A New Road Ahead…

Where I’ve Been

Since January 1, 2012 I’ve been the principal consultant at Centino Systems. Jokingly, I refer to myself as The Centino of Systems. I learned a lot of lessons running my own business. Such as how to be a consultant and also how to scale the business even as the only employee/consultant. There’s been ups and downs, successes and failures and I couldn’t be more happy with how things went. The first phase of Centino Systems I learned how to build a consulting practice. Then in the second phase I learned how to scale Centino Systems by focusing on training. I blogged a bunch, produced 21 courses at Pluralsight, co-authored three books (with one more on the way), and numerous corporate and conference sessions and workshops focusing on Linux, SQL Server and of course Kubernetes.

What’s Next

Over the past few years I kept my eye on Pure Storage. Pure builds rocket fast storage systems that I’ve used as the backbone to many SQL Server systems that I’ve built and supported in my consulting practice. Using Pure solutions in my consulting practice exposed me to the technology and the people. Both of which are incredible.

One thing lead to another and starting in July, I am joining Pure Storage as a Principal Field Solution Architect focusing on SQL Server and emerging technologies like Azure Arc-enabled Data Services and deploying SQL Server on Kubernetes. I’m going get to work on bigger and harder challenges, helping customers and Pure Engineering build solutions to solve those challenges. I will remain active in the SQL and PowerShell communities talking about the technologies I enjoy working with. Further, I will continue to produce courses at Pluralsight again focusing on Azure, SQL, PowerShell and of course Kubernetes.

The People

In addition to the technology and challenges ahead, the next reason I want to join Pure it to work with a collection of very talented people. I get to work with of some the best people in our industry. I’ll be fortunate to work with SQL community leaders Argenis Fernandez, Chris Adkin, Marsha Pierce, Melody Zacharias among many others…I have been able to call you friends…and now co-workers. I’m really looking forward to the next phase of my career.