Over the years, I have planned to start capturing my thoughts and share my experiences.  I guess that I should admit that there have been several kickoff points but work, life, and well work has always seemed to get into the way.  I have the tendency to lose myself in the work and sometimes just forget the world around me.  I am starting an end of the year resolution to start sharing more and giving back to the community.

Let me first start this with a brief introduction.  My name is Jeremy Goodrum, and I am a father of two and devoted husband.  I have had a very crazy life when as a child, I lived on a sailboat in the Bahamas with my family.  This background earned me the nickname of the Pirate and one that has followed me for over a decade.  Almost ten years ago, I started into writing scripts after spending the first half of my career in Network and Server Administration.  It was around this time in 2006 that I joined then Network Appliance (NetApp) as a Technical Support Engineer.  I am truly thankful for that experience as I feel that I learned more in those 5 years in support then I ever could have dreamed.  After I had moved on from support, some of the newer guys would come to the bar to chat and ask how I transitioned.  I would always tell them that I would soak up every bit of information that I could.  The amazing opportunity to learn how different Fortune 500 companies work and manage their environments has been invaluable to me… even 7 years later.

My first experience with an automation platform came when I started alpha testing a new product from NetApp called Workflow Automation (WFA).  This was version 0.6 and it was still pretty rough around the edges but…. I feel in love with the idea.  I started looking at everything differently and how I would be able to automate everyday tasks.  I had been notorious for writing KSH and PowerShell scripts to parse logs and manage files.  This was something different.  I became excited and long before Code Defined Architecture or Infrastructure-as-Code became a thing, I was writing workflows that could be reused in any scenario and defined with best practices. Though it wasn’t part of my job, my manager liked what I was doing and encouraged me to continue.  He did caution me that we might get some push back, and since I was in Professional Services working directly with a major Telecom in the US, he suggested that if I post them then figure out a way to track the impact.  It was from this suggestion that the idea of my famous Pirate Packs formed.  Soon, I was releasing several new packages every few months.  I was in heaven and a monster was born.

From those humble beginnings in PS and my crazy idea to brand the code as Pirate Packs, I have traveled down an amazing road towards helping customers define their automation strategies.  I will admit that I am giddy when I get my hands on a new piece of tech.  I have done some amazing workflows for WFA by automating end-to-end automation for Oracle and SQL.  I built the first integration into vRO/vRA for NetApp. Heck, I even created a secure, multi-tenant storage management platform for AWS and Azure with NetApp.  The fun in all of this is building something beautiful and amazing.  Pushing the limits of the technology and when you get there, to figure out how to bolt another one in and keep going.

After all of this, I couldn’t stop and decided that I wanted to learn about other platforms.  For the last 2yrs, I have worked on CHEF projects and the concept of a Desired State Configuration (DSC) or the fancy buzzword Infrastructure-as-Code.  I have learned some amazing lessons and follies along the way.  I want to use this blog to share those with you and help you in your journey.