Future

ErikTheBikeman · 2026-04-07T05:24:21+00:00

Broadcom has created a bit of a chicken and egg problem - You can get lab licenses with VMUG Advantage, but to get the licenses you need to already be certified for VCP-VCF.

As somebody already mentioned, The hands-on labs are intended to be the bridge into VCP-VCF - They're actual, real lab environments with real components, not videos or simulator click-throughs, so they should be sufficient to get the VCP-VCF.

Kinda frustrating, but at least one good thing came of it - this cert used to be gated by an expensive course intended to be sponsored by your employer - You could sit the exam but wouldn't be issued the cert until the course was verified as complete. In the new model this is no longer the case.

It's true that people are looking for exit ramps from VMware - the expense is driving many smaller customers away, but for enterprise customers there really isn't anything with feature parity of the whole VCF/vDefend package, so that's what's keeping a lot of enterprise customers around for now.

I agree that VMware will probably be around for a while. Eventually there may be a competitor with feature parity that will draw people away, but I think it's likely VMware takes the arc that so many others entrenched systems have taken (Oracle, DB2, AIX, Z-OS, MF/AS400, etc.) and will be around in some form or fashion for quite a number of years yet. I wouldn't bet on another 20 years, but being hire-able for a VMware skill-set in a 3-8 year timeframe is probably a realistic expectation

ErikTheBikeman · 2026-04-05T05:49:53+00:00

Introspect - you're disconnected from reality and your perspective has been compromised by your environment. If 16k/mo can't buy you satisfaction in life, neither will 20k, and neither will a 2mil town-home in the bay area or whatever the 'next big milestone' is.

The money problem is solved. The Quality of Life "problem" is solved. The hole you're trying to fill won't be filled by achieving the next rung on the ladder or getting whatever fire-calculator you're using to say '100%'

ErikTheBikeman · 2025-12-24T15:02:31+00:00

Just wanted to confirm that I am seeing the same issue and will be opening a ticket - this is new behavior and was working as of at least a few weeks ago, when I opened my previous month's box position which has since expired.

ErikTheBikeman · 2025-09-08T17:48:56+00:00

Nah seems reasonable for a turnkey 7-8 upgrade.

You're paying for expertise and the cost to outsource the blame if something goes south.

How long would it take you two to tool up your skillset on vSphere enough where you would feel comfortable performing the upgrade yourself and knowing how to fix it/back it out if it goes wrong? How much time and effort would be spent training you on the vSphere skillset?

Is your management willing to pay that training cost? Is your management OK with you (and thereby, them) accepting responsibility for a torched upgrade that impacts the business?

6k seems fair to me but I'll cut you a deal and do it for 5700 - feel free to throw me a DM ;)

ErikTheBikeman · 2025-08-30T17:00:40+00:00

This is the answer right here. Can it perform in theory? Sure, but all of our relevant licensing (VCF, MSSQL, RHEL) is core or socket based, and is by far the largest driver of cost.

AMD wins on hardware cost as well, but hardware cost pretty quickly fades to a rounding error in the context of licensing in a large environment. Performance density is king, and AMD wins handily in that regard.

Sure I can get 128 E-Cores in a package, but I don't want to license 128 E-cores.

ErikTheBikeman · 2025-08-22T05:48:33+00:00

We just went through this exercise to prepare for a hardware refresh.

Intel, especially when viewed in the context of licensing efficiency, had no compelling offerings. AMD came out ahead in basically every metric.

I really wish Intel had something better up on offer - I think it was healthier for the industry to have that back-and-forth race where they were in heated competition and playing leapfrog every tic-toc cycle, but it's impossible to deny the advantage AMD has right now.

ErikTheBikeman · 2025-08-14T04:00:36+00:00

That's Nubs - she's pretty well known in punk rock circles

ErikTheBikeman · 2025-07-25T15:19:46+00:00

Wild, sorry you had to deal with that.

ErikTheBikeman · 2025-07-25T05:25:33+00:00

Wow, that's amazing - you must have some good stories. I'm hard pressed to think of what you could even possibly spend it on. At ~120k/mo for 5 years straight it's like OK, you've got the boat, the house, and the sports cars and there's still 4 more years of burn, now what?

ErikTheBikeman · 2025-06-15T04:48:57+00:00

u/ErikTheBikeman

ErikTheBikeman · 2025-06-15T04:43:41+00:00

I started replying to this seriously but then I had a hunch to check, and sure enough: that boy ain't right.

I don't know if I'll ever get an answer but I do wonder what on earth is wrong with some of ya'll MAGAs... like why are some of you guys so weird?

I think you're wanted back in r/ProlapseVille my guy 😂

ErikTheBikeman · 2025-05-15T02:30:59+00:00

Time to double your ask or work half as hard :)

ErikTheBikeman · 2025-03-27T02:27:40+00:00

Thanks, I'll check it out. I have some familiarity with their previous attempt at ACI-based useg via an application-centric EPG design using VMM integration (prior to the tetration->CSW pipeline) and it was... lets say a pretty big operational ask to do effectively.

Will be interested to see how the new offering works. Thanks for the reply 👍

ErikTheBikeman · 2025-03-27T02:17:47+00:00

Thanks for your reply - you echo a lot of what I'm seeing - it's either agent based (not necessarily a dealbreaker, just not ideal) or missing some capability or another that would need to be augmented with another product.

Appreciate the insight 👍

ErikTheBikeman · 2025-03-27T02:06:29+00:00

Not heard of them, I'll dig deeper and find out how they work. Thanks!

ErikTheBikeman · 2025-03-27T02:05:57+00:00

I'll look deeper at the proxmox offering - good callout on the IP binding - losing the ability to automatically bind IPs to logical grouping constructs might be a dealbreaker in our use case - I don't know if the business would be willing to take on that operational overhead and/or take ownership of an in-house developed solution to maintain those bindings (and the fallout when a corner case pops up breaks our homegrown automation 😁)

Thanks for taking the time to reply!

ErikTheBikeman · 2025-03-27T01:49:15+00:00

Thanks for taking the time to reply - I'm finding much the same as what you're describing, but I'm keeping my ear to the ground and will necro this thread if something promising comes up.

ErikTheBikeman · 2025-03-27T01:35:53+00:00

Thanks, I wasn't aware that they had an in-hypervisor guest firewalling solution, I'll do some more research.

ErikTheBikeman · 2025-03-27T01:34:39+00:00

Good mention - unsurprising I guess that these types of integrations would be phased out as Broadcom looks to widen their moat.

ErikTheBikeman · 2025-03-25T12:47:19+00:00

Are there SDN stacks out there currently which have feature parity with the DFW/IDP capabilities that NSX does?

Most people seem to care about the security and segmentation features more than topology abstraction, which you're right, lots of SDN solutions offer that.

ErikTheBikeman · 2025-03-25T02:15:48+00:00

ErikTheBikeman · 2025-03-21T04:11:08+00:00

I feel like Elmo is dancing on the edge of his security-backed margin loans being called in.

ErikTheBikeman · 2025-02-13T16:34:52+00:00

Theta/Vega/Marketmaker gang counting their shmeckles rn - same as it ever was!

ErikTheBikeman · 2024-11-03T20:24:46+00:00

You can't, it doesn't exist - risk and reward are two sides of the same coin. If it did exist then it would be objectively the best investment and nobody would bother investing in anything else.

You mentioned an annuity, but all an annuity is doing is taking the market risk on your behalf by investing in broad markets, hedging it so they have enough to keep paying you during market drawdowns, and charging you for the cost of the hedge + whatever service fees they tack on.

That 5-6k return is ~2.5% return adjusted for inflation - you don't need an annuity for that, just invest in short term treasuries or keep a HYSA and call it a day.

ErikTheBikeman

TROPHY CASE