This is the intro to a new series I wanted to write about for a long time. Besides the let’s learn section where I give an overview of places and classes where concrete knowledge is stored, I want to also share my opinion on why you (the tech-people) should learn more about specific products and technologies. Or in short – give you some arguments why it makes sense to invest time in specific tools/solutions.
When I say tech-people we are talking about people being specialists within their domain. Some with deeper, some with less deeper knowledge. To grow your expertise within your domain you need motivation, courage, time and other reasons to do so. If you read this you most probably will be feeling comfortable in the world of server virtualization. If that’s the case you know the fact that our domain is not ‘just’/only server virtualization. It’s much more than that. For the business we are the domain infrastructure. We deliver services and the technical foundation that the business is able to do what it needs to do. This infrastructure consists of many different components and IT systems requiring from time to time completely different indept know-how (people).
When I started with virtualization I was fascinated because the world was suddenly so big. Virtualization / Hypervisors always have been like the glue, tying together different elements (network, storage, Operating systems, ….) forming a wonderful thing: An easy to deploy application.
(wow …. this sounds really shallow and pedantic …)
Anyway our world is changing. We are working in the datacenter field. Many functions and services are transformed into (I am afraid of saying commodity) x-86 software accessible/configureable via APIs and integrated with each other. Requirements for the IT staff are changing from people specialized within their domain to specialists within their domain + 1/2/3/n (ability to work/understand in any other datacenter relevant domain).
I realized that a deductive approach of learning has always been a little harder, but more efficient in my specific case. When I learn things I like to align my learning strategy to the same approach like modern IT-architecture system are created (e.g. the VCDX way).
Try to understand tools and technologies in the following order:
- understand the concepts (less technical) – focus on features and problems that are solved
- understand the logical behaviour (more technical) – how are the problems solved without getting to specific
- understand the physical behaviour (100% technical where you can dive into as deep as you want (‘$i+$y‘ vs ‘mov eax, [num1] sub eax, ‘0’ add eax, ebx add eax, ‘0’‘)) – deep dive s**t
I observe many people only wanting to understand the physical behaviour (‘I don’t have time I just need to make sure the system is running somehow’ / ‘a reboot might help’). Even I like rather clicking around and explore than going through the books/manual.
The business requires the ability from us to do and learn ‘everything’, but either the business is not encouraging us (time as a constraint) or we are not motivated enough to encourage our self (laziness, supposed uselessness, etc.).
That’s why I am going to create in the future several posts and try to give an argumentation on why you should learn more about new products and technologies.
Maybe I can convince/motivate a few of you guys to get on the road of getting a professional or even an expert in fields of NSX, vRealize, PowerCLI and many more…