vDoctor Sessions

If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find him, maybe you can consult the vDoctor!

Many of us in IT read a lot of whitepapers, blogposts, how-to articles and view numerous Podcasts or training video’s to learn all the details about new products or features. Still, I don’t always get some of the details or can’t find the info I need. Meeting people at VMUGs or VMworld gives me the changes to ask for those last missing piece of information. But what if you don’t have that chance?

When I blog about stuff I’m sometimes surprised about the comments I get and about how more people than I thought were struggling with the same questions. In responds to the comments I have been able to help quite a number of readers of my blog by e-mail and lately I did a few Google Plus Hangout sessions to help in an even better way. And that is when I came up with the following idea: Why not do a video-chat help session?

If you want help on specific topics and would like a one-to-one chat with me send me an e-mail ( thegabeman AT gmail dot com) in which you write about a specific subject you would like to know more about or maybe an issue you have with a design or installation. I’ll then plan a meeting with you for a Google Hangout session (you do need a Google Plus account for this). This might be an one-to-one session or maybe we’ll have a session with more people and collect a number of questions. The session will be live broadcasted and published on YouTube afterwards.

Some examples on what I think a session could be about:

  • Think together with you on design questions: “When using UCS Blades with two physical nics, how should I design the virtual network for this?” or “How to make SSO and vSphere Web Client redundant?”.
  • Explain a specific vSphere or vCloud concept to you: “How do shares, reservations and limits work?”

What will this NOT be?

  • A complete training on vSphere or vCloud or other subject. If you need good training contact Eric Sloof or David Davisat TrainSignal.
  • A support desk you can call when your server is down or a plane landed on your datacenter. Call VMware Support.

And as a disclaimer: I don’t know everything and I don’t have all the answers, but I do want to make the effort to help you and do some research myself when needed to be able to help you. Any advice I give is without any warranty.

Experiences from earlier sessions have thought me the following:

It is important to be specific in the questions. “Tell me something about the upgrade to vSphere 5.1” isn’t very specific and if you didn’t run into any errors while performing an upgrade, I can give some general guide lines and tips, but won’t give us much to talk about.

For previous sessions see here:

  1. The Doctor is IN on SRM, Upgrade to vSphere 5.1, vCSA and VCAP-DCA