Chris Mutchler - VCDX#257
Cloud & Data Center Architect
Twitter: @chrismutchler
LinkedIn: Chris Mutchler
The site is focused on discussing current technologies within the VMware and Cloud Native spaces. Most of the articles discuss various aspect of these technologies and how to operationalize these technologies in an Enterprise environment. I am extremely passionate about helping individuals increase their DevOps skill sets through automation, or Infrastructure-as-Code. My past endeavors included building out customized Hadoop clusters based on the workload needs within a VMware SDDC private cloud infrastructure. I have worked extensively with VMware Big Data Extensions since I was first exposed to it in a private session at the 2013 VMworld US conference. I have dedicated countless hours to implementing and enhancing the capabilities Big Data Extensions to include many of the new cloud native technologies and Hadoop-focused applications.
More recently, I have found myself focused on Cloud Native technologies, specifically Kubernetes and VMware Tanzu Kubernetes Grid. These technologies are transforming the way enterprise IT organizations deliver cloud capacities to their consumers. The transformation required of organizations transitioning from the old IT model move beyond just the technologies deployed and focus more on individuals within their organizations. Through my role at VMware, I have been given the ability to share the insights I have gained over the past 20 years to help customers adapt to these changes and find success within their organizations.
I am a VMware Certified Design Expert (VCDX-257) and VCDX Certification Panelist.
I am currently a Senior Staff Cloud Infrastructure Architect at VMware. My role currently allows me to take my operational experience and assist VMware’s largest global customers to deliver business outcomes that are aligned with the business goals, through architectural design reviews and operational guidance. As a subject matter expert in the full-stack of VMware products, including vSphere, vSAN, NSX and Tanzu, I am able to assist customers work through current challenges across the entire VMware and Public Cloud ecosystems.
I was previously (2015-2018) a Cloud Services Architect on the VMware internal private cloud team. The VMware private cloud is consumed by the VMware Education, Hands-on-Labs and various other engineering teams within VMware. The team is highly motivated to run the VMware products at an extremely large-scale to help address issues external customers could possibly see in their own environments.
Until May 2015 I was employed at Adobe in the Digital Marketing business unit, where I was a Cloud & Virtualization Engineer. At Adobe, the team specialized in designing Infrastructure-as-a-Service and Platform-as-a-Service offerings. Before Adobe, I managed a team of system administrators that grew a virtualized web-hosting business from a few hundred servers to over 10,000 servers.
My career has been focused entirely on enterprise operations and working in large scale environments. I have managed environments that have started out as a few hundred physical servers to thousands of physical servers and hundreds of thousands of virtual machines.
The challenges around running a large-scale enterprise private cloud has been very rewarding and I continue to enjoy learning each day how to implement robust architectures.