Hello, I’m Dave Simpson, I’ve been an IT professional for over 20 years now, all of them for the same employer. I’m a Virtualisation SME for Travelers, a large American insurance company. As you can imagine, being in the same place for that long, I have been through a number of roles. This would include being an administrator for a range of things;

• Windows
• Lotus Notes
• SQL Server
• Meridian phone system / IDNX
• Sequent SE30

Virtualisation

This has been my thing since the days of vSphere 2.5 and I’m VCP certified on vSphere 3.5 to 6.5. Gotta get off that certification treadmill one day. I’m also a VMware vExpert for 2015 through 2020.

I’ve designed and implemented a number of VMware deployments, including with that a range of items such as datacentre migration and consolidation, BC and DR, automation and orchestration, monitoring, VDI, you name it. I also get involved with the physical server, storage and networking considerations that go hand in hand with a virtual role. I’m also familiar with all manner of hardware - there’s been a number of vendors in and out over the years, basically all the ones you’d expect to see in a big American Insurance Company. I think that’s wooly enough.

VMUG

I’m a regular attendee at the London chapter of the VMware User Group - #LonVMUG, which is a good thing, being as I’ve been on the organising Committee since the start of 2016! This means that I am now a VMUG Leader for the London VMUG - and have also helped to organise the UK VMUG UserCon too. I have become more involved in the VMware Community over the past few years based upon my involvement with LonVMUG. You can’t help it, there’s such a strong contingent of vExperts who turn up at these things that you get cleverer by osmosis.

I’m passionate about our community and what VMUG can do for it and as a result, have served as a founding member of the VMUG Leader Advisory Council (a body of leaders set up as a liaison between the VMUG Board and the rest of the leaders) and subsequently as a member of the VMUG Board of Directors, since the start of 2019.

Homelab

I’m also a home labber, which helps for those certifications and for trying to keep up with an ever changing landscape. Having a lab at work alone isn’t enough for me to mess with some of the products I’d like to mess with! I’m also a founder member of the OpenHomeLab project. There’s a lot of people involved with LonVMUG and the OpenHomeLab project to who I owe a considerable debt of thanks for their motivation, inspiration, collaboration or a combination thereof. Certainly too many to mention here by name. Come to a LonVMUG one day and you’ll meet them for yourself!

Blog Origins

This blog started out as a bit of fun to do with the CloudCred gameification site a few years ago and became a place for me to dump random occasional thoughts on things I was messing with in the lab or found interesting. I’ve kickstarted it several times since then, including this occasion (new decade) plus when I moved it to markdown and static pages just for fun and also as a participant in the 2016 #vDM30in30, during a month where I was away from home organising conventions and the like. If I do that again, I’ll have to be more organised in advance.

More on me

I’m married and live in Sussex, UK with my wife and our pack of half a dozen dogs. Fortunately they’re all relatively small, so I can still get a seat on the sofa if I need one. I’m also a Diplomacy player and have traveled the world competing in various tournaments. I was European Grand Prix of Diplomacy Champion in 2012 and world team champion in 2015. My Twitter feed @bfd_diplomacy does contain the worlds only virtualisation and Diplomacy crossover. I’m also getting involved with Toastmasters these days, which certainly helps with speaking at VMUG events.

Disclaimer

The opinions stated upon this blog are mine alone and are not to be taken to be the opinion of the Travelers Companies Inc. Most of what I talk about is likely to have been messed with in my home lab or spun off from something else online, or something I attended in person, so you shouldn’t infer that Travelers is specifically linked to that either, nor that Travelers owns or operates said stuff.

Thanks for reading!