VEXPERT

Why the vExpert PRO program is important

October 18, 2018 Kim Bottu 0

Over the last couple of days I have heard and have read a lot of negative feedback about the vExpert PRO program. I don’t really want to go in on this because people are entitled to voice their opinion and we don’t always have to agree on everything. Instead, let me tell you why I think this program is important and why I think it is an added value. Four years ago, blogging and public speaking were the last things on my mind. I was too shy and too afraid of running the risk of making a fool of myself in public to even dare anything publicly. But along came Ariel Sanchez. (Yes, that guy again! He is like a […]

vExpert PRO

October 10, 2018 Kim Bottu 0

Back in February I did send an email to Corey telling him that I didn’t understand that there were only a handful of vExperts in Belgium, a country similarly sized to the Netherlands, and that I wanted to encourage the program in Belgium and grow the numbers of vExperts. Hey Corey, Hopefully you are doing well and not too swamped with assessing all the VEXPERT applications. For the last couple of years I have been literally stunned by the underwhelming amount of VEXPERTS in Belgium. There are exactly 10. As a comparison: there are about 70 in the Netherlands, a similarly sized and populated country. So what is going on over here in Belgium? I have been thinking about how to increase the number […]

VEXPERT: Increasing the number of vExperts in Belgium and Luxembourg

June 5, 2018 Kim Bottu 3

 An excellent idea “Yes, that is an excellent idea!” was Tom’s reply when I asked him if he would mind if I would try to encourage more people to join the vExpert program in Belgium. Probably you don’t know, but there are only 14 VEXPERTS in BeLux (Belgium and Luxembourg combined). Not a big number. It is shocking that a similarly sized country such as the Netherlands manages to have 92 vExperts compared to 14 in BeLux!  We are convinced that the vExpert presence in Belgium and Luxembourg might increase if only people would see what the program can do for them and how good the vCommunity is to its family members. My small idea about encouraging the vExpert program […]

How attending VMworld changed my professional life and can change yours too!

June 3, 2018 Kim Bottu 2

It’s been six years since I attended VMworld for the very first time. Up until my very first VMworld I never had attended any vendor conference and here I was on the plane on route to Barcelona. As soon as I got off the plane and out of the airport, I immediately got smacked in the face with a heatwave. My first planning mistake became very clear as soon as I entered my hotel room: crappy air conditioning. Not really what you desire for when it is blistering hot outside. Unfortunately, it wouldn’t be my only planning mistake. Ahead of the conference I had made a list of all the sessions I wanted to attend to and all the guided labs […]

VCAP6-DESIGN compute calculation

March 26, 2018 Kim Bottu 0

A few weeks ago Bilal pinged me a message and asked me if I could quickly calculate the resources for an attached VCAP compute resource question. After solving the question he told me that I had created this question on our VCAP-Design sim about a year ago and that most people get the answer wrong. So what is happening here and more importantly: why? The reason why most people are unable to solve this question is because of what is assumed and hasn’t been explicitely mentioned: overhead. I always treat overhead as a mandatory input: Workloads should be able to run without contention and there should be enough free resources to run ESXi and its tasks at all times. Unfortunately a lot of people who […]

Rebuilding your VSAN lab in Ravello is easy and takes no time!

February 1, 2018 Kim Bottu 2

I really like the Free vEXPERT Ravello tier to run some quick tests but it has few disadvantages: The limited amount of CPU hours. The time it takes to upload images, create VMs, blueprints, applications and networks. The time it takes to create a new lab environment from scratch can take a lot of hours. The more servers you add to your lab environment, the longer it will take to create it. But as soon as I had figured out how to create my applications, VMs and blueprints, it was very easy to come up with a plan to deploy new test environments in different regions or to replace my corrupted labs with only a few mouse clicks. The time to deploy a […]

How to setup a VSAN 6.6.1 test environment on Ravello

October 30, 2017 Kim Bottu 1

There are a couple of things to prepare before you can start setting up your VSAN 6.6.1 test on Ravello Cloud. If you don’t have an account, you can click on the picture below which will redirect you to the Oracle cloud signup page (Ravello is owned by Oracle). After signing up you will receive 30 days of free access and a budget of 300$ to spend as you wish. Images For this VSAN 6.6.1 test, I have uploaded the following files to Ravello: Server 2012 STD iso file VMware-VIM-all-6.5.0-6816762.iso VMware-VMvisor-Installer-6.5.0.update01-5969303.x86_64.iso   Create a new application in Ravello In this application you will create all the VM’s you need for this test. Click on create application give it a name and […]

How to configure different networks in Ravello – vEXPERT

October 7, 2017 Kim Bottu 1

Intro As a vEXPERT I am entitled to a cloud lab provided for by Ravello Systems. By default this lab has been setup on a specific network: 10.0.0.0/16. Until today I have been placing all my objects on my canvas on that same network. Below you can see an example of that. When I take a deeper look in the network configuration of Ravello I can see that the following has been pre-configured for my convenience: A switch: Switch 1 A router: Router 1: 10.0.0.2 A DNS server: 10.0.0.1 A DHCP server: 10.0.0.1 A DHCP range: 10.0.0.1 – 10.0.255.254 A Gateway: 10.0.0.2   FreeNAS –  double interfaces Today I finally took the time to make some changes. As an example […]