vExpert Spotlight: Matt Bradford
Matt Bradford
Today’s vExpert Spotlight interview is with Matt Bradford. Matt joins us on the #vExpertSpotlight from New Hampshire where he is a System Administrator working in the Healthcare industry.
The LIVE #vExpertSpotlight of Matt Bradford
The Interview Breakdown
Star Wars or Star Trek?
Star Wars
Peanut Butter?
Crunchy
Favorite Adult Beverage?
Jack and Ginger
What was your 1st IT gig?
I’ve been tinkering with computers ever since I could read and write but my first paid IT gig was in High School. I started out as a part time help desk technician in 1999 at Hypertherm, a large manufacturing company in my hometown. I was fortunate to land the job thanks to my older brother, Jeff and our common friend, Steve Athanas (Leader of the Boston VMUG) who both held the position before me. I put in a few hours after school each day and spent my summers supporting approximately 250 users.
I’m very grateful for the experience and got a lot of exposure to Windows domains, corporate networks, and Exchange 5.0. Most of our users were on-site, but we also supported a number of travelling salespeople around the globe. We hosted our own dial-up RAS and would provide support over a 33.6k connection. Anyone remember PC Anywhere? After college, I spent a number of years working in television and industrial automation before coming back to IT.
What is your current job title and role?
I am a systems administrator at Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon, NH and I get to work with the most talented group of people I’ve ever met. My team manages about 1,300 servers and well over a petabyte of shared storage. It’s not a huge environment, but with the size of our staff and the amount of support it takes to keep the institution running, it’s a large enough. My main focus is on our VMware environment which we built about a year and a half ago.
How many years have you been a vExpert?
This is my first year!
What other IT Communities are you involved with or frequent?
VMTN, VMware Certified Professional group on LinkedIn, and recently the VMware group on Reddit.
What advice would you give to others involved in the VMware community who are looking at becoming a vExpert?
Your passion is infectious, share it with everyone! The hardest part about becoming a vExpert is making that leap from information consumer to content creator. There are so many things you can do right now that can be used to achieve vExpert status. Help folks out on forums, post about something great you’ve just discovered, give presentations at work, get involved with a user’s group or start your own. These things will not only help get your name on the vExpert list, but will help your career tremendously as well!
Do you currently have a Home Lab environment?
My home lab is powered by an 8 core AMD FX8320 with 32 GB of RAM, 256GB of SSD storage and 2 TB of spinning disk. My cloud lab is powered by Ravello Systems who is an incredible supporter of the vExpert program. My work lab is made up of two BL460 Gen8 blades with dual 8 core Xeons and 98GB of RAM.
How do you use VMware products or services in your daily work life?
Supporting 50 ESXi servers (soon to be 70) wouldn’t be possible without some level of automation. I rely on PowerCLI for a majority of it but am starting to utilize vRealize Orchestrator. We are pro-actively monitoring our environment with vRealize Log Insight which has saved us from a number of outages already. I love that product!
What certifications do you currently hold (if any)?
VCP5-DCV
What’s your go to song or music genre when work stress becomes too much?
Anything I know well enough to sing along to in the car…with the windows rolled up of course! I grew up playing guitar, drums, and some piano so 90’s alternative reminds me of great times jamming with my friends. EDM helps me get in the zone while scripting.
Tell us something about yourself that the community may not already know.
I’m a geek! Oh, you already knew that? Well… I have a Bachelor’s degree in television production and design which in my current role means I make pretty PowerPoint presentations. I’ve recently returned to video production and created a video on SMP-FT which you can find on my blog: http://www.vmspot.com/support-for-multiprocessor-fault-tolerance-in-vsphere-6/ I plan to create many more, but it’s very time consuming and right now it’s summer so I’m spending most of my time outdoors!
Do you have a blog that you would like to share?
Yes, you can check me out at http://www.VMSpot.com/
Let us know how to contact you via social media.
Twitter: @VMSpot
Matt it has been a pleasure to have you be a part of the vExpert Spotlight series! I appreciate you very much sir.
Please follow Matt on Twitter & also visit his personal blog.
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