The final hurdle for OCS MCM rotation 4

OCS MCM rotation 4 is almost out the door. Almost - just the final qual lab to finish now. As I write the candidates are all laser focused on their laptops, oblivious to the world around them as they work through the final gruelling 6 hour lab. All this and they've already sat their last written exam this morning. Tough day. They have all worked incredibly hard over the past three weeks - I never ceased to be amazed by the effort and energy that they put in and how well they pull together as a team. Every evening they've been getting together into study groups to work through content from the day and to test each other to make sure they all succeed. A great group and a great group effort.

I've been pleased with the updates that we've made to the lab over the summer - some new multi pool and multi edge scenarios adding depth to the labs. Yet again the candidates have had nothing but praise for the lab - an environment that people just don't get to play around in every day. We have also understood just how far we can push the hardware - despite 8 cores and 32GB of RAM we've pretty much hit the limit at 33 virtual machines. I also purchased some new toys for the classroom this rotation in the shape of some quad core PCs which enable us to run HD video using the new Microsoft Cinema HD cameras. Very cool. We were also lucky enough to have the MS hardware team stop by and talk about this new device in some detail. As always its been great to have PMs involved in the sessions - they provide fantastic insight into why the product does what it does. We are hugely appreciative of their time.

We lost one candidate this rotation thanks to suspected flu - we'll make sure he gets the chance to come back and finish up. We won't let a little thing like illness get in the way of the Masters!

Here's a shot of rotation 4 right before the qual lab today looking calm and collected....

 

Well done to all of them for making it this far - its been a pleasure having them here.

Adrian.