Seeing as the VCAP5-DCA blueprint is 60-70% the same as the VCAP4, a large portion of the objectives are the same but objective 1.1 has a fair amount of differences due to VMFS 5 coming out, the standardisation of the esxcli command and a number of new features like Profile Based Storage. I think you can never know too much about storage and this one is one I’ve spent a bit more time on due to the new features and methods. Also i need to break old habits of using esxcfg. The below links are ones I’ve been using in my preparations for the beta exam, for some of the sections I’ve not put any links in as Sean Cookston’s,Ed Grigson’s and Kendrick Coleman’s Blueprint Breaksdowns for the VCAP4 covered them perfectly. This is more about covering the new things i need to learn after having done the VCAP4-DCA exam (twice to be exact)

Objective 1.1 – Implement and Manage Complex Storage Solutions

Knowledge

· Identify RAID levels

· Identify supported HBA types

· Identify virtual disk format types

Skills and Abilities

• Determine use cases for and configure VMware DirectPath I/O
• Determine requirements for and configure NPIV
• Determine appropriate RAID level for various Virtual Machine workloads
• Apply VMware storage best practices

http://www.vmware.com/pdf/Perf_Best_Practices_vSphere5.0.pdf pg 30

• Understand use cases for Raw Device Mapping
• Configure vCenter Server storage filters

http://pubs.vmware.com/vsphere-50/topic/com.vmware.ICbase/PDF/vsphere-esxi-vcenter-server-50-storage-guide.pdf pg126

• Understand and apply VMFS resignaturing

http://pubs.vmware.com/vsphere-50/topic/com.vmware.ICbase/PDF/vsphere-esxi-vcenter-server-50-storage-guide.pdf pg122-123

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1011387 Now using the esxcli command for ESXi 5

• Understand and apply LUN masking using PSA-related commands

http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1009449 <- look carefully at this one as I think there is a nice hint in it by the name of something

http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1017760

http://pubs.vmware.com/vsphere-50/index.jsp?topic=/com.vmware.vcli.examples.doc_50/cli_advanced_storage.8.2.html

http://pubs.vmware.com/vsphere-50/topic/com.vmware.ICbase/PDF/vsphere-esxi-vcenter-server-50-storage-guide.pdf pg 166-168

http://www.punchingclouds.com/?p=965

http://pubs.vmware.com/vsphere-50/index.jsp?topic=/com.vmware.vcli.ref.doc_50/esxcli_storage.html

• Analyze I/O workloads to determine storage performance requirements

Understanding vSphere Storage Management from Trainsignals VMware vSphere Performance Monitoring Training

• Identify and tag SSD devices

http://pubs.vmware.com/vsphere-50/topic/com.vmware.ICbase/PDF/vsphere-esxi-vcenter-server-50-storage-guide.pdf Pg 143 and 144 and 147

• Administer hardware acceleration for VAAI

http://pubs.vmware.com/vsphere-4-esxi-installable-vcenter/index.jsp?topic=/com.vmware.vsphere.esxi_server_config.doc_41/esx_server_config/managing_storage/c_hardware_acceleration.html

http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1021976

http://www.shogan.co.uk/?p=995 From my Xtravirt Colleague Sean Duffy

• Configure and administer profile-based storage

http://pubs.vmware.com/vsphere-50/topic/com.vmware.ICbase/PDF/vsphere-esxi-vcenter-server-50-storage-guide.pdf pg195

Policy Driven Storage lesson from VMware vSphere 5 Training course from Trainsignal

• Prepare storage for maintenance (mounting/un-mounting)

http://kb.vmware.com/kb/2004605 -Covers via vsphere client, command line and automated via PowerCLI

http://blog.mwpreston.net/vcp-5/vcp-5-objective-3-3-create-and-configure-vmfs-and-nfs-datastores/

• Upgrade VMware storage infrastructure

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=2003813

http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/techpaper/VMFS-5_Upgrade_Considerations.pdf

http://blog.mwpreston.net/vcp-5/vcp-5-objective-3-3-create-and-configure-vmfs-and-nfs-datastores/

Now to go and practice all the above things in your lab and make sure you know how to do all of them.

Gregg