 600 now. There are over 400 blog postings on my site now. I was very happy that I was rewarded the vExpert title by VMware for my work as a blogger.
What would you tell someone who wanted to get a job like yours to do?
You really need to have a passion for IT. There are so many developments that you will need to spent quite a bit of time (also your own time) on reading blogs and books and practise in your home lab. If you have a 9 to 5 mentality, you will not grow in a role dealing with technique. Be curious to find out how a product works under the hood to fully understand the product. Twitter is nowadays a great pointer to interesting info published on the internet. Share your knowledge and people will share their knowledge with you. Start blogging and this will force you to deep dive into products and learn about them.
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