2018 Personal Objectives (a bit late)

~ Chris Storrie

It’s now 6 weeks into the year and i figure it’s finally time to do something that i’ve been meaning to do since late last year… And that’s to to publish my personal objectives for 2018. For me it should be two fold it means they’re publicly out there so i can judge (and be judged) how the year went for me. Secondly i’m sure a lot of my objectives cross over with others in this community so i’m hoping it may spark some conversations and debates as the year goes on.

Certifications:

  • VCAP-DCV – So as posted last year (actually oops, that’s still in draft!) well spoiler alert on the 2nd attempt i got my VCAP-DCD, so it’s high on my list to aim for the 2nd VCAP which would of course unlock VCIX for me. This has to be my #1 goal for the year
  • About a year ago, like so many others i decided to embark on some AWS certs. I started working through the training but then it totally stalled. As i had an expiring exam voucher i forced issue and its scheduled for 3 months time. I need to set aside sufficient time between now and then to give myself any chance. I’m going for AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate

New Technologies:

  • Ansible and SaltStack . The scale of things at my new job compared to my old one is staggering. Everything is multiplied by 10x. Therefore it’s going to be essential for me to get much more familiar with configuration management

  • Powershell, GIT, Terraform- I know i’m supposed to say if i have to do a job more than once i should try to automate it. The truth is that isn’t always the case, sometimes i like a repeatable task. However as stated above my working environment has evolved so i really need to evolve with it
  • NSX. I hate networking, always have done. I find it boring and complicated. BUT the game is changing, NSX is very much at the heart of that. My new company have bought NSX but it hasn’t really been deployed in anger. In the next 6-9 months we really need to ramp up it’s usage, so i really need to ramp up my knowledge.
  • vRA. I’ve spun up vRealize Automation Center before, dipped my toe a little. But now i’m faced with a fully deployed enterprise solution and it feels head spinningly complicated. So there’s a very real requirement for me to get hands on and up to speed with vRA this year. There’s also the looming (and much anticipated)vrequirement to upgrade to vRA7. It’s supposedly a light year leap in quality, but unfortunately i don’t think the learning curve is any shallower
  • VMware on AWS. I’ve pretty much been green-lit to spin up a POC VMware on AWS environment Personally i think if we can properly deploy  NSX first it dramatically influences the possibilities for this POC.
  • Ravello – Most personal than professional but there’s some really interesting development work going on in this area and i’d like to try and spend some time with it

Training:

I don’t see myself doing anything really formal in this space this year. Despite having a more generous training allowance than i’m used to. I reckon i’ve just got too much on and too many other things to be studying in house. So from an external training perspective i would think VMWorld will be the extent of it for me, i am hoping to get to go to US VMworld for the first time though, so that would be exciting

I haven’t listed them in any list of preference or as the order i expect to tackle them. Right now i feel my priorities change on an almost daily basis. There’s so much out there that i need or want to learn i’m having real issues with focus  but now it’s out there, it’s harder for me to hide from the fact.