How Instructors stay VxRail Sharp

Absolutely none you may be wondering what it takes for instructors to stay VxRail sharp, but I'll cover it just in case. At any given time, any number of the twenty plus worldwide VxRail instructors may Delivering a VxRail class. We reside in about every major geographic region except for Antarctica. Periodically, new courses are introduced, and existing courses are updated. So how do all these instructors stay sharp?

1. Learn from our students. Depending upon the VxRail course, we may have Dell Technology customers, partners, and internals all in one class. Students often bring-up questions and scenarios you won’t find documented. I’ll provide examples of some of these in future posts.  
2. Learn from instructors. Instructors tend to funnel VxRail questions to one another detailing curious scenarios. I’ll provide examples of some of these in future posts.  
3. Read new and updated publications. Many VxRail related documents follow a predictable cadence which tells us when we should be checking for updates. Below is a list of the usual suspects we check:
   7. [Release Based] Release Notes: Read the pre-pended section for a given VxRail software release family, i.e.: 7.0.x and 4.7.x.
   8. [Release Based] VxRail Support Matrix: Check the latest supported versions.
   9. [Quarterly] VxRail System Techbook: A holistic overview of VxRail.
   10. [Quarterly] VxRail Administration Guide: When checking for available procedures.
   11. [Release Based] VxRail API Guide: What’s new and deprecated.
   12. [Release Based] VxRail API Cookbook Guide: Looking for sample code.
   13. [Release Based] VxRail Event Code Reference: Getting more details about an error or looking at event code groupings for triage purposes.
   14. [Every 1-2 months] VxRail Network Planning Guide: Newly supported network configurations and settings.
4. We use SolVe Online not only for performing a specific procedure, but also for researching questions from class.
5. Hands-on practice.  We often practice installation, configuration, management, and reset operations. Each time we teach a class the instructor is provisioned a vApp just like the students. While students are in lab we are often testing diffferent scenairos. 
6. Industry news. We follow technical news sites to get a different perspective and identify industry trends.
7. Take classes. Yes, we take class too. Instructors are some of the worst students you could imagine. Taking supporting classes and even courses we already teach (to get a different perspective).
8. Get VxRail certifications. Being certified ourselves helps us answer questions about the certification process, build credibility, and set a baseline of expected knowledge. 
9. We setup our Dell EMC Support account to receive weekly VxRail updates. The latest Email I received described 30+ updated items: documents, software, and tools. For me, this weekly notification makes sense because VxRail is such a large part of my role:

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