The Path to a More Virtualized World.
I have started to rollout a number of virtualized systems in my enterprise. I have chosen my tool of choice to be products from VMware. They are the industry leaders in the virtualization space, as well as the longest running company to offer virtualization.
The one thing that I love about using VMware is the community! It nearly rivals the Ubuntu in the greatness of the community of users that love VMware. There are a number of VMware blogs, and most of those great bloggers are also on twitter. One of the best resources that a new VMware user can have is the vLaunchPad run by Eric Siebert at his site vSphere Land. Routinely, he conducts a poll and rates the Top VMware Bloggers. He just finished one for the new year and I took part in the voting, even though I have only been reading some of these bloggers for a couple of months.
Here are my Top 10 votes:
- Scott Lowe: blog.scottlowe.org
- Simon Seagrave: Techhead
- Frank Denneman: frankdenneman
- Chad Sakac: Virtual Geek
- Duncan Epping: Yellow Bricks
- Gabe Van Zanten: Gabe's Virtual World
- Alan Renouf: Virtual-Al
- Hany Michael: Hypervizor
- Cody Bunch: Professional VMware
- Eric Gray: vCritical
There were 64 blogs available in the voting. I have not read a majority of them, but I hope to start reading them more this year.
I have also created a twitter list of the Top 25 Bloggers from Eric Siebert's Poll. Eric also has his own list of the Top 100 VMware People that is great to follow as well.
To start my VMware learning process, I am reading the excellent book by Scott Lowe called Mastering VMware vSphere 4. It is a great overview and starting place for learning about the VMware family of products. Next up will be the vSphere 4 Quick Start Guide from Duncan Epping, Alan Renouf and others.
I would like to pursue the VMware Certified Professional on vSphere 4 (VCP4) certification this year as well. It looks to be a pretty hard test, and you have to sit through one of there official 4 day classes. Luckily, there are a number of class times throughout the year in Atlanta, which is not too far from my home.
I am very excited about the learning opportunities with VMware for 2010. I am also excited to see how I can implement VMware Infrastructure into my enterprise. Since my network is so small, I think that I should be able to virtualize the entire thing...at least that is my goal!
September 17, 2009
