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Hello, I am Bert Smets 👋

Welcome on my personal pages where I will add some techical blogs!

I am a Senior IT Engineer located in Belgium. In my day-to-day life I design, configure, implement and secure complex enterprise infrastructure. My focus is on the intersection of virtualization, next-generation firewalls, network segmentation and cloud.

🎯 Why this blog?

The IT landscape evolves at a breakneck pace. Throughout my daily work and projects, I frequently run into challenging troubleshooting scenarios, migration hurdles, and architectural edge cases.

I strongly believe in the “Learn in public” philosophy: the best way to solidify knowledge is by sharing it with the community.

On this blog, you will find:

  • Deep-Dives & Troubleshooting: Practical solutions to real-world problems (no shallow guides—just deep technical context).
  • SecOps & Hardening: Best practices for securing virtual environments, management interfaces, and network perimeters.
  • Automation & Infrastructure: Tips for managing complex environments more efficiently through scripts and automation.

🛠️ Expertise & Certifications

My daily IT toolkit includes:

Domain Technologies & Focus
Virtualization & Cloud VMware vSphere / ESXi, vCenter, VMware VCF, Enterprise HA Architecture
Network & Security Enterprise Firewalls (Fortinet FortiGate, Palo Alto Networks), VLANs, Micro-segmentation
Infrastructure Management Out-of-band management, zero-trust access, air-gapped environments

Certifications

  • VMware Certified Specialist - Cloud Foundation 2023 & 2024
  • VMWare Certified Professional - Data Center Virtualization 2019 & 2023
  • CompTIA Security+
  • ISC2 Certified in Cybersecurity
  • Fortinet Certified Associate Cybersecurity
  • Google - Professional Cloud Architect (2021)

🤝 Community & Contact

Are you a fellow IT Expert, colleague, or simply interested in network security and virtualization? I’d love to connect!

“Knowledge increases by sharing, not by saving.”