In early 2012 a Reseller loaded Solarwinds Orion NPM and NTA as a demo to see if we would like it to replace our current monitoring environment.
About May 2012, I dug into the demo and built it up to replace What's Up Gold, Alterpoint and PRTG. It was so nice to get all monitoring under one company, Solarwinds.
I finally joined Thwack in June of 2012 and found a robust community with fun and captivating ways learn more about Solarwinds software and monitoring in general.
Today I broke over 100,000 points (Level 16).
I have done almost every mission for the last three years and learned a great deal along the way. Helping with Beta programs and Usability studies seemed like a natural thing to do because if I help Solarwinds make better software, it makes it easier to monitor what we need to watch. All of this added up on the points.
In December of 2013 I took and passed the Solarwinds Certified Professional (SCP) exam. I would recommend SCP for everyone that works with any monitoring software.
Today is also the 21st anniversary of my first professional certification. I finished my seventh test in less than 90 days to receive a Novell CNE on July 29th 1994. I felt that I was getting to the game a bit late but by the end of March 1995 I added Compaq ASE and Novell ECNE (later called Master CNE) certifications.
Now I am honored to be named a Thwack MVP by Solarwinds!
I truly have a blessed career.
Let me relate some advice that an old amateur radio mentor told me 25 years ago, "Show up everyday and do the best job to can. If you do, good things will happen to you."
Take care,
RT
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