Name: Niklas Akerlund
Blog URL: http://vniklas.djungeln.se
Twitter handle: @vNiklas
Current employer: Lumagate AB/ Sweden
How did you get into IT?
My dad brought home an IBM PC in the early 1980´s and I started to play games and developed an interest in computers. My favourite game was in that time “Digger” www.digger.org. After some university studies I started working with both Unix and Microsoft infrastructure solutions. I have been working both as a network technician and as a consultant during my years in IT. To be able to help customers and being out on different locations is fun and educational.
I have always had an interest in automating and scripting. I have been digging around in Perl and vbscript, but now I do most of the scripting in PowerShell. It feels so good to be able to automate boring repetitive tasks. Even if I´m going to do something just once I try to see if there is a way to script it. During the different assignments I am faced with challenging tasks every day that gives me ideas.
Now I am working as a Product Manager Private Cloud, and my job is to help customers with their Private Cloud solutions, both with the setup and also the continued process of maintaining and operating.
How did you get into working with VMware and becoming a 2012 vExpert?
My first experience with virtualization was with a really early version of the VMware Workstation. Since 2008 have I been working active with VMware Virtualization. My main focus in the start was on capacity planning and physical to virtual migrations and in later projects more towards automating and scripting. I have also quite a bit experience in setting up and configuring virtualization solutions.
When I saw the potential in PowerCLI and automation for virtualization I started my blog to share my findings and solutions, in the same time I started my twitter account also. Both Luc Dekens and Alan Renouf have inspired me a lot to find new ways of doing PowerCLI automation.
I was awarded the 2012 vExpert for my work with the blog posts and twitter activity. A twitter user was seeking help for a SAN migration script and I used some blog posts and put it together with my own logic to help him, that little script was much appreciated. The power of the community to help each other is cool. If you have an idea, someone might have done a part of your solution and combining their parts with yours save time.
What would you tell someone who wanted to get a job like yours to do?
It is not always you will get to work with exactly what you want from time to time, but even in the most boring tasks you can find challenges and make it into something you can find appealing. And if you cannot change your tasks, believe in yourself and do not be afraid of changing job! I do tend to extend my studies and testing during the evenings and weekends when not the family is complaining too much.
Try to think and questioning solutions to not just do things as they always has been deployed.
Good luck!
