After quite the extended hiatus, I’m back on the blogging train. Over the last 18 months, I’ve been super occupied at Coho Data as their Technical Product Manager, participated (and trained for) some ultra trail running events, and generally been busy with life – unfortunately, as a result, I let my blog posting suffer. Anyway, enough excuses. Just to let you know that I intend to get back to churning out irregularly scheduled blogs with a few interesting projects that have been percolating on the back burner long enough.
Over the last couple of months, I’ve actually been making small tweaks to this site, such as a newer theme, done some optimization work, etc, and generally getting things ready. I’ve also been blogging a little over on Coho Data’s site as well: http://www.cohodata.com/blog/author/forbes/
During the break, I renewed my VMware certification status last summer by completing version 6 VCPs for both DCV (Data Center Virtualization) and NV (NSX). As soon as the v6 VCAP-DCV Admin exam (now called “Deploy”) is available I’ll be upgrading and grabbing myself a VCIX6 if I can – no doubt I’ll publish some articles about what I learn during that journey. As a Product Manger these days it can be tough to keep my hands-on skills relevant and not too dusty, but I think the VCAP-Admin exams are a good *forcing function*. I completed both the Design and Admin VCAP exams for v5, so I was glad when VMware relaxed the rules for VCIX and allowed candidates to elect to take either option for the upgrade (see the comments in this thread: http://blogs.vmware.com/education/2015/03/migration-paths-v5-certification-v6.html#comment-20114). Great to see a large company like VMware listening to their customers on this one.
Also, last week I was delighted (if not a little surprised) to be designated as a vExpert again. I feel personally that this was somewhat of an emeritus status for me, as during 2015 there wasn’t as much going on (at least publicly on this site) on the virtualization advocacy-side. Regardless, I’m delighted to stay on the list. I find access to the NFR licenses from VMware and their partners, and access to the VMworld sessions, invaluable to creating blog content and keeping skills honed in my home lab. I will endeavour to use the vExpert badge with greater gusto this year.
I may also write-up 1 or 2 running articles this year. This is not something I’ve done before, and obviously not related to my normal distribution audience, but it might prove to be an interesting diversion. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a good runner. But I enjoy the challenge of these longer distance trots, and I know I like reading about the tribulations of the common-runner more, as they’re usually more entertaining and instructive than those written by the athletes that operate in a seemly different world.
I don’t want to promise on any projects yet, but I’ll have some more news on some of them shortly I hope. The one area I spent quite a bit of time on last year, although nothing has surfaced on this site yet, is a refresh to my reference cards. I’m still super keen to get out a version 6 card and plan to use the power of GitHub to allow greater transparency and collaboration from now on. <aside>I saw Duncan’s announcement this morning, and was delighted that they’ve decided to share their deepdive book in a similarly open way – I’ll need to take a look at GitBook as an option for accepting contributions.</aside>
To conclude I wanting to quote something ethereal, noteworthy and markedly considered. So I leave you these important words: