Why it is worth to have vExpert award

Some of my colleagues keep asking me why do I waste my time on blogging or what are the benefits of vExpert award ? Here you get an answer:

Yesterday late afternoon I got an email from The vExpert Crew with a NFR licences – oooo yes !! This is what tigers like the most 😛

Enclosed please find three complimentary 365-day evaluation license keys. More licenses are in the pipeline, but we wanted you to be able to keep your vSphere labs up and running now that your initial 5.1 evals are starting to run out. Note you are receiving an evaluation of 16 CPUs of vCloud Suite Enterprise, which includes vCD, vC Ops, vCAC, Application Director, and SRM. For a full list see: http://www.vmware.com/products/datacenter-virtualization/vcloud-suite/compare.html

Awesome, isn’t it ? Finally I can deploy my little private cloud in a box without re-installing it every 60 days.

This isn’t the only benefit you can get there are much more such as voucher for all VMworld sessions which normally costs around 700$,

Update: vExpert 2013.

• recognition within industry – I noticed that, vExpert award is more and more valuable within industry
• AWESOME package of one year free of charge subscription to all training resources from TRAINSIGNAL,available for vExpert 2013
• T-shirt from Tintri 🙂
• access to VMware BETA programs

Update:  vExpert 2014.

• Devolutions

  One year license for remote desktop manager from Devolutions

• Pluralsight

  Pluralsight’s special gift to vExperts is one year of free, unlimited dev and IT training. That’s 1,400+ courses on the latest technologies including topics ranging from virtualization and security, to SQL Server and .NET. There are hundreds of topics to choose from in our library, and you’ll get access to all of it.

  Pluralsight one year subscription

• Veeam

  Veeam is giving away FREE 180-day NFR licenses for 2 sockets of Veeam® Backup Management Suite™ for VMware or Hyper-V for your home or work lab. Veeam Backup Management Suite is built from Veeam Backup & Replication™ to deliver the data protection, visibility and control you need for your VMware or Hyper-V environment.

  Veeam® Backup Management Suite™ NFR License

• Datacore

  Datacore SANsymphony-V is a software solution that runs on any x86-64 server. Runs in the data path between application servers and any makes/models of storage hardware. SANsymphony-V operates in 2 node configuration leaving no single point of failure.

  Datacore SANsymphony-V NFR License

• Starwind

  Starwind offers StarWind V8 for Hyper-V and VMware that you can use for your home or work lab! StarWind V8 delivers high-performance fault-tolerant SAN at a fraction of the cost and complexity associated with traditional SAN-based storage infrastructure and includes three stand-alone products that share a common engine, with efficiency proven by eight generations of software and hundreds of loyal users.

  Starwind V8 NFR License

• Solarwinds

  Solarwinds offers SolarWinds^® Virtualization Manager software. SolarWinds Virtualization Manager delivers integrated VMware and Microsoft Hyper-V capacity planning, performance monitoring, VM sprawl control, configuration management, and chargeback automation; all in one awesomely affordable product that’s easy to download, deploy, and use.

  Solarwinds Virtualization Manager NFR License

• Symantec

  Symantec offers NFR license of Symantec Backup Exec V-Ray Edition for vExperts. Symantec Backup Exec 2012 V-Ray Edition is designed to completely protect your VMware or Hyper-V virtual environments. With advanced host-based virtual protection and integrated deduplication, the V-Ray Edition gives you worry-free backup and recovery for virtual machines and virtualized applications. And Backup Exec gives you granular recovery of entire virtual machines, single files, Active Directory objects, Exchange emails, or SharePoint documents from a single-pass, host-level backup.

  Symantec Backup Exec V-Ray Edition NFR License

• Royal TS

  Efficiency is drastically improved with the ribbon-style interface. Context ribbon tabs will show you only commands for the active connection. Connection tabs enable you to easily and effortlessly access your sessions. In addition you can reorder tabs using drag and drop and also split tabs horizontally or vertically to show multiple tabs in groups side-by-side. The navigation panel as well as other panels can be rearranged, stacked or tabbed. You can also configure panels to hide automatically.

  Register for Royal TS NFR license

• HP – storage virtual VSA

  HP StoreVirtual VSA transforms your server’s internal or direct-attached storage into a fully-featured shared storage array without the cost and complexity associated with dedicated storage. StoreVirtual VSA is a virtual storage appliance optimized for VMware vSphere and Microsoft Hyper-V environments. It creates a virtual array within your application server and scales as storage needs evolve.

  vExpert VMware communities thread

• Tintri – vExpert t-shirt

  Tintri Zero Management Storage™ helps IT organizations eliminate storage complexity and minimize costs for their virtualized environments. Designed from the ground up for virtualization and cloud, Tintri addresses the mismatch between storage and virtualization with the industry’s first and leading VM-Aware Storage architecture.  With intelligence that understands virtual machines and keeps storage always optimized, Tintri VMstore improves performance by as much as 10x, makes virtualization predictable and enables higher IT productivity—all while slashing costs. Production-proven in hundreds of global enterprises, Tintri helps businesses and organizations worldwide maximize their virtualization investments. – See more at: http://www.tintri.com/company#sthash.yvCOfYjs.dpuf

  Register for Tintri T-shirt

• VMware vCHS free access for vExpert

  VMware vCloud® Hybrid Service™ is built on the trusted foundation of vSphere and is compatible with your on-premise data center. vCloud Hybrid Service allows you to extend your workloads into the cloud with ease. You can migrate existing virtual machines (VMs) from on-premises to the public cloud or start up new application VMs directly in the cloud. You can also easily port VMs and other business-critical workloads back and forth to the location of your choice, all with the secure and capable foundation of vSphere.
  

• • Program Information Post on Community Forums
  • Program Guide
  • Sign Up Form
  • Participant Calendar

Did I miss anything ? Feel free to comment below if you gained other benefits.