Goals for 2017 - Half Way

So we have now passed the half way mark of the year, so I thought at a follow up on my blogpost about my Goals for 2017 would be in order.

• Energy efficient Homelab
  So this is almost complete. I have now relocated the Homelab setup from my home office to the wash/storage room of the house. I have gotten the 22U rack cabinet in place, and purchased a Intel NUC (NUC7i3BNH).
  I have also “upgraded” my networking kit, which previously was a mix of UBNT UniFi and EdgeMax units, to now be completly UBNT UniFi based.
  All that is missing is the setup of VMs. My plan is to make this mostly a coding Homelab, with vRealize Orchestrator as the center.

• More blogposts
  I have currently written 7 blogpost including this one, so that is on track.
  Hopefully I will be able to write even more posts in the last half of the year, now that I have a working Homelab again.

• VMUG presentation
  No VMUG presentation yet, but there is still one VMUG meeting scheduled in Denmark, so it is still possible to achieve this goal.

• Code sharing
  Unfortunately most of my work have been for a single customer this year, which have very strict policies about ownership of the code written. So I have not shared much.
  I have been pushing internally in Proact for a more openminded approach to code and community sharing.

• International conference
  Although I have been offered to go both to VeeamON in New Orleans and VMworld in Las Vegas, I have had to decline because of the baby boy and the family situation here at home.

• User Groups
  Regarding User Groups, it seems to be going okay.

  • Veeam User Group Denmark (VeeamUGDK)
    We have already had one meeting, where I unfortunately was unable to attend my self. And we have a second meeting planed for Friday 13th of October 2017.

  • VMware Automation User Group Denmark (VMAUGDK)
    One meeting as been held, which was the original goal. The meeting as a Special Interest Group (SIG) at a larger VMUG meeting in Denmark on Thursday 30th of March at a large cinema in Copenhagen, where VMUG Denmark had arranged for 3 cinema auditoriums.

• Podcast
  I had a few talks with different podcast organisers about 2 months ago, but it “died” down again, so still no plans for a podcast. I will have to pursue this again.

• Blog sponsors
  So this is “half-way” done. I have rewritten the CSS part of the website, to accommodate the Sponsor graphics. I have sponsor graphic from Veeam, but I actually don’t have a signed deal yet. I need to follow up on this, and get that closed. And try to find a second sponsors as well.

• vRealize Orchestrator Book Project
  I have started a bit on this book project agian, vRealize Orchestrator - the community book. But it is har dto find the time to write, and I have also been missing the Homelab to test stuff in.

• vExpert and Veeam Vanguard
  I have been selected as both VMware vExpert and Veeam Vanguard for 2017, so that is done. And I am trying to be invovled in the 2 communities, so hopefully I will acheive VMware vExpert and Veeam Vanguard status again next year.

• Certifications
  The goal was the below certifications, but because of both work and family I have not yet had time to take any of these.

  • At lest one of the VMware VCAP-CMA
  • Veeam Certified Architect

• Book reading list
  Unfortunately I have not had the time to read any of the books on my reading list yet, but I am hoping to get some reading done in the second half of the year.

  • VMware vRealize Orchestrator Cookbook - Second Edition
  • Mastering vRealize Automation 7.1

So that is the current status for the first half of the year. I will do a final follow up, when we enter the new year.