Blog originally posted on Personal Blog about vAdventures by Christoph Villnow (@LagnDary)
I’ve been into VMware for quite a while now. And into storage products also. So it is quite normal that VMware vSAN caught my interest immediately. But it is challenging sometimes, to explain in an simple and easy way, how it works and what the benefits of vSAN are depending on the knowledge of the listener.
In the beginning of 2018 I was lucky enough to came across the Youtube playlist of Elver Sena Sosa ( Kudos, Elver! ) and his short videos explaining the fundamentals as well as advanced features of VMware vSAN only using a lightboard, his calm voice and knowledge! Big win! If any of the features are unknown or you’ll need a recap of something specific, head over to the VMware vSAN Youtube Playlist.
I was quite impressed by the way Elver explained the technology and tried it myself. During the next couple of months I dived deeper into all the things vSAN and became more and more familiar with it. Build my 2 Node vSAN homelab, gave trainings to colleagues about the day in day out situations on vSAN and became event speaker talking about “Why VMware vSAN and how does it work?” in a 1 hour session (Spoiler: It was a blast!) hosted by @uniqueprojects and @DellTechnologies + @VMware.
Also in my favorites is this link to the vSAN related Podcasts on Virtually Speaking:
I really like the podcast of Jase McCarty and Niels Hagoort about vSAN Stretched Cluster and Pete Koehler about vSAN performance! But all the other ( of course all podcasts! ) are a huge win for the whole community.
Also a great source to learn new stuff and interact directly with the experts are VMware’s webcasts. As the support end of vSphere 5.5 was coming to an end on 19th of September 2018, everyone wanted to take the opportunity to take a look at the new things available in vSphere 6.7. I had been registered to the online webcast “What’s new with vSphere 6.7 – A Deep Dive” on 22th of May 2018 with Adam Eckerle and Kim Jahnz.
Brilliant way to get in touch with other members! And these are available on demand afterwards! But take the chance for yourself and follow @VMwareEvents on Twitter to get the newest updates!
I was lucky to attend the VMware EMPOWER 2019 in Lisbon a few weeks back and, beside all the other excellent sessions, had been very curious about Stijn Depril‘s session about the VMware vSAN vision in the future. I was not disappointed. vSAN is an awesome technology and it has just been started!
This blog is a direct result of my past searching through the world wide web, listen to breakout sessions, discover new things and solve issues with the solutions others made public. I also wanted to contribute my part to the community, even if it isn’t as much. Big advantage of sharing is that you’ll get in touch with new people and increase your circles.
In review, there a many ways to start learning about new things, perspectives, ideas or other. Not every channel is perfect in every situation. Getting an visual overview about a technology is easier to fetch during a video or blog post. Making notes is easy in a printed book. But while driving a car it is easy to start a podcast and listen to other colleagues or community members talking about specific features. The most important thing is to share the knowledge!
Keep up the work. Share your experience. Make a solution or workaround public for the community. Don’t be afraid to ask others. Sharing is caring!
