Tag Archives: personal

On the road to… nowhere?

This posting is ~2 years years old. You should keep this in mind. IT is a short living business. This information might be outdated.

Its been four month since my last blog post, and the blog frequency was quite low before that. This blog is, to be honest, a giant pile of stuff that has not worked as expected. Okay, some random thoughts or howto’s, but most blog posts are about stuff that failed in some way. That’s a bit “depressing”. I should write more about the fun things in my life

Picture by Gerd Altmann on Pixabay 

For a pretty long time my focus was on infrastructure. And my focus _is_ on infrastrucutre – Networks, lots of storage, virtualization with VMware. And always full stack: Networking, Storage, Servers, Operating System, always with a little focus here and there. Sure, products shifted over time, but in the bigger picture, my focus was always on infrastrucutre and datacenter stuff. No client devices, no end user support, no managed services/ admin tasks, no leadership. Technical stuff and projects. But my focus continued to shift. Microsoft Exchange for example. A product I really hate. Not really infrastructure. But I’m good at it and so I got projects and stuff to do. Or Office 365. Or Microsoft Azure. And since 2013 more leadership tasks. And since January 2020 I held some kind of a higher management position.

I’m doing much less VMware for the past 24 months than I like to do. Therefore much more Office 365 and Azure. And consulting for Microsoft stuff, transition to cloud, transition of IT services into managed services, or deployment of managed services. I lost my VCP/ VCAP through, IMHO, unnecessarily complicated recertification requirements. That was very frustrating for me. Of course, I learned other things in return.

Companions from the last 20 years are now mostly in management positions. Head of … whatever. Most of them are not doing technical stuff anymore. And they are happy with it. It looks like a typical career path, but it’s one that I don’t necessarily like right now. I’m still doing technical stuff, even if I’m in a management position. Actually quite good, but it also feels kind of weird.

I’m turning 40 this year. 23 years in IT behind me, 25 years to go until retirement. Not even half-time. :/ A wife, three nice kids, we just moved to our new house. Actually everything should be really great, but currently I can’t see a career path for me that makes me happy. And this sucks pretty hard.

So, to make a long story short, come back from time to time. Add this blog to your RSS reader. I hope to post nice content here again soon.

End-of-year review 2014

This posting is ~8 years years old. You should keep this in mind. IT is a short living business. This information might be outdated.

The days at the year’s end are usually the time to look back and to draw a resume.

I blogged on blazilla.de for nearly 7 years, but in December 2013 I decided that it was time for a new beginning: New blog platform, new content, another language, but the same topics. In January 2014 I started vcloudnine.de.

Some statistics

Until today, I wrote about 100 blog posts. According to Google Analytics, these are my Top 10 most visited blog posts for 2014:

  1. VMware ESXi 5.5 host doesn’t mount VMFS 5 datastore
  2. Load VMware PowerCLI snap-in automatically in PowerShell ISE
  3. Event ID 4625 – Failure Reason: Domain sid inconsistent
  4. Windows Server 2012 Cluster with VMware vSphere 5.1/ 5.5
  5. Configuring HP StoreOnce VSA and HP Data Protector for HP StoreOnce Catalyst
  6. Deploying HP StoreOnce VSA with HP Data Protector – Part III
  7. Exchange 2013: Event ID 2937 MSExchange ADAccess after public folder migration
  8. Some thoughts about HP 3PAR Adaptive Optimization
  9. Users on Exchange 2013 can’t open public folders or shared mailboxes on an Exchange 2007/ 2010
  10. Trouble with Broadcom NetXtreme II and VMware ESXi

Since January vcloudnine.de was visited about 90.000 times. I think this isn’t a bad score for a new blog and I hope that it will be much more in 2015. Most visitors came from the US. These are the Top 5 countries:

  1. United States
  2. Germany
  3. United Kingdom
  4. France
  5. Netherlands

Most of them used Google Chrome to access vcloudnine.de (this has really suprised me…). And someone regulary visited vcloudnine.de with a BlackBerry. These are the Top 5 used browser to access vcloudnine.de:

  1. Chrome
  2. Firefox
  3. Internet Explorer
  4. Safari (including in-app)
  5. Opera

I’m curious how vcloudnine.de will develop in the future.

Final words for 2014

This blog deals with my work. Because of this, the final words for 2014 are mainly written from the job perspective. 2014 was also the first full year back in the office, after working for more than four years mainly for a enterprise customer as an Infrastructure Architect. 2013 was a transitional year, but 2014 has surprised and disappointed me in different ways. From the career perspective, I can’t say much good about 2014. I hope 2015 will be better.

On the other hand, 2014 was a successful year: I finished my a degree at the FernUniversität Hagen. I’m a bit proud of this. The majority doesn’t finish the study at the FernUniversität Hagen. Many give up because of the double burden of study, job and family. 2014 was also the year of recertification. Between September and October I passed five exams and recertified my HP Master ASE, my DataCore DCIE, VMware VCP and I also achieved my first Juniper certification. Since April 2014 I’m a vExpert. This award has made me incredibly proud. I got so many positive feedback because of this and it has motivated me in many ways.

I look forward to your feedback. Drop me an email or a comment. I wish you and your family all the best. Enjoy the holidays and we will see us again in 2015.