Breaking into Virtualization - Virtualizedgeek TechTalk 24
Transcript
hi welcome to episode 24 of virtualized geeks tech talk the episode before vmworld i'm really excited about vmworld this year uh because one i'm going for the first time and uh i've never been in san francisco one of my favorite cities i've been spending the past few uh months actually in the bay area so i'll be actually nice to make it to san francisco this episode of virtualized geek though we're not talking about vmworld we're actually talking about something related to vmworld which is virtualization training
a lot of you guys have asked me the question um quite frequently how do i get into virtualization doesn't matter if it's network virtualization server virtualization storage virtualization but mainly you look your uh you know uh i think a lot of my content has been geared towards people who are already familiar familiar with virtualization and cloud computing and a lot of the questions especially since i i've done a lot of the training videos is how do i even get into virtualization so let's talk about a
few options uh one if you look at some of my earliest videos they are quite boring but inform informative uh introduction to virtualization in general in general virtualization and cloud computing so basically what's the difference between virtualization and cloud computing what is virtualization what is cloud computing is kind of the three or four videos i have available for you on my youtube channel the next area is getting kind of real world experience so a lot of my videos walk you through uh after you install after
you've installed vmworks vmware workstation installing vmware esxi on it vmware is very generous with their evaluation programs one they give you all of their most of their products uh in the evaluation mode for 60 days so you can get vmware workstation version 9 for 60 days under eval so that may be 30 days but it's 30 to 60 days on the eval and then uh vsphere 5.1 the whole suite you can get for evaluation under 60 days and what i've done until i became a v
expert was basically i built a lab use it for 60 days tear it down and rebuild it it can be a little irritating that you have to rebuild the uh environment but it's actually pretty good practice especially if you're new to virtualization so that you know kind of high level how do i get the software so you know two ways to get the software you can uh purchase the vmware workstation straight out which is roughly a hundred and 150 bucks 170 bucks or a hundred dollars
with a education discount uh you need a uh the actual vmware software and we're talking about vmware specifically here but you don't need to do just vmware so you can go to 60 day evals but kvm zen are both free uh virtualization platforms and you can use either one for free as long as you want and both kvm is in are very very solid hypervisors and they uh they're they're they're very uh well used within the public uh within the enterprise vmware of course is the
king of virtualization in the enterprise so if you were to learn vmware that has more career opportunities for you but zen server and kvm also are great ways to at least get introduced to uh virtualization and virtualization topics the next thing is probably hardware so you've gotten the software um whether you've chosen vmware workstation where vmware uh vmware virtual i'm sorry vmware workstation vmware player which is free which also can do next to vms or virtualbox is an option that i haven't talked about but you
can uh google virtualbox and people uh will be more than happy to give you more detailed information about virtualbox so you've gotten that software layer now it's time for the hardware hardware can be a little bit of a challenge for some folks um basically you need a if you have a pc that you bought in the re recently in the past couple of years it's going to have virtualization support so am am dv or intel vt technology at least four gigs around uh to be able
to run a nested vm so the ability to install uh vmware workstation on your let's say windows 7 laptop or windows 8 laptop you install vmware esxi inside of vmware workstation and then inside of esxi you can start installing uh guest os's to start learning about virtualization so in order to do that you need at least four gig ram preferably eight and if you can get 16 16 will take you a long way in the types of laps you'll be able to do when you talk
about doing some of the more advanced labs like running a zen desktop inside of a vmware workstation you're going to need at least 16 gig of ram my workstation that i use is my beefy lab machine has about 32 gig ram and that allows me pretty much to do whatever i want so that gives you your lab so you have your software you have your hardware and uh now it's just a matter of finding labs you can obviously look at some of the labs that i've
done another way to look at lab get labs is to just google there's plenty of guys who do labs on youtube outside of just me another option is to go with uh training videos um i like train signal they have a 50 all you can eat uh training videos they have an excellent uh introduction to virtualization and vmware vsphere video which gets us kind into that next layer after you've done server virtualization which is very mature let's talk about network virtualization network virtualization um it all
happens within uh vmware in the vmware world it all happens with virtual switches and uh virtual distributed switches and all that so if you have that base lab that we talked about you'll be able to do all of the vmware networking you want inside of that vmware workstation lab a second um option is to start looking at open switch which is which gets a little bit advanced uh as you uh look at uh doing hypervisors other than vmware open switch kind of becomes the defect uh
distributed switch uh that lap that i described with the four to eight gig workstation or laptop will do you fine for being able to start learning virtualization uh from the networking perspective uh then outside of that there's really no big secret you know it's like breaking into any other industry someone has to give you a shot you have to prove yourself unfortunately in order to get um certified in vmware you do have to take the formal class which is quite expensive uh it's basically about thirty
five hundred dollars for the self-paced class about five to six thousand dollars for a uh vmware official course another option is that vmware has this thing called vmware academy so it's basically junior colleges and community colleges that offer you the same coursework but via your community college so you can get student loans if you can't afford to pay your community college weight rates in order to get uh the class necessarily to take the the vmware certification once you have certification it's a little bit easier to
get a job in the industry once you have a vcp and then outside of that you know it's just more more learning than studying the best advice i can give you with ending off the vid this video uh segment on becoming a network virtualization or server virtualization guru is that there's no secret sauce you have to just read a lot study a lot uh subscribe to more guys like me train signal videos uh vmware uh education videos uh vmware kb knowledge videos there's a awful lot
of uh introductory stuff on youtube available stop by the virtualized geek stop by this channel ask questions but dig deep uh go vmware has a very big community when you go to vmware's community page the guys there are phenomenal they'll answer any question that you have so you know no secret sauce ask questions read a lot work hard and uh study if you have the lab available to you you can do a lot well that's it that's it for this uh episode of virtualized geeks tech
talk we'll talk to you throughout the week i plan on having my first video uh from vmworld more than likely sunday and uh as as material comes up i'll probably do more videos throughout the week week i'm actually planning on interviewing my wife who's doing the vmware spousal tips so uh i'm looking forward to talking to you guys visit the website virtualizedgeek.com like our videos subscribe talk to you next week
