So this morning at 4 AM Santa brought me a extra stocking stuffer and I got my login access for the beta hands-on training offered by VMware. Soooooo, here are my thoughts.
Interface:
Because this just the beta offering I don't know if the user interface will stay the same but I wasn't very thrilled. The console to the labs, the lab manual and other "printed material" were all offered in the same browser window. There was no option to download the manuals as a PDF, as is the case with MS labs or Netapp. I was working on a older laptop with a relativity low resolution so it was rather tedious bouncing back and forth but it worked, so meh. Here is a screenshot of the interface
Content:
I come from a Citrix XenApp shop and dont use VMware as much a I used to at my last job. Some of the labs deal with more advanced topics but are explained very well. What I found great is its not just "type this and click here" like in other labs. I have seen but it was explained in two three slides why this is necessary, whats going on, and how the commands or actions affects the system.
Speed and Availability:
There was a very noticeable lag with text input and mouse movements also it seemed that double clicking didn't work at all. After completing the "HOL-INF-04 - Deliver Optimal Performance with VMware vSphere 5.1" lab I tried to start another lab but received a error message " out of capacity".
Conclusion:
In summary, after all the complaining, me thinks it is a really idea from VMware to allow people to get some hands on time with their flagship products and I hope it remains free. The service offers another resource for admins and engineers testing new features as a first step before setting up a inhouse lab. I think that platform is geared more toward feature evaluation but rookies would be better served by downloading a copy of the vShere Hypervisor.
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