My NPX Journey

I have had an amazing learning experience in the last few months, expanding my skills into a second hypervisor being Kernel Virtual Machine (KVM) as well as continuing to enhance my knowledge on the ever increasing functionality of the Nutanix platform itself.

This past week I have been in Miami with some of the most talented guys in the industry who I have the pleasure to work with. We have been bootstrapping the Nutanix Platform Expert (NPX) program and have had numerous people submit comprehensive documentation sets which have been reviewed, and those who met the (very) high bar, were invited to the in-person, panel based Nutanix Design Review (NDR).

I was lucky enough to be asked to be part of the NDR panel as well as being invited to the NDR to attempt my NPX.

Being on the panel was a great learning experience in itself as I was privileged to observe many candidates who presented expert level architecture, design and troubleshooting abilities across multiple hypervisors.

I presented a design based on KVM for a customer which I have been working with over the last few months who is deploying a large scale vBCA solution on Nutanix.

I had an All-Star panel made up entirely of experienced Nutant’s who all happen to also be VCDXs, its safe to say it was not an easy experience.

The Design Review section was 90 mins which went by in a heart beat where I presented my vBCA KVM design, followed by a 30 min troubleshooting session and 60 min design scenario also based on vSphere.

Its a serious challenge having to present at an expert level on one Hypervisor, then swap into troubleshooting and designing a second hypervisor, so by the end of the examination it was safe to say I went to the bar.

As this is a bootstrap process I was asked to leave the room while the panel performed the final scores, then I was invited back in the room and told I was

Congratulations NPX #001

I am over the moon to be a part of an amazing company and to be honoured with the being #001 of such an challenging certification. I intend to continue to pursue deeper level knowledge on multiple hypervisors and everything Nutanix related to ensure I do justice to being NPX #001.

I am also pleased to say we have crowned several other NPX’s but I won’t steal there thunder by announcing their names and numbers.

For more information on the NPX program see http://go.nutanix.com/npx-application.html

Looking forward to .NEXT conference which is on this week!