Random Stuff

My Review on TrainSignal’s VMware Troubleshooting course

August 2, 2011 By Damian Karlson Leave a Comment

If you follow me on Twitter, you’ve probably seen me mention that I’m (finally!) preparing to sit the VMware VCAP-DCA exam in about a week. I took the recommended troubleshooting class about a year ago, but recently decided to review the material by taking the VMware vSphere Troubleshooting course from TrainSignal. I’m about halfway into the course so far, and have been so pleased with it that I decided to write up a quick blog post about my experience.

First, TrainSignal has done a great job of identifying courses that VMware professionals need, and delivers them with intelligence. Purchasing the course gives you a number of different options to review the material both online and off. Secondly, David Davis, the presenter/teacher of the Troubleshooting course, does a great job of working through the material in a way that is engaging and insightful. David speaks very clearly and seems to be honestly excited about the topics he’s teaching. There’s no mumbling or boring rambling here, every minute of the course is just as bright and clear as the one before it. Third, David is very down to earth and straightforward. There’s a couple of spots where he’s made a mistake, like when working from the command line as an example, and he takes the time to explain that mistakes happen & no one is perfect. I think little things like that bring a friendly, human touch to the material and adds to the overall engagement. Fourth, and finally, the online presentation viewer does a great job of dealing with Internet connection interruptions (switching between wifi & hard wire, or public to VPN as an example), the fast forward/rewind functions are smooth and seamless, and the chapter separations work great.

Overall, I’ve been extremely pleased with the Troubleshooting course from TrainSignal, and highly recommend it to anyone who’d like to brush up on their knowledge and skills before taking the VCAP-DCA.

Note: I’m under no financial obligation or agreement with TrainSignal to post this review, and have not received any form of financial compensation.

VMware vExpert 2011 — An honor!

July 2, 2011 By Damian Karlson 1 Comment

I’m honored to announce that I’ve been recognized as a VMware vExpert for 2011. I’m definitely in great company; quite a number of my fellow vExperts are folks that I look up to both professionally and personally. Many thanks go out to those who nominated me, voted for me, and encouraged me all along the way. Thanks again! 🙂

Improving Your Career With Social Media (or, How To Learn To Stop Worrying And Love The Twitter)

June 30, 2011 By Damian Karlson Leave a Comment

Recently, a friend of mine found out he was in need of a new job, and asked me if I had any leads. I didn’t, at least not for his area and desired position. I did have one suggestion, which was to get on Twitter. His response, “Thanks, I hadn’t thought of that!”

That got me thinking, how many other folks hadn’t thought of that? How many other people haven’t realized the power of social media as a tool for professional networking, mentoring others, and the occasional tech support? And, what’s an effective way to let people know?

Some tips for writing your first PowerShell cmdlets & modules

June 9, 2011 By Damian Karlson Leave a Comment

A while back, I wrote a bit of a rant about the difficulties in finding helpful resources on writing PowerShell 2.0 cmdlets in C#. In case you hadn’t read it, my point was that there’s literally tons of great resources on authoring PowerShell scripts, but very little comparatively on how to author your own binary script modules. I still stand by that assessment regarding binary modules, however, I received some great advice recently that really helped me understand the learning curve involved in transitioning from a PowerShell scripter to a module author, and I’d like to pass that advice along.
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PowerShell module for VIO-4001/4004

June 7, 2011 By Damian Karlson Leave a Comment

As I’ve mentioned before, I work as a sales engineer for Virtensys, a company that provides a very cool PCIe-based I/O virtualization appliance. Lately I’ve been working on an unofficial project to develop PowerShell cmdlets that will allow the provisioning of virtual I/O to servers connected to our VIO appliances.

Here’s a *very* informal demo I cut over the weekend demonstrating the functionality available in the first release of the PowerShell cmdlets for the VIO-4001/4004 appliances.

A great use case I have in mind would be combining my PowerShell cmdlets with VMware’s PowerCLI when provisioning/scripting VMware hosts & clusters.

(Video after the jump)

[youtube]q2pCouYlBuM[/youtube]