Christopher Kusek had a unique opportunity presented to him in 2013, to take the leadership position responsible for theaterwide infrastructure operations for the war effort in Afghanistan. Leveraging his leadership skills and expertise in virtualization, storage, applications, and security, he's been able to provide enterprisequality service while operating in an environment that includes the real and regular challenges of heat, dust, rockets, and earthquakes.

He has over 20 years' experience in the industry, with virtualization experience running back to the pre1.0 days of VMware. He has shared his expertise with many far and wide through conferences, presentations, #CXIParty, and sponsoring or presenting at community events and outings whether it is focused on storage, VMworld, or cloud.

He is the author of VMware vSphere 5 Administration Instant Reference, Sybex, 2012, and VMware vSphere Performance: Designing CPU, Memory, Storage, and Networking for PerformanceIntensive Workloads, Sybex, 2014. He is a frequent contributor to VMware Communities' Podcasts and vBrownbag, and has been an active blogger for over a decade.

A proud VMware vExpert and huge supporter of the program and growth of the virtualization community, Christopher continues to find new ways to outreach and spread the joys of virtualization and the transformative properties it has on individuals and businesses alike. He was named an EMC Elect in 2013, 2014, and continues to contribute to the storage community, whether directly or indirectly, with analysis and regular review.

He continues to update his blog with useful stories of virtualization and storage and his adventures throughout the world, which currently include stories of his times in Afghanistan. You can read his blog at http://pkguild.com or more likely catch him on Twitter; his twitter handle is @cxi.

When he is not busy changing the world, one virtual machine at a time or Facetiming with his family on the other side of the world, he's trying to find awesome vegan food in the world at large or somewhat edible food for a vegan in a war zone.