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Monthly Archives: April 2017

A Certified Community Warrior

*With the below announcement, nominations are now open for the next Community Warrior*

Are you an individual who has achieved a VMware certification in the past 10 years? If so, you may recognize our newest Community Warrior’s handle: @scott28tt. Congratulations to Scott Vessey!

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Scott is a VMware employee who goes above and beyond his call of duty in helping the community. Scott holds over 14,000 community points, with 7,000+ in the Certification community, where he answers questions daily, helping others achieve their VCA, VCP, VCAP, VCIX, and VCDX.

I encourage anyone working towards passing these exams to visit the forums for advice, resources, and content provided by others, like Scott, who have been in your shoes. This information is invaluable.

Thanks for submitting such a well-deserved nomination lilesj!

I had a chance to pick Scott’s brain on behalf of the community…

Tell us a bit about what you do at VMware.

The organization I work for designs, develops, and manages all field-specific training programs, both technical and non-technical, for employees and partners. I’ve worked at VMware for just over 5 years, and my current role is to help the technical pre-sales folks in EMEA be the best at what they do!

I work with EMEA Systems Engineering leadership and managers to help determine who needs to know what, reviewing existing and desired skill levels, and creating and rolling out both corporate-wide and locally-developed training programs.

Ah, so customer certification is not a part of your day-to-day responsibilities. What makes you passionate about helping customers who post in the certification communities?

This goes back to when I worked as a VMware Certified Instructor – I took myself online into the communities and into other forums as an extension of the kinds of discussions that would be had in the classroom with students working towards their certification. I found there were a lot of people online who needed guidance and help – what to me was simple, everyday knowledge, could be very useful for others to understand.

What was the most recent VMware certification you received and what was the first?

Passing the VCP550D exam to recertify my VCP5-DCV, which also extended my VCP4-DCV, VCP3, and my first VMware certification – VCP2

How can our community members contact you with any follow-up questions?

VMTN: @scott28tt

Twitter: https://twitter.com/vmtraining

Blog: http://vmwaretraining.blogspot.com

Email: vmtraining.blog@vmware.com

For more information around VMware certifications, visit the forums, check out the latest VMware Community Podcast with Karl Childs and Eric Nielsen, or visit MyLearn.

Congratulations again Scott – thanks for all of your contributions to VMTN! I speak for the community when I say, thanks for cutting down queries to help so many customers achieve certifications. You are truly a Community Warrior.

Talk Techy – The VMTN Podcast Program

Do you host a podcast around virtualization, storage, networking, or a key VMware subject area? Do you have a favorite podcast about technology? Would you like to explore relevant podcasts around technical topics?

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VMware Technology Network would like to help further connect our 3 million+ members by building and publishing a comprehensive list of favorite community podcasts, for your enjoyment. We are working to build our Podcasts community into said list, but we need your help.

If you host a podcast, or know of a technical podcast involving key VMware topics and would like to share it with the community, you only need to provide the following:

  • Name of podcast
  • Link to podcast
  • A 2-sentence abstract explaining the subject matter
  • Host information
  • Specific topics covered

This information can be submitted here: https://goo.gl/forms/GgM8kuEllYw8gVcL2. Any podcast submitted may be subject to promotion through VMTN and vExpert social channels.

Go ahead, take a minute and submit now; contribute to the education and entertainment of the VMware community.

Follow these channels for updates:

Please reach out to katieb@vmware.com with any questions.

VMworld 2017 US & Europe Blogger Passes

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Each year VMware provides blogger passes to both the VMworld US and the VMworld Europe conferences. The program is simple: if you are a technical blogger or have a publication around Virtualization then you should apply for a complementary blogger pass to one of the conferences. We provide the pass, you provide the transportation and hotel accommodations. The blogger passes are full conference passes so you will still be able to register for sessions just the same as a regular conference pass difference is these are free of charge.

Since passes are limited, we will only provide one pass per person per year. Meaning you can go to either VMworld US in Las Vegas or VMworld Europe in Barcelona. Keep in mind that in the past we have always had more passes to Las Vegas then Barcelona and both are limited. U.S. Limit is 50 blogger passes while the Europe conference is limited to 35 blogger passes.

Key Dates:

  • April 12th – Blogger Pass Applications Open
  • May 12th – Blogger Pass Applications Close
  • June 2nd – Blogger Pass Allocation & Announcement
  • June 12th – Early Bird Registration Closes

Not everyone will be chosen for a blogger pass since the passes are limited and I’m sure we will see a tremendous response this year. If plans change please email cromero at vmware.com with the cancelation so we can allocate the blogger pass to the next qualified blogger.

Apply for a VMworld Blogger Pass (VMware Employee Are Excluded)

See you at VMworld!

VMTN Gets virtuallyGhetto: Community Warrior #4

With the below announcement, nominations are now open for winner #5

It is my pleasure to announce the newest VMware Technology Network Community Warrior Badge is being awarded to one of VMware’s very own, William Lam.

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Congratulations William! @Lamw is well-known for his blog, virtuallyGhetto, but has also been actively contributing to VMTN for almost 10 years. He has earned nearly 25,000 points in this time and attained the Guru badge, consistently supporting others in their endeavors to achieve automation. He has been instrumental in helping the VMware {code} developer program take-off, presents at VMUGs all over the world, and has been a vExpert since the start of the program.

In exploring his online presence, and reading the wonderful nominations I received for him from @LucD, @arielsanchezmor, and @Nscuola, who described William’s following as “cult-like,” I decided I needed to find out more about the man behind the scripts first-hand.

I had the chance to ask him a few questions…

K:   William, you are a very decorated community member, you were just named one of the Top 50 Overall VMware Influencers this year, and you’ve been a vExpert for all 8 years – why and how did you start as a VMware evangelist?

W: The evangelism was really a by-product of the work I had been doing over the years rather than a specific goal I had in mind. Like many in the VMware Community, my career started out as a regular Systems Administrator and at the time, I was supporting a mix of Linux/UNIX and VMware-based infrastructures. Having worked for several large Enterprises, I was exposed to a multitude of challenges which gave me a great opportunity to learn about news things and solve some really hard problems.
I am a huge believer in sharing what you have learned so that others can build on top of that knowledge and do even greater things. This constant learning and sharing of VMware knowledge has always been something I enjoyed and as I mentioned earlier, the evangelism for VMware and their solutions just sort of happened naturally.

K: Very cool! I’m sure a lot of our readers can relate. How did you get to where you are today – with almost 17,000 followers on Twitter and one of the most popular blogs in the community?

W: To be perfectly honest, I still ask myself that every day. I think for me personally; I have always enjoyed learning about new things and sharing that back with the community whether that is explaining a complex topic or building creative solutions to solve real customer problems. I think being passionate about what you do really helps, regardless if you are the #1 blogger or 2,013th blogger. Find that one thing you really love and just keep at it, you may not see it right away, but it will pay dividends in the future in ways you cannot even imagine.

K: That’s great advice. What has your passion led you to lately… What are you currently working on?

W: I had just recently finished a fun little project with my good friend Alan Renouf called USB to SDDC which we also got to present for the first time in public at both the Sydney and Melbourne VMUG a couple of weeks ago. The idea is quite simple, how cool would it be if you could simply plug in a USB key into a server and have automatically provision and configure ESXi, the vCenter Server Appliance and vSAN without any additional user interaction? That is what Project USB to SDDC is all about. You can find more details in this blog post here: http://www.virtuallyghetto.com/2017/04/project-usb-to-sddc-part-1.html

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Do you have questions for William?  Reach out to him:

Over Twitter: @lamw

On VMTN: @lamw

Check out his blog: http://www.virtuallyghetto.com/

And for fun, his video of a 109-mile bike ride for charity he participated in: https://vimeo.com/106775852

Then be sure to submit your nominations for Community Warrior #5. Who has stood out in your favorite community lately? What warrior has been knocking down questions left and right? Contact the Community Manager @KTbradley on VMTN or through email at katieb@vmware.com to nominate.