No VCDX Design Is Perfect

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I wanted to quickly talk about something from my own personal VCDX experience that may help people a little bit that was in my head today.  There are very few IT Professionals that are NOT perfectionists.  It’s true, admit it, we are all very Type-A and with that comes a need to do everything as perfect as we possibly can.  True Type-A people take pride in the smallest of perfections.  That’s okay, it’s who you are, it’s who I am as well.  That being said I will say out loud right now to ease your personal pain that NO VCDX DESIGN IS PERFECT, this is because the only perfect design is the one that meets the customers requirements.  In fact, don’t tell yourself it has to be perfect.

Practice does not make perfect…..perfect practice makes perfect.  If you practice something 1000 times but you are practicing it wrong, they will always do it perfectly wrong.

Your VCDX Design Can Have Oddities

I will tell you as would my panelists, that my design was not perfect.  It had some odd things about it.  That did not make the design wrong though.  It met the customer’s requirements presented to me.  I was able to defend those design aspects mainly because the customer had some ODD requirements and constraints.  That also added to the list of risks by default of course.  The only perfect design is the one that meets all the requirements, constraints, and assumptions set forth by the customer.

Now, that being said, if you don’t understand the decision made that may indicate you were not really involved in the decisions.  It is also not a valid response to say “the customer said so”.  If you were truly involved in the design like I was, you would have knowledge and talking points to the discussions you directly had with the customer.  You can also explain how you maybe would have done it differently had the requirement not been so strange or odd.  Just be sure you are technically accurate in your reasoning why you’d do it differently.

Let’s face it, our customers don’t all have the same requirements, and you need to sometimes go outside any documented best practice to meet them.  This doe NOT make it a bad or incorrect design…..as long as you can defend your reasons with more that “That’s what the customer wanted”.  Talk about the discussions you had, why they felt they may not have wanted to follow your recommendations.  Give more details to the story to fill int he blanks.  It made for some really interesting conversation in my defense for sure!  It actually made it more fun of a process, I did not feel like I was defending anything.  Instead I felt like we were all having a spirited discussion about some interesting requirements I had to work with.

About Chris Colotti

Chris is active on the VMUG and event speaking circuit and is available for many events if you want to reach out and ask. Previously to this he spent close to a decade working for VMware as a Principal Architect. Previous to his nine plus years at VMware, Chris was a System Administrator that evolved his career into a data center architect. Chris spends a lot of time mentoring co-workers and friends on the benefits of personal growth and professional development. Chris is also amongst the first VMware Certified Design Experts (VCDX#37), and author of multiple white papers. In his spare time he helps his wife Julie run her promotional products as the accountant, book keeper, and IT Support. Chris also believes in both a healthy body and healthy mind, and has become heavily involved with fitness as a Diamond Team Beachbody Coach using P90X and other Beachbody Programs. Although Technology is his day job, Chris is passionate about fitness after losing 60 pounds himself in the last few years.

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