Linux what's my deal?

 

Linux iconOK if you took the time to read my home page you know I am no a Linux expert.  I have been using Linux based operating systems as my only productivity based systems for about 3 years now. I have not gone to the deep end of the pool really with my distribution choices either.  For the first two years I ran Ubuntu and for about the last about 10 months I have been running Mint with a cinnamon interface.

This year I have begun to be a bit more serious about expanding my Linux skill set on the server side of the fence.  With cloud this and cloud that I’m not really not to sure how much of a career future someone who is primarily a Windows specialist has.  I’m sure Windows will be around for the foreseeable future in one form or another.  I’m an enterprise support guy and that is definitely a space with the exception of Active Directory and cloud based solutions like Outlook 365 where Microsoft is losing market share.

The thing I really get paid to do for the most part is VMware.  This is another product that is losing it’s luster when it comes to prime job opportunities.  Big IT theses days is all about doing more with less.  No one really wants to make large scale investments in building or increasing their own private infrastructure foot print.  Call it private cloud or whatever you want but it is getting harder and harder to find companies that do not have a plan to move most of their internal hosting to external solutions.  Like everything else in the world there will always be exceptions,  I have heard from some of my friends and colleagues of places just starting to do server consolidation.  There is always going to be industries that have content concerns that will be slow to make their transitions.

I believe that the Linux skill set is not necessarily future proof but in a less centralized world it is clearly what you will find more often then not.  I spent some time looking at Windows server 2016 and I believe there are some real reasons to be able to deploy this newest flavor of Windows in most environments.  I just have not heard of a lot of places making a real effort to ensure they can do this.   VMware is another company I believe that has had trouble getting it customers to stay at their current released products levels.  I believe this is a mistake as well.  Anyone that does VMware work has been witness to VMware’s long road to migrate their product suite off of Microsoft based technologies.  Staying on Windows based vCenter servers and Oracle or MS SQL database servers is not where you want to be in my own humble opinion.

What about VMware on AWS this must be a good thing for us VMware guy’s right?  I know it is still early but from what I have learned about this “solution” it seems to me to be more of a marketing pitch.  Maybe a desperate attempt by VMware to keep relevant in the cloud conversation.  If you want to run a service on AWS you can just do it with native AWS solutions.  Why would you want to pay a VMware premium to let you keep making baby steps toward outsourced infrastructure?  Maybe because you don’t have an internal AWS skilled team?  We all know there is a simple solution to problems like this, its called replace you team members.  AWS is not a platform only for Linux based solutions.  Some companies obviously do run windows based work loads in an AWS based environment.  While that is true I feel that you will find these people are in the minority.

So with that I will stop my rambling manifesto.  With all these statements I have made, if true paint a bleak future for us Windows/VMware folks I’m looking at it as more of a challenge.  As the need for hard core infrastructure talent wanes it will shake out those who cannot make the transition.  I am do not believe I will be one of those who cannot make it to the mountain top.