Practice-Lab, I don't need to practice...

I sometimes come across IT engineers who tell me that they don't need to practice IT (that is not a play on words by the way), which is utter nonsense. The truth is we cant remember everything that we have done in the past, we may need a refresher on how to do it again; like a "practice" run. Imagine a premiership footballer saying to the manager "I don't need to practice just let me play", it would not happen.

I think if you want to keep your skills sharp, learn new things or test "what if scenarios" you need to practice it (now that is a play on words). How you do this is up to you, whether it is in your test lab, home server or virtual environment get stuck in and get your hands dirty. This is why we built Practice-Labs so that all you need is an Internet connection to access real kit, the idea actually came to me when I was working with a guy called Winston Cheung. Winston came and asked me how to create an A record in DNS. The conversation went a little something like this:

Winston: "How do I actually create an A record?"
Ricky: "Jump on the sever or do it through the DNS admin console."
Winston: "I don't have the rights to do that."
Ricky: "OK, well build a server at home and play around with DNS."
Winston: "I don't have any spare kit." (and this was the days before virtualisation software was freely and easily accessible)
Ricky: **light bulb moment** "If I could give you access to a server online to play with would you use it."
Winston: "Defo"

Something like that; this is the story I tell and how I remember it anyway. Thanks Winston, you are the seed of Practice-Labs.


Ricky Doyle
http://www.practice-it.co.uk/
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