Some of you may have seen the blog that William Lam posted last year titled the “VMUG Advantage Homelab Group Buy Discount”. Some of you may have not seen this. Basically, William worked with the VMUG on a discount for the VMUG Advantage Program. Why am I posting this? Well, I am pleased to announce that I have teamed up with William Lam and the VMUG to bring the VMUG Advantage Group Buy to the VMware Community. The great thing about this group buy is that the higher the number of people signing up, the higher the discount will be! But why should you sign up?
I get questions about career development a lot. How do I become an expert in vSAN or NSX for instance? How do I get to the next level? Well, there’s no shortcut, unfortunately. You have got to put in the work! What better way than building a lab, testing and playing with the products, taking training courses etc? That is where VMUG Advantage comes into play as it can provide access to all of those things, and/or at least lower the cost for these things. What is included?
- 365-day Evaluation Licenses
- Including vSphere, vCloud Foundation, vSAN, NSX, vRealize, Workstation, Horizon, and more!
- VMworld Discounts
- 20-35% discount on training
- Access to “test drive“
The VMUG Advantage Program comes at a cost of 200 USD. Last year the discount was 15%, which means the price ended up being 170 USD for a full year. If you have just one training course planned per year, the VMUG Advantage Program will have already paid for itself (20% discount on a 3000+ USD training course). Yes, I have been talking about USD so far, but of course, this offer is available to all our community members globally (Europe, APJ, Africa, Middle East, etc). Now, again, the discount percentage you get, will depend on the number of people signing up for this years promotion. The ranges look as follows:
| Quantity | Discount | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| 1-199 | 12% | $176 |
| 200-299 | 14% | $172 |
| 300+ | 15% | $170 |
If more than 1000 people sign up, VMUG HQ will also do a raffle and give away some cool VMUG Advantage “swag”.Can’t wait? Sign up for the discount code here, join the program!
Now before I forget, personally I think that the VMUG Advantage Program is a great program, and I feel that it is a great investment in your career. However, I also do realize that not everyone may be in a position where they can afford to invest 170-176 USD. I would highly encourage people to have a conversation with their employer, in many cases, employers are happy for employees to join these programs, if only because it allows them to benefit from the discounts on training courses, exams, and of course VMworld. Sign up for the discount code here, join the program!
<UPDATE: We have reached 250, so right now we are at 15% discount!>