A week before I officially launched my online course How to Build a Personal Lab for Deploying SQL Server on Windows Server Failover Clusters, I asked this question on Twitter.

There were various responses, ranging from “very important” to “it helped my career“.

While reading one of the responses, I realized that I actually asked the wrong question. Because anybody can say “it is very important.”

Rather, I should have asked, “Do you have a personal lab environment?”

Human behavior tells us that we pay for the things that matter to us – be it with our time, our efforts or our resources. A good indicator of what matters most to somebody or to an organization is by looking at what they spend on.

So, if somebody says that they have a personal lab environment, its a good indicator that having one is important to their career growth and development. In my case, I’ve made a decision early on in my career to have a personal lab environment that I can use to hone my skills and test out concepts and assumptions.

If you are just starting out in your career as a SQL Server DBA or an IT professional, having a personal lab environment is very important. You’re making a huge mistake in your career if you don’t have one.

Below is one of the video lessons in my latest online course How to Build a Personal Lab for Deploying SQL Server on Windows Server Failover Clusters.

Want to learn how to build a personal lab for deploying SQL Server failover clustered instances and Availability Groups on Windows Server Failover Clusters? I just released an online course specifically on this very topic. Head on over to this site for more details.