I know how much everybody loves the “I got a job” posts. Seen some tweets recently from some people who don’t like that people make a huge deal out of it. I get it, but I will be part of the problem today. I signed a new job offer this morning!

Now, before I get to what and where that is, I need to call out a laundry list of people who have helped to make my career at VMware possible. Brad Christian was the reason I got to join VMware in the first place. He heard me talking NSX at a VMUG event, hit me up on twitter, and asked if I wanted to sell NSX. Never imagined I would be the right candidate for it, as most of my  colleagues are serious networking guys. But here we are. Sean Howard, my first manager who gave me a shot. He knew I wasn’t the long time Cisco guy, but we got along really well and he took a shot. All of my teammates this past two years who have helped me along. We really are the Dream Team. We’ve had a lot of managers, but always remained a strong team. Sean, Sachin, Dave, David, and the entire management crew have been fantastic.

Paul B and The Dom Father. Two of the greatest Senior Managers of all time. I strive daily to do my job half as well as they do theirs. They run the finest damn pirate ship on the globe.

Now, at this point, you’re probably wondering where I am going. Am I staying at VMware? Am I leaving? What is happening? Why are you still reading this? AM I GOING TO MICROSOFT?!

No, I am staying at VMware. Obviously. I bleed our green and blue now. I worked so hard to get into this company, I refuse to leave it. But, I am making a really huge shift. I am following in the footsteps of Sean “Fancy Pants” O’Dell and running to the land of VMware Cloud Services! I will be a Technical Cloud Specialist for the VCS team under Bill Shetti. Huge thanks to my colleague Prabhu Barathi for helping me realize that this was the gig for me. Started out as just having a conversation, and turned into something I knew I had to be a part of. A fundamental shift in the way that VMware does business. All of those customers out there who are making the huge push to the cloud, we have tons of tools to help them be successful. Look forward to a ton of cool new stuff out of VMware. Things you never thought we would do!

But, don’t worry. I will always rep team #RunNSX. The Virtual Cloud Network is the future of the business network.

Be on the lookout for a ton of new stuff from me, and the rest of the VCS team!

-vTimD

Below is the video of the vBrownBag Tech Talk on Community, presented at VMworld 2016.

-vTimD

It is with mixed emotions that I am writing this today. I will be leaving my current role as Sr. Virtualization Engineer for Dell Services. Over the past 3 years, I have had the privilege of working for one of the largest accounts for Dell Services. I was hired on as a Wintel engineer with a strong knowledge of VMware. From there, I quickly became the Principal Architect and SME for the VDI solution. I have also become the Infrastructure Lead. I owe a huge debt to my original hiring manager, as well as the Cloud Services manager that helped build me up to where I am today. I will be leaving one of the greatest team of people I have had the opportunity to work with.

As of April 18th, 2016, I will shift directions slightly. I will be joining the VMware NSBU as Senior Systems Engineer, NSX Enterprise. While a lot of the existing NSBU folks have a heavy background in networking, I will be bringing my heavy virtualization background to the table. I am greatly looking forward to the opportunity to dive head first into one of the coolest pieces of technology to hit the streets. I will be working alongside and under some of the most gifted minds in the industry. This is extremely exciting for me, and I cannot wait to start.

One of the biggest goals I have for my life and career is to learn all I possibly can. While I have a grasp of basic networking, this job will give me the opportunity to jump out of my comfort zone and on to the bleeding edge of a rapidly growing technology. I can’t wait to see what the future has in store for NSX, and I’ll be sure to share it with all of you. Stay tuned!

-vTimD

The day has come! I have been working hard for the past year to try and get myself on the list. I really stepped up my blogging, community involvement, etc. And it paid off. I am officially a vExpert for 2016. Proud to have the moniker. I am among a list of great people in the community, and will do my part to do wear it well.  Congrats to all the other new vExperts, as well as the returning champions!

-vTimD

So, there has been a LOT of changes going on at Dell Services recently. Maybe you have heard some rumors… While this is big news for my future at this current point, it doesn’t’ affect my daily work with my contract. What DOES affect my daily work is the staffing changes that have gone down. Due to recent team shifting and loss, I am drifting from the VDI lead to help and try to cover our Infrastructure Manager position. This gets me away from View and way more into overall Infrastructure Architecture. Host build outs, storage and network design, and the biggest project is our upgrade from 5.5 to 6.0. I hope to get a bunch of good blogs out of this transition. It’s not something I’m brand new too, but I have obviously been knee deep in Horizon for 2 years now. Gotta brush off some of the vSphere / vCenter skills. More to come. Sit tight!

-vTimD