My life as VMware/Nutanix Consultant - June & July Update

It has been a while since my last update. So, here is my recap of the past 2 months.

At the end of May, I had a with a chat with PQR HR department to formally end my trial period as a new joiner at the company. Yeah!! :) Next milestone set for the 1 year celebration.

In the first week of June, I attended the Nutanix Consulting Specialist training at Nutanix in Hoofddorp. Another thank you to the trainers Cliff Butler and J.L. Francois for sharing their extensive knowledge! I got my NCS certification!! :))

The second week was all about making preparations for upgrading an existing VMware vSphere environment for a customer in Amsterdam. Key task here was to analyse and document their current vSphere environment and identify any upgrade issues upfront.

The week after, I had the privilege to attend a whole day seminar on VMware Cloud on Amazon at the Amazon office in Amsterdam. Nice office (!) and thanks to Henk Nijkerk for making this possible.

In that same week, I traveled to a customer in Eindhoven twice to help them out with a Nutanix cluster deployment to expand their Production capacity. It was a lengthy trip from my home in The Hague but the weather was great so it was all good!

June concluded with the actual VMware vSphere upgrade for the customer in Amsterdam, which was a great opportunity to work together with Natasja Mihic in those noisy data centers. Thereafter on 27th of June, I traveled with my colleague Martijn Ditmar to Neustadt in Germany to help a customer out with a new Nutanix cluster deployment. We completed our work on-time in the 2 days allocated and also had the opportunity to check out the local cuisines and sceneries. Good times!

Then came July and the summer heath started to build up in the Netherlands and Europe for that matter. 

At the end of the first week together with my colleague Michael in ’t Hout, I was participating in a video recording for a commercial to attract new Nutanix colleagues. Cool stuff but actually more challenging than doing a vSphere or Nutanix deployment! :P If you have not checked out the resulting video, feel free to do so via my earlier post: click here.

As the month progressed, more colleagues started their vacations whereas I worked on my exam preparations for VMware VCP7-CMA certification. It is quite hard to study when it is 27 degrees Celsius in my home. As this will be my first VCP certification, I need to pass two exams: a Foundation exam and the actual VCP7-CMA exam. 

In the second week of June, I passed for my Foundation exam with a nice 400+ score! Yeah! :))) 

I celebrated this win during the third week during a small vacation with my family at the Efteling theme park in Kaatsheuvel. My kids had a blast over there whilst we were being baked by the warm weather. And I turned 38 in that week on the 17th of July. That big 40 is coming near now… By the way, a BIG thank you to everyone who sent me birthday messages! It was a bit overwhelming and I still have not had the opportunity to thank all of you personally. :)

In the fourth week of July, I continued my VCP exam preparations thus my nose went into the books again as well as into my home vSphere lab environment to get fully prepared before taking the actual exam.

August started with an internal kick-off meeting at PQR yesterday involving a Nutanix cluster deployment for a customer in Maastricht. This will be a larger deployment and my hands are itching to deep-dive into this one!

The forecast of this month will be: preparations for and actual deployment of the Nutanix cluster in Maastricht, 2-week vacation with my family in Lanzarote (Yeah!!), taking the VCP7-CMA exam and perhaps another Nutanix cluster deployment in the United Kingdom or a VMware vSphere upgrade for a customer in the Netherlands. And what is a summer without a music festival? So, perhaps I will be visiting the MysteryLand festival at the end of August. ;)

In September and beyond, the focus will continue on Nutanix deployments but with the addition of VMware vRealize Automation projects.

Life is quite diverse and full of opportunities and challenges as a VMware/Nutanix consultant at PQR. Time flies when you are having fun, that’s for sure! :)

In case you are interested in becoming my colleague then don’t hesitate to check out our job vacancies at: click here (site in Dutch).

Enjoy your weekend!!