Who is this virBeaver and what is it up to with this blog? I would like to answer this question with my first post:
My name is Tim Maier, I am 29 years old and currently live in Stuttgart, Baden-Württemberg, Germany. I was born in Biberach an der Riss and due to the obvious association with the rodent I had nicknames all around the beaver throughout my life (beaver means Biber in German).

I studied business informatics at the DHBW Heidenheim from 2008 to 2011. It was a dual course of study, i.e. theory and practice in a three-month transition between university and company. In the first two years of this course I gained a good insight into the various technical departments of a medium-sized system integrator, before I decided in the third year to go deeper into the areas of virtualization and storage.
After my studies I was directly taken over by the system integrator and worked for the next five years as a system engineer in numerous internal and customer-related projects. Due to the size of the company, it was always necessary to consider the infrastructure projects as a whole and so the area of backup was quickly added to my area of responsibility. During this time, I also completed the first of many manufacturer certifications, including the VMware Certified Professional (VCP).

At the end of 2016 I decided to take on a new challenge and changed to a large German system integrator as a PreSales Consultant for IT infrastructure. For me it was exactly the right decision at that time to get a different view on business processes and projects. By focusing on IT design and architecture, it was necessary to expand my skills and broaden my horizons. Therefore it was only logical to aim for further certifications like VMware Certified Advanced Professional (VCAP).
After a little more than a year, however, I slowly realized that corporate structures and the rapidly changing IT world do not always fit together perfectly. Again and again, internal structures and specifications prevented me from doing what was important to me: finding a solution for my customers that fits their requirements and solves their problems.

For this reason I decided to take up a new (old) challenge with the beginning of 2019. I switched back to the company I had already been with during my studies. There I am now responsible for the overall support of our customers in the area of IT infrastructure as a Solution Architect Software-defined Datacenter (SDDC).

But enough about me. The idea of starting my own blog has been around for quite some time, but when I prepared for VCAP in the summer of 2018 and mostly used blogs and other online resources of the #vCommunity, the motivation increased. Due to the nicknames around the beaver, the corresponding name and domain was quickly found. The moment a corresponding logo and banner were finished (a huge thanks to my better half for that and for everything else!), it was clear: Now it’s only up to me.
My blog will mainly be about things from my daily work, i.e. topics around the SDDC with a focus on VMware technologies.
And now enjoy reading and maybe there’s something interesting for you in one of the posts.