I’m a bit late on posting this. But, better late than never. I’ve been renewed again as a VMware vExpert for 2025. This is my seventh consecutive year since I first applied. Woohoo!!

If you haven’t met me, then you should know the image for this post is not how I look at all. That guy is way better looking than me. I also don’t have anywhere near that amount of hair. I decided to create a generic IT guy holding a placard claiming to be a 7-time vExpert. I used the AI image site, NightCafe. It has a paid tier for creating images, but I use the free tier. Check it out sometime.

You may be wondering why the heck would I bother getting renewed as a vExpert. There are many folks who are very displeased with VMware/Broadcom nowadays. I get it, Broadcom massively increased the renewal pricing for everyone. Soon, they are going to change the minimum number of cores required from 16 to 72. This will piss off people even more. However, I still think there is value in sticking with VMware as your daily hypervisor. Let me give two reasons why I think so.

1. VMware has a very long track record of supporting just about any operating system and there are more applications than you can think of.
2. Along with it’s longevity there are 1000’s of adminstrators in the market who have built entire careers on designing, building and maintaining virtualized infrastructure based on VMware technology.

There are many more reasons. But I don’t want to make this about “why VMware.” I may cover that topic in a future post.

For now, I’m still a fan of the vCommunity and I virtually hang out with many of them on several Discord servers. One of the servers I spend the most time on is the vCommunity Discord server I encourage you join me and many other like-minded folks. If you join, then make sure to reach out to me.

I want to congratulate everyone who was awarded the privilege of being a vExpert in 2025. Welcome to all the newcomers.

I’ll end with if you did not apply when the applications opened last year, you can apply during the vExpert 2025 second-half application cycle, which should be open around June/July 2025.

I hope to see you at a VMUG UserCon or local VMUG some time this year.