Get your lab ready for VMware's VMworld 2020, VMUG Advantage is offering TinkerTry readers 15% off throughout September, refer a friend!

Posted by Paul Braren on Sep 1 2020 in

Short URL for this article that's easy to share with your IT friends:
tinkertry.com/tinkertry15
with VMUG Advantage sign-up page here.

Backstory

It's been such an honor to enjoy an active readership of my various virtualization articles over these past 9+ years here at TinkerTry, with many new VMware vSphere 7 articles with videos for your enjoyment and education.

My passion for helping virtualization enthusiasts through blogging dates back to a lonely experience I had when attending VMworld many years ago. I knew like 5 people there in total, and VMUG Advantage wasn't yet a thing. The VMware trials for 60 days time-bomb were really frustrating for me, as it was quite the struggle to keep up with my on-call IT job, keep up my certifications, and raising my sons. I'd sometimes be faced with the time-consuming task of lab rebuilds when everybody else was sleeping, which wasn't exactly ideal.

As for illegitimate ways to side-step these issues, that's just not me, I'd much rather help the industry I'm in.

So there I was, eating my boxed lunch alone on the roof of Moscone, when I overheard two other conversations happening nearby. Both were lamenting the death of VMTN. Specifically, they were bummed about the loss of easy access to the best of VMware's vast library of code and longer license keys that was normally only available to licensed vSphere buyers. I joined in the conversation, introduced myself, and shared that I felt very much the same way. It was a shame so many potential customers were heading off to easier alternatives.

Wouldn't it be great if there was something like an affordable version of MSDN for VMware enthusiasts?

This is what we all agreed upon, there was definitely a need. But we had no means to resolve this need.

Gladly, soon enough it became a thing , it's called VMUG Advantage, and the code download portion is called EVALExperience.

So I was quite thankful when the good folks at VMUG Advantage recently reached out to me directly, to see if I had some ideas for helping spur renewed awareness of their program that has so many benefits well beyond access to VMware code & license keys for non-production workloads. Apparently VMworld has been a very important time of year for them to increase subscribers, but this year due to the pandemic, it's a virtual, online-only event. So a little creativity was in order.

We came up with a special way to show you my readers the love, discounting beyond the 10% coupon codes you may have seen before including here at TinkerTry. I believe they've only run a 15% discount for more than a day very rarely, or maybe even just once, so it's quite an honor to be asked to help get the word out that it's happening this month!

Refer a friend in IT

Having affordable access to learn-hands-on is especially important for those just starting out in IT, but working from home sure makes it harder for me to get to meet new folks like I regularly used when presenting at VMUGs. Consider letting your budding IT friends and colleagues know about this discount by sharing this article with them!

I know that working in a small organization with extremely limited budget usually means you have no way to login and gain access to authenticated-user-only My VMware's Download Products portal. Now you have another way, and you don't need to re-install, you can just renew your subscription then apply new keys, as seen in my walk-through video below.

Use TINKERTRY15 when placing your order in September of 2020 to get 15% off!

Subscribe to VMUG Advantage
Note that you'll be given 3 options:
- VMUG Member + Advantage Single User Subscription
- VMUG Member + Advantage Single User Subscription (2 years)
- VMUG Member + Advantage Single User Subscription (3 years)

and you'll realize the most savings with the 3 year option that I usually choose, when my personal budget allows. Yes, of course I subscribe too, to know exactly what vExperts, EVALExperience, and vSphere buyers experience when downloading and using VMware code. The non-production portions of my home lab regularly uses code that I've gotten from the EVALExperience portion of the VMUG Advantage program, up to 32 CPUs cores!

Note, VMUG Advantage is part of the VMUG organization, so using the same login email address for both is best. The VMUG organization is not owned by VMware.

Disclosure: VMUG Advantage has purchased ads at TinkerTry within the past 12 months using 3rd party BuySellAds ad placement services, and is using my banner ad space right now. That said, I did create this article and all VMUG Advantage videos independently, and VMUG Advantage had no say in their content.