“If you wish to achieve worthwhile things in your personal and career life, you must become a worthwhile person in your own self-development”
Brian Tracy
“The fastest way to learn IT is 80% labbing and 20% studying theory. Just do it and have fun.”
vAndu
I think everyone knows what Lego is and doesn’t need an explanation. Still, I’m sure you are very confused why I’m saying vSphere/Workstation Pro is like a Lego suitable for everyone.
We have all seen or even experienced how fun and engaging it is playing with Lego bricks. It’s an exciting opportunity to tinker and be creative. Only your imagination limits what you can build and how you play. It’s so engaging that time flies, and every day, you can create something fun without worrying about doing something wrong or even breaking what you made. It’s not a big deal. At any moment, you can build something newer and even better. Each time you build and break, build and break, you get better and better. Your skills develop rapidly. Hands-on learning opens the door to becoming a successful person.
VMware vSphere/Workstation Pro offers a similar experience to build without worrying about breaking something and making someone upset or angry. Have you heard some IT people say, “Don’t touch a working system”? This means, “I have no clue how the thing is working, and if something happens, I don’t know how to fix it.”
Today computer processors are so powerful that most software doesn’t use all their resources, and many cores are just “sleeping.” When you watch road workers, one worker is working, and others are watching how the one worker is doing all the work. This is precisely what is going on with your computer processor.
Besides that, VMware engineers and developers have designed fantastic virtualization software that is exceptionally lightweight and knows how to share one physical computer resource with multiple virtual machines. You can over-provision a lot of your CPU and RAM.
You can turn your old computer into a vSphere server or install it on your laptop/computer operating system Workstation Pro/Fusion Pro and run multiple virtual machines. Today it’s possible to virtualize anything. Most computers are powerful enough and have enough memory to at least run one virtual machine.
And here the fun starts. You can learn every IT skill that you could ever dream of. It is effortless to use, fun, fast and time-saving. You can learn how to install and configure Windows Server, Linux server, or any other software. You can build a complicated enterprise system again and again. Developers are building the software, and system administrations are using it.
Oh… and one of the most extraordinary inventions is VMware’s Snapshot. I love snapshots; this is what makes it so fun. It is similar to when you play a computer game, and you want to save your progress in the game to later continue or before you fight with the big boss. Sadly Lego doesn’t have this feature, but virtualization software does.
“What is a Snapshot? A snapshot preserves the state and data of a virtual machine at a specific point in time. The state includes the virtual machine’s power state (for example, powered-on, powered-off, suspended). The data includes all of the files that make up the virtual machine.”
by VMware
You can quickly test/build up different software in a virtualized environment. Take as many snapshots as you want (vSphere 7.0 32 snapshots), and if you make a mistake, revert back to where it was working, and you’ll be fine. It has been fun playing around with different software and learning, experimenting. You are trying to understand how things actually work, to see what happens, and so on. You have nothing to worry about if something breaks down. I strongly encourage you to break things, blow them up and try to fix them. Play around with all those things. Don’t worry if you don’t understand how things are working at the beginning. By playing, you are getting a better understanding, and google is your friend.
I’m saying it doesn’t matter what your gender or age is, whether you’re a kid or 80 years old. Just start playing around and imagine you are playing with Legos.
Many years ago, my grandmother installed and set up a printer with my explanation on email of how to do it. During that time, it was more difficult installing printer drivers than installing vSphere or Workstation Pro and playing around with VMs. So, there is no excuse for you. Start with what you have and then step by step upgrade your home lab.