This is our fourth and last interview with the Special Guests visiting us in Milan in early April for the VMUG-IT User Conference. We already spoke to +Cormac Hogan, +Scott Lowe and +Duncan Epping and today I am delighted to introduce you Mr. +Mike Laverick.
I am particularly pleased to complete this mini-series with Mike, as I know him personally since 2006, when I was among his students in a VMware ESX 2.5 training. Mike’s training skills were instrumental in teaching me the fundamentals of Enterprise Virtualization and in helping me to become the professional I am now.
Mike is probably one of the best known personalities in the VMware Community: a former Trainer, then Blogger and Writer (his SRM books should be in any professional’s technical library) and now an “Evangelist”.
But he’s probably most famous as an Elvis Impersonator!
VMUG-IT: Hi, who are you, could you please introduce yourself?
Mike: I’m Mike Laverick I used to run the rtfm-ed.co.uk website, where I published many blogs, free guides and a weekly podcast. I’m now working for VMware, and I blog at mikelaverick.com. I’ve worked with Vmware technologies since 2003/4, and cut my teeth on ESX 2.0 and vCenter 1.0.
VMUG-IT: What is your current role within VMware?
Mike: My official job title is “Senior Cloud Infrastructure Evangelist”. I’ve yet to meet any of my Junior Evangelist to boss around, and make me cups of tea. Being an evangelist means I get to stare into the middle-distance all day long pontificating about the future. I’m joking, of course.
VMUG-IT: What are the latest technologies you are working on lately?
Mike: At the moment I’m stuck into vCloud Director 5.1. I’m planning a whole series of “design” based blogpost based on my recent attendance of the vCloud Director Design course presented by the world famous, Eric Sloof! After that I’m going to get stuck into vCloud Automation Center, which is a very hot product amongst our customers. Finally, I want to work with vCOPs more than I have in the past.
VMUG-IT: What do you think about VMUG in general?
Mike: I’ve been a long supporter of VMUGs – both as former VMUG Leader, as well as being on the speaker-circuit for the big “User Conferences” in the US. The vCommunity is life-blood of Vmware, and its one of my roles to engage with that community, and mentor people – leading that generation of people who initially started learning about vSphere, to learn more about our other technologies.
VMUG-IT: What are you going to talk about at the Italian User Conference?
Mike: I’m hoping to do two sessions – one about how I reshaped my lab environment for vCloud Director – and perhaps a second on some thoughts about DR to the Cloud.
VMUG-IT: Any thoughts you would like to add?
Mike: I’m really pleased to see nationwide VMUG event spring up in Italy. I’m hoping that along with the UK we see more of these national events bring together the vCommunity on a yearly basis.
VMUG-IT: Thank you, Mike!
You can follow Mike on his Blog (http://mikelaverick.com/) or on Twitter (@Mike_Laverick)