5 Ways Virtualization Impacts Your Career
Last week,
I told you five things to know about VMware certification. Now, I want to flip that around and offer five things you need to know about putting virtualization as one of your core competencies:
1. So you know virtualization, but what about storage and networking? I mentioned how these are important before, but I can't stress this enough. When it comes to architecting a robust virtualized architecture, you'll have to be a passable network and storage engineer.
2. You will have to be a licensing expert. Licensing historically has not been one of my strong points. But, virtualization has changed how I go about general infrastructure practices, from per-processor licenses with SQL server, Windows Datacenter's unlimited virtualization rights, and even USB license dongles. You'll have to deal with it, and make it work.
3. You will have to be a data protection expert. Architecting backups, providing off-site disaster recover, replication, mirroring, RPO/RTO and other core competencies will have to be part of the virtualization professional's repertoire.
4. You will have to be a database expert. I pick on databases in particular because so many topics come into play with database servers. The good news is that now there are plenty of resources that the virtualization administrator has to prepare a strong case to support databases in this environment. Here are the best resources for supporting databases in virtualization:
5. You will have to evangelize. Unfortunately, people generally don't want to change. In order to realize new IT architectures with superior benefits, mindsets have to shift to a new way of thinking. This takes patience to explain the technology to people who may have a vague understanding of a non-virtualized environment. But should you be successful at this mode and deliver a superior virtualized infrastructure, you will build political capital in your organization.
Posted by Rick Vanover on 02/18/2010 at 12:47 PM