TheSaffaGeek

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Author Archives: Gregg Robertson


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January 2012 London VMware Users Group (LONVMUG) and I’m presenting

Just a very quick posting to remind anyone around the south of England or who is willing to come to the south of England for it that the next London VMware User Group (LonVMUG) and the first one of 2012 is happening on Thursday the 26th of January. Also I’ll be presenting at it, the first time I’ve ever done a session at a VMUG. Mine will be around my VCP 5 Study Resources, my exam experiences and a few surprises Smile

If you haven’t registered I would highly recommend you do so ASAP as these are more often than not fully booked a week or two before the event. You can register for the event here and hopefully I’ll get to meet you there.

After the VMUG the standard vBeers will take place. If you’ve somehow never heard of vBeers before the below is just for you Smile.

vBeers

Is an informal get together of virtualisation enthusiasts and professionals to meet and discuss all things IT. It’s a great opportunity to network, learn and meet like minded people.

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The following is part quoted from Simon Seagrave’s Website :

Enjoy Talking Virtualization? Come & Socialise at vBeers!

vBeers[7]Fancy meeting up every month with other IT virtualization enthusiasts to socialise and chat over a cold beer, wine or soft-drink? If so, then vBeers is for you! This is a great opportunity to meet with other virtualization enthusiasts and professionals and enjoy discussing all things virtualization, and in fact anything else that comes up in conversation…

vBeers is open to everyone so whether you are a VMware vSphere, Microsoft Hyper-V, Citrix XenServer user/fan or none of the above it really doesn’t matter as “it’s all about the virtualization”.

The London vBeers meet-up is held at the Pavilion End Pub . Details and directions below:

When & Where

The London vBeers are held on the first Thursday of every month or after a VMUG meeting starting at 6pm in the ‘pavilion end pub’

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Location: The ‘pavilion end pub’, London

Address: 23 Watling Street Moorgate EC4M 9BR

Date: First Thursday of every month and after VMUG meetings

Time: 6:00pm

Map:

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Gregg


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VCP 5 Exam Experience.

This morning I sat my VCP 5 after around two and half weeks of studying. As I’m sure, you know I’m under NDA so I can’t mention too much but what I can I will in the hope that maybe it will help someone prepare better and thereby pass the exam.

I utilised a large amount of resources although due to my time constraints I did have to pick and choose which ones I felt would help me most. All the resources I used in my preparations are listed on my VCP 5 page here: https://thesaffageek.co.uk/vcp5/ .The ones i personally used from my list were:

  • The vSphere 5 Trainsignal videos by David M Davis and Elias Khnaser. I watched all the videos as i wanted to make sure i didn’t miss a low level setting that might come up in the exam and had a feeling the VCP 5 would require you to know each features inside out (which they do)
  • I know not helpful for people who haven’t attempted it but the preparations for my VCAP4-DCA really helped me as it gave me a really good base knowledge and loads of experience installing configuring and managing loads of the less utilised features. Off of this i would recommend getting loads of hands on lab time and make sure you install all the features and know how they work as the exam is based much more on experience rather than picking the new feature in vSphere 5 from a list. As mentioned in the BrownBag webinar I did last week with Damian Karlson you can create a lab from a few desktop computers or even use VMware workstation on your laptop and build a small lab that way.
  • The vSphere 5 Clustering Technical Deepdive by Frank Denneman and Duncan Epping helped me loads! the exam doesn’t expect you to know the deepest configurations but i read the whole book anyway and it really did help me better understand how it all works and even if you don’t want to read the whole thing then get the book and read the first few chapters of each of the sections so you know how it all works and what the new features are all about.
  • Andrea Mauro’s study guides were amazing and really helped me systematically make my way through the blueprint and flagged up points i possibly wasn’t very strong in so I could go research and learn more about it. All his guides are on his blog here: http://vinfrastructure.it/certifications-on-virtualization/vcp/vcp5/. They really are great
  • One of the resources I used to do the further research of features I wasn’t that strong in was Scott Lowe’s Mastering VMware vSphere 5 book. The book is great and gives amazing examples and explanations for all the features. Due to time constraints, i wasn’t able to read the whole book but it was really helpful for further studies and if I had more time I would have liked to have read the book.
  • The practice exams by Simon Long and the VMware mock exam were highly beneficial as they gave me a really good idea of the style of questions and helped flag up parts I was weak in and thereby needed to spend more time studying. As mentioned in the BrownBag, if you get 100% for the VMware mock exam you can’t retake it, which is insane but something to keep in mind.
  • I did mention it above but I feel it’s so important I want to mention it again. Get yourself a lab/build a lab on your laptop/desktop and practice everything as the exam is based on experience so the only way you are going to get a really good understanding of how everything works and all the features and settings is to get a number of practice hours in.

Well that’s all the things I used for the exam and I’m pleased to say I passed the examclip_image001. The score was a lot closer than I had hoped but seeing as the exam was so difficult I’m very pleased with my pass. Good luck to anyone sitting the exam soon.

Gregg


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The Next Chapter

Until you spread your wings, you‘ll have no idea how far you can fly.- anonymous

Almost five years ago, I made the decision to make a change or risk the chance of possibly never getting the opportunity to spread my wings. After having worked for my company in South Africa for just over three years and having grown from someone on a three month contract tasked with creating an IT equipment inventory of all the companies IT equipment to being a permanent employee and the Systems Administrator I handed in my notice and decided I wanted to move to the UK to try get a job with a large IT organisation and work with cutting edge technologies. I left my then girlfriend (now wife), parents, lifestyle and comfortable job back in South Africa and make a leap of faith that I could do it. I’m proud to say the risk paid off and five years down the line, I’m working for one of the biggest IT companies in the world, working with innovative technologies and have grown immensely from when I first came over to the UK both personally and professionally. However, the time has come yet again for me to push myself out of my comfort zone and try spread my wings even more. So as of the 12th of December, I will be joining Xtravirt as a Technical Consultant specialising in virtualisation and complimenting technologies. I have loved my time at EMC Consulting and owe so much of my growth to the people I have worked with at EMC and previously Conchango and the opportunities both have granted me to grow and keep advancing my knowledge.

My leaving is not down to disliking my role at EMC Consulting, as I’ve loved it immensely. I’ve felt that the next logical step in my career was to test and hone my skills and knowledge in the consulting arena as a consultant and Xtravirt have given me an amazing opportunity to learn and grow an immense amount while joining a very exciting team of people working on loads of very exciting projects.

If you haven’t heard of Xtravirt before, you should have and I have full confidence you will hear a lot more of us in the future. Some quick facts about Xtravirt:

  • Xtravirt were awarded VMware EMEA Consulting Partner of the Year at this year’s VMworld Europe.
  • Xtravirt are also very well known in the virtualisation community for their tools especially the Free vAlarm application which David M Davis of Trainsignal fame covered in one of his VMware vSphere Performance Monitoring Training lessons and the vLogView application which provides the ability to store, view and search ESX Server log files from multiple ESX Servers, without requiring individual login, navigation and manual file transfer to name but two.
  • Xtravirt is a knowledge-based company that delivers its expertise in virtualization online and in person. They have a reputation for astute leadership and expertise through their work with an impressive array of organisations. It is this real-world experience that drives the ability to provide the best professional consultancy services available

I’m still planning on blogging as much as possible and am actually very confident of being able to blog about a lot more technologies and a much broader base due to Xtravirt having no affinity to any specific vendor or technology. Although I don’t know about any Hyper-V postings clip_image001I’ll still be on twitter whenever I have the opportunity and will still try answer and help people on the VMware Communities and try attend the London VMUG’s and vBeers.

Gregg


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BrownBag VCP 5 Guest Appearance

A very quick posting to point out that the recording of my guest appearance as a panellist on Cody Bunch and Damian Karlson’s VCP 5 BrownBag is now available for viewing. The BrownBag was at 22:30 GMT to make sure loads of people in the US could join it but it wasn’t extremely late for me out of the UK. In the BrownBag I go through all the resources I’m using for my VCP 5 study preparations as mentioned in my VCP5 page.You can watch the video here:

ProfessionalVMware BrownBag – VCP5 from ProfessionalVMware on Vimeo.

I really enjoyed it and hopefully I can do a few more in the future. A big thanks to Cody and Damian for inviting me and hopefully the resources i covered will help people

Gregg


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VCP5 Study Resources Page

Just a very quick posting that I have finally created my VCP5 Study Resources Page with all the resources I’m planning to use in preparation for my VCP5 exam. As mentioned on the page I decided to create the page as it seems the VCAP5 exams aren’t going to be out before the grace period for people with the VCP4 accreditation not needing to take the What’s New course expires. So like with my VCAP4 and VCAP5 pages I’m planning on listing all the resources I plan to use and the great study resources I come across that may help other people of varying degrees of expertise prepare for the exam

Good luck to anyone preparing for any of the VMware exams soon, good luck! Also tell me how you’ve done or if you think I have missed an amazing resource by either leaving a comment or sending me a tweet on @greggrobertson5 on twitter

Gregg


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All Things VMworld Europe 2011 Day 3

 

Yet again (I’m not sure why I keep doing this) I decided to get up early and into the conference so i could get my Day 2 blog posting out and be awake enough for Paul Maritz’s keynote. A number of my fellow LonVMUG colleagues also made their way in early and we ended up watching the keynote from the food hall on the big screen. I decided against trying to cover the keynote and give my opinions as seeing as a large portion of it was customers talking about their experiences with VMware technology and then Paul’s chat was exactly what was said at VMworld US. Therefore, i would recommend watching the keynote here and if you missed Steve Herrod’s or Raghu Raghuram’s from Tuesday and Wednesday respectively then you can watch them.

After this, i made my way to my first and only session of the day (due to the time my flight left i only had enough time for the 11am slot unfortunately) which was VSP1708 VCDX Panel Defence Preparation. The session was everything i had hoped it would be and a little more. One of my future aims is to obtain my VCDX (looking like VCDX 5 due to time constraints now) and so I really wanted to attend the session to get a good idea of the process and what happens on the day and what the panelists are expecting and looking for. If you are going to watch one VMworld session video and are thinking of doing the VCDX one day then this has to be it as it scared me a little but also gave me an amazing idea of what i need to do and aim for now to be ready to build, defend and obtain my VCDX. The biggest tip I got out of it that john Arrasjid said was “start building your design now as the people who rush to build their designs are normally the people who fail and don’t fully understand their designs”

After the session, i had some lunch and hung out at the bloggers lounge and even almost got onto one of the vSoup videos but instead decided to watch from a far and was mentioned by the guys on it here. I still say if they don’t announce the band, it is only right to make wild speculations of who the band will beclip_image001.

After chatting to a number of the bloggers and vExpert’s I made my way to the airport and after my flight being delayed by two hours and the pilot having to abort our landing at the last second i made it back to the UK after a very successful and tiring VMworld Europe 2011.

Gregg


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All Things VMworld Europe 2011 Day 2

As I did with Day 1, for day 2 I also got in around half seven to be able to get into the labs as they opened. It seems that loads of other people had the exact same idea though as by half eight there was a waiting queue in the waiting area of over 50 people and loads more in the line outside. My first lab was all about deploying Nexus 1000V via Distributed Switches and was really really good and is one I would highly recommend. After I finished the lab, I walked straight back in and got myself on “Optimising Your Network Structure and Consolidating Network Management”. The lab mainly went through deploying standard virtual switch networking, then creating, and migrating it to distributed switching whilst keeping the hosts up and running as well as the virtual machines. I had learnt loads of this for my VCAP but it was really good practice in preparation for my retry of my VCAP-DCA.

Next, I wrote up my All Things VMworld Europe Day 1 posting in the bloggers lounge whilst chatting to a number of fellow bloggers and vExpert’s. Talking of Day 1 the recording of Steve Herrod, “CTO and Senior VP of R&D at VMware” and
Maurizio Carli (Senior Vice President and General Manager for EMEA ) keynote is now available here and Raghu Raghuram, (Senior VP and General Manager of Cloud Platforms for VMware) from Tuesdays morning session is up also.

After having some lunch I attended the session “Design, Deploy and Optimise SharePoint 2010 on vSphere”. The session was highly interesting as we do a number of SharePoint 2010 deployments on VMware at present and it was good to see and hear what they experienced and the best practices for it. Once the sessions go up on the VMworld, website i would recommend watching this one and going through the slidedeck before doing a SharePoint 2010 implementation in your own environment.

The VMworld TV summary of Day 2 has also gone up and covers all the news and even a super hero guest appearance.

After the session I wandered around the solutions exchange chatting to a few people and also chatted to a number of the guys I know operating the EMC booth and even got one of the guys a good contact for some work for EMC. The day slowly quieted down from here, as a number of people seemed to have left to go change and get ready for the VMworld Party. The party was help at the Carlsberg Museum in downtown Copenhagen and was set out in an eighties retro style of Blade runner meets Tron styling. The evening was a great one personally, as it let me meet even more of the top bloggers and VMware experts like the infamous Dave Hill and Chris Colotti of vCloud Director Fame to name but two.The night was a real success even though there was no big band like the US.

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For all the VMware people I met last night it was great meeting you all clip_image002

Gregg

 


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All Things VMworld Europe Day 1

 

Day 1 started early for me as I wanted to get in early and make sure I got a full day out. So I arrived at the Bella Centre at 7:45 and got myself onto a hands on lab as it opened.

The lab I took was Deploying ESXi hosts via auto deploy (not the official name but it’s close). The lab was really informative and I would highly recommend it as it gives you a great overview of how the whole auto deploy feature with vSphere 5 works and all the things you will need to do in your own environment to enable this feature. The lab also gave me a whole load of things to think about and start preparing to allow me implement auto deploy in my own environments.

After the lab I made my way to the bloggers lounge to start writing up my All Things VMworld Day 0 posting and also chat to some of the vExpert bloggers. There’s nothing like sitting at the same table as Mike Laverick,Scott Lowe and Jason Boche to name but three and as I’ve said before, this for me is one of the biggest features of VMworld.

After posting up my blog posting and having talked shop with a number of the fellow bloggers I made my way to my first session of the day "#CIM2363 Building an Enterprise Hybrid Cloud for Dummies: 10 Steps (or Less)" the session was good but obviously when they said for dummies they weren’t kidding as it was the real basics of vCloud director and what it’s all made up of. If you have never used vCloud Director and want to get a great overview of all the necessary components then I would highly recommend the session.

Then it was lunch where I spotted the MonsterVM character wandering around and sat and chatted with the PowerCLI guru’s of Alan Renouf, Luc Dekens and Jonathan Medd over lunch. I then wandered back to the bloggers lounge and chatted to a few fellow bloggers about each of the sessions we’ve all been to and what we thought of them. I then went to Alan and Luc’s session "VMware vSphere PowerCLI Best Practices" The session was really good and the guys gave some really great tips on things to look out for and best practices. I hope they’ll upload their slidedeck as they had so many best practices (42 in total) that they couldn’t cover them all.

Next was the General session keynote by Stephen Herrod. The keynote was largely a repeat of the VMworld US one with even the same jokes being said. After about an hour and half of the keynote the first new announcement was announced with it being vCenter Operations Management Suite 5.0. Fellow vExpert and London based Saffa Julian Wood has done a really great posting about the suite and what it does here. The next announcement was vFabric Application Management Suite. As I’ve yet to play with it thereby be able to give you a good description of all it’s features etc. the best resource I’ve found is the VMworld TV video all about it

The last announcement of the day was the VMware IT Business Management Suite. So far there doesn’t seem to be a large amount of information out about it apart from the VMware product page about it here. All three suites look amazing and it looks like VMware is definitely aiming to take some of the management market away from people such as vKernel and Xangati to name but two. One of the topics that was covered again like Vegas was Horizon Mobile and it looks like the deals are already growing as VMware have now signed deals with Verizon in the US and Telefonica in Europe to give their users the ability to have Horizon Mobile on their phones.

After the keynote was the welcoming party with drinks and some snacks  in the Solutions Exchange to allow everyone to speak to the exhibitors. I spoke to a few exhibitors but the two that had some interesting products which I may try out in my lab are vKernel’s vOperations Suite and Embotics’ V-Commander tool which I’m hoping will be helpful for creating baselines and understanding how things were provisioned and if I can claw back some resources in certain areas.

I was then fortunate enough to attend the VMware vExpert 2011 meeting and meet loads of the European based (and a few Americans and Australians who also flew over) vExperts and talk about all the announcements and how we saw the market going and what it will mean for our roles. We then all made our ways to our respective parties and that was the end of Day 1 at VMworld Europe 2011.

Gregg


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All Things VMworld Europe Day 0

Yet again, i have been fortunate enough to be given the opportunity to attend VMworld Europe. I really enjoyed my time last year and knowing what to expect made it even more exciting for me than last year. Monday is Partner day and they definitely made sure all the partners felt welcome with free drinks, loads of top sessions and awards at the end of the day. I only arrived around 2pm so i had already missed one or two of the sessions and felt like a number of the VMworld sessions that I can watch them off the VMworld website in my own time later on and i would rather meet up with fellow vExpert’s and some of the top bloggers and talk shop. One confirmation that I am a real nerd is that I got Duncan Epping and Frank Denneman to sign my copy of the VMware vSphere 5 Clustering technical deepdive book clip_image001. Day 0 went by very quickly and I had been invited to two of the parties. The official VMUG party hosted by the Danish VMUG and the vGeekfest run by EMC. Seeing as EMC were so nice in sending me yet again and because a number of the people I really wanted to meet and chat to were going to the vGeekfest party. After getting lost trying to find the party, I finally found it at the Apollo Brewery. A very nice location and the whole ground floor was allocated to us with home brewed beers and very nice food. The main thing I really enjoyed about the evening though was meeting loads of the top bloggers and social media experts so I’m sure I’m going to miss out a few but I was fortunate enough to meet Aaron Demp,Fred Nix (@nixfred) ,Delon Karrim (@delonk) , Travers Nicholas (@travern),Simon Rahilly (@noneonemany), Scott Lowe,Bas Raayman, Simon Long ( aka the SLOG) ,Steve Chambers, Craig Stewart and Simon Seagrave to name but a few clip_image002. The VMworld TV team have already posted a video of Day 0 although due to it not being the official first day they don’t cover very much of the technology yet but more the conference centre and what they are hoping to see and here

If you are at the conference and see some nerdy Saffa walking around stop me and say hi, as I’d love to meet as many people as possible

Gregg


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VCAP4-DCA Exam Experience

 

I decided to wait until I got my results before I wrote up this blog posting as I felt writing it up straight afterwards would mean I might miss something out and to see if VMware would give me credit for doing things in another way even though I made a mistake. Firstly, unfortunately I failed the exam by 23 points. This was mainly down to my making a major mistake very early in the exam and VMware not giving me the ability to fix it even though I knew how and the ability to know how to fix it is one of the exam objectives. I agree that if I make a mistake it’s only right that now I should use up my exam time fixing my mistake but not giving me the ability to fix it when in a real world situation you would have this ability isn’t very fair in my opinion.

Study Resources:

But enough of that as it’s done and seeing as I made that mistake so early on and still got so close is pretty pleasing in my opinion. For my studying of the exam, I decided I wanted to cover everything and so set myself a month and a half to study for the exam. I covered everything in my VCAP-DCA study notes list and went through both Sean Crookston and Ed Grigson’s study guides. I did all four of the VCAP courses trainsignal videos (these were honestly the best for it and taught me things so in depth that even questions in the exam that was very unusual I knew them because of these videos). I also researched anything I didn’t understand and as linked to in both Sean and Ed’s study guides I read up on loads of blogs, watched loads of YouTube videos from people like Eric Sloof (you can find these by just searching for Eric on YouTube as he has loads of them up) and watched a whole load of VMworld videos. Using all of these resources prepared me amazingly; the only thing I didn’t do enough of which was mainly to blame for me making my major mistake was not enough lab hours. I’ve got so used to question and answer exams that even though I obviously knew the exam would be 100% lab based I never realised the real importance of my practicing all the tasks twenty times until I knew it without even thinking as trust me the pdf’s give you nothing apart from the real basics and if you don’t know those you won’t pass the exam anyhow.

The Exam:

The exam was hard and is probably the hardest IT exam I have ever done (previously this title was held by my MCSE 2003 upgrade exams) but I think it is only right it is as tough as it is as it really does separate the men from the boys and really shows if you know your stuff or not. As mentioned by every one, time is extremely tight and you won’t finish all the questions unless you skip certain ones. One bit of advice I was given which was really helpful was, if you don’t know how to do the question mark it down on your notes and carry on as rather do the ones you can do rather than waste time on ones you are unsure of as I knew how to do some of the last questions just before time ran out whereas if I had sat and tried to work my through ones I didn’t know I probably wouldn’t have even had the time to see and do the ones I could.

Summary:

If you do all the study resources I’ve listed in my study resources page and put in loads of hours deploying and playing around with every single thing on the blueprint in your lab then you’ll pass it. I’ve already started rebuilding my lab to get in a serious number more hours of practice for my re-sitting of the exam and making sure that the stuff I was unsure of in the exam I now know 150%. Good luck for anyone writing

Gregg