TheSaffaGeek

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Category Archives: Certifications


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VCDX Defences Dates For 2014 Announced

 

Spongebob-Happy-spongebob-squarepants-154897_338_432As some people who know me may be aware I pushed for a UK VCDX defence this year as I along with numerous other people were looking to submit for the VCDX but couldn’t motivate and/or afford the costs to fly to the other defences released. Mark Brunstad was very helpful and put out a feedback form for people to submit their interest in a UK defence and sadly we fell a few people short of making it worth the expense and time for VMware. In all honesty it wasn’t a bad thing for me as with a very busy (but super exciting) work schedule and getting used to trying to study with a child under one in my house I wouldn’t have made a defence anyways.

But at VMworld Europe this year I rekindled the idea and Mark and John Arrasjid really liked it and again voting was opened. I knew for a fact there were at least 5-6 people who were interested to submit for it from the UK and numerous more in western Europe. Now I’m certainly not saying I had anything to do with it but it seems there were so many people interested that there are not one but TWO defences going to happen in Frimley UK next year. I’m hoping I wont need a second defence date but it is really great to have the option. The other dates are below which were released by Mark on the VMware Communities here.

February 10-14 2014: VMware Partner Exchange (PEX) – San Francisco CA US

VCDX Candidates wishing to defend at PEX 2014 may register by following this link:

http://mylearn.vmware.com/mgrSurvey/feedback.cfm?survey=49517

Applications for the PEX San Francisco 2014 VCDX Design Defense will be due on or before Midnight PST (UTC -8:00)  Friday December 20,  2013

April 2014:

April 7-9 2014 Frimley UK

April 7-9 2014 Sydney AU

Applications for April 2014 Frimley and Sydney VCDX Design Defense will be due on or before Midnight PDT (UTC -8:00) Friday 02 February 2014

July 2014:

July 7-9 2014 Cambridge MA US

July 7-9 2014 Frankfurt DE

July 7-9 2014 Singapore SG

Applications for July 2014 Cambridge, Frankfurt, and Singapore VCDX Design Defense will be due on or before Midnight PDT (UTC -8:00) Friday 09 May 2014

October 2014:

October 6-8 2014 Palo Alto CA USA                                   

October 6-8 2014 Frimley UK

October 6-8 2014 Kuala Lumpur MY

Applications for October 2014 Palo Alto, Frimley, and Kuala Lumpur VCDX Design Defense will be due on or before Midnight PDT (UTC -8:00) Friday 08 August 2014.

Good luck to all of those looking to submit next year and hopefully I’ll be posting this post next year this time as a VCDX Open-mouthed smile

Gregg


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VCAP-CID Objective 1.3 – Determine Capacity Requirements for a Conceptual Design

 

Skills and Abilities

Determine how storage and network topologies affect capacity requirements for a vCloud conceptual design.

  • This in my opinion can be taken in a few ways so I welcome any feedback on if you think I have looked at this the wrong way but the way I am looking at this is the way it is all connected to differing portions of the environment obviously impacts the speeds that can be achieved and thereby the capacity of virtual machines that can be run over a certain link for networking or even over a specific NIC/Switch/HBA/Cable. So to use the networking topology as the example:
    • Network: For networking there are a number of constraints that can affect the capacity requirements for a vCloud conceptual design. To give an example I will use one that I am seeing a lot recently which is a 10Gb NIC connection from each blade/rack server in your proposed vCloud environment. For this 10Gb link you need to carve it up (either via native hardware methods or via NIOC) for all the varying types of traffic that needs to go over the link for your vCloud environment. Now if your network topology is inside an existing datacentre then you may have to connect to an existing top of rack switch which may only have the capability to provide two 10Gb connections per switch and the price for 2 new 10Gb switches (to obviously provide resiliency) won’t fit in the budget. So for the conceptual design if you need 10Gb of network traffic leaving each host to supply network requirements of the virtual machines on the host then you will need to either:
      • Change the hosts to have a sufficient number of NICs to provide this or
      • Go down an infiniband route or
      • Explain to the customer due to the constraint of having to use existing switches it is not possible to provide the required network bandwidth for each host so they will need to buy more hosts so that the virtual machines on each host get their required bandwidth.
    • This way of thinking applies exactly the same for storage and if you are running converged networking then it can be almost exactly the same.

Describe VMware vCloud Director and VMware vSphere functionality and limitations related to capacity.

  • This in my opinion is all about vSphere and vCloud maximums which is always something you have to keep in mind when doing a conceptual design as for example the linked clone chain length limit is 30 and then after this a new shadow copy is created which then utilises more space on a new datastore and affects storage capacity. Actually knowing these functionality metrics and limitations is something I have been learning from going through the vCAT documentation. I did think about listing all of them but there are so many and what they could impact is so vast I think this is something where you need to know the limitations and functional capabilities of the two products and then think of it in the holistic manner of the whole design and how it impacts the conceptual design. Now remember the conceptual design is the “napkin” style design and so product names do not feature but you need to understand at a certain level what is and is not possible from the products.
  • As I mentioned in my previous point if you feel I am totally wrong then please do tell me in a friendly manner as I am certainly not perfect and am doing this to learn.

Given current and future customer capacity requirements, determine impact to the conceptual design.

  • During your design workshops you will work out and record what the customer’s current and future capacity requirements are and then will need to plan for that 20% year on year growth they require to give an example. So if their current requirements can be met with eight hosts to be very simplistic then you will need to ensure you have sufficient capacity not just in compute but also storage, networking, cooling, power and switching.

Given a customer datacenter topology, determine impact to the conceptual design.

  • For this I think I covered it in the first section but you now need to look at the whole topology with storage, networking, power, rack space, distances between components, distances between datacentres, cooling and weight limitations to name a few off my head that may impact your conceptual design. So say for cooling you can only put in a certain amount of hardware into each rack which then impacts your conceptual design of how many blades can fit into the datacentre/server room.

Given cloud capacity needs, constraints, and future growth potential, create an appropriate high-level topology.

  • This is the point where you have done your design workshop and are now looking to do a high-level design of the environment that meets all the customers’ needs and shows to them you understand what they require and have planned for the future. The below diagram is a very basic version of what you would provide based on networking to show you understand their needs :

    image


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    VCDX Spotlight: Jonathan Kohler

    Name: Jon Kohler

    Twitter Handle:  @JonKohler

    Blog URL: vdoogle.wordpress.com

    Current Employer : MSN Communications

    VCDX #: 116

    How did you get into using VMware?

    I started using VMware ESX 3.x and Workstation in late 2008. The more I started to use VMware’s products, both personally and professionally, the more impressed I was with their functionality and direction. I worked at a VMware partner at the time vSphere 4.0 came out and deployed it internally for their production environment and externally for customers as part of PS engagements. I decided then that VMware virtualization is where I wanted to maintain my professional focus and haven’t let up since.

    What made you decide to do the VCDX?

    I decided to go after the VCDX after I changed jobs a few years ago. I moved from Vermont to Colorado after finding a VMware Infrastructure engineering job at a large national health system on Twitter. The person who got me in the door was Nate Raper, VCDX 85, though not a VCDX at the time. I had both of my VCAP4’s at the time, and hadn’t really given much thought to the VCDX. That changed when I saw what Nate brought me in to work on. The environment at this company was massive in both complexity and size. To give you an idea of the level of VMware engineering at this particular establishment, the enterprise both Nate and I worked in has produced 3 VCDX’s (Tom Ralph, Nate, and Myself). That scale, as well as Nate’s encouragement, is what got me hooked and on the right path.

    How long did it take you to complete the whole VCDX journey?

    I started with the VCP4 in January 2009 and finished up with the VCDX5-DCV in August 2013, so holistically the better part of five years. In terms of hours, I probably spent over 600 hours over the last year working on everything associated with the VCDX deliverables. This was over the course of three application attempts and one defense attempt.

    What advice would you give to people thinking of pursuing the VCDX accreditation?

    Approach all of your work like it was going to be compared against the VCDX blueprint, this will get you in the right mind set to succeed on whatever design you choose. I know the blueprint can be kind of vague, but try to use it as a checklist when you think you are done with a project, and literally go down the list and point out where you have those items in your design. Also, get and read the VCDX boot camp book.

    Have confidence in yourself and give yourself a LOT of time. No matter how good of an engineer or architect you are, trying to rush to put together a world class deliverable simply doesn’t work, which I learned the hard way when I didn’t allow myself enough time for proper decompression, peer review, etc and failed the application stage twice.

    If you get invited to defend, no matter how confident you feel, get SEVERAL different peer reviews on your presentation, practice frequently, and KNOW YOUR DESIGN INSIDE AND OUT. This means know why you made choices (very specifically), what you didn’t choose to implement (alternative design choices), and why you did what you did.

    Past that, keep your hands in the dirt, as you will need to be sharp for the troubleshooting and design sections. I got lucky on my troubleshooting piece, as it was a problem I had actually dealt with in the real world before, which made me much more confident when engaging the panellists.

    If you could do the whole VCDX journey again what would you do differently?

    I would have given myself much more time the first go around, so that I didn’t have to stress over this for the past year. Smile

    Life after the VCDX?  How did your company respond?  Was it worth it

    Life has been much less stressful for sure. My employer MSN Communications and manager Colin were supportive throughout the entire journey, and have responded well. No change in positions or anything, but as fate would have it, Nate and I left our healthcare IT jobs last year when we got outsourced, and both went to MSN. He just left MSN to go to VMware’s Global CoE, so I am going to step up and fill some of that gap with our customers, which I don’t think I could have done without going through the VCDX process. Lastly, I do think this journey was worth it and I would do it again in a heartbeat.


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    VCDX Spotlight: Brian Suhr

    Name: Brian Suhr

    Twitter Handle: bsuhr

    Blog URL: www.virtualizetips.com

    Current : Ahead

    VCDX #: 118

    How did you get into using VMware?

    I was working for a large enterprise at the time and they had already begun to deploy some workloads into VMware 2.5. I was looking for more ways to expand my skills and learn new things. So I kept asking my manager to let me start working with this new virtualization stuff. This got me hooked on VMware early and fast, soon came amazing things like vMotion that blew my mind.

    This was really a pivotal point in my technology career that set me on a course that led me to the point I’m at today. Without getting that early opportunity I would have not likely been introduced to VMware for several years.

    What made you decide to do the VCDX?

    I remember back about three years ago, thinking that I was pretty bored at the time. I was looking for a new challenge and I would need to make a career move. So I took my time and looked for a company that would provide me with the support and environment that would allow me to earn the skills necessary for me to make a VCDX attempt. This was the early days of VCDX and I was impressed with the level of people that were already certified then.

    How long did it take you to complete the whole VCDX journey?

    If you count the point from which I made the job change about 2.5 years. But for me it was about 18 months ago. That was when I began taking my VCAP5 exams and selected which one of my projects I would use for the submission. Anything before that point was preparation that I needed to hone my consulting and architecture skills.

    What advice would you give to people thinking of pursuing the VCDX accreditation?

    I would say that while its possible to pursue VCDX by yourself it’s much easier if you have a support system. This could be co-workers or other technology people. You can then use these people for technical reviews and practice answering their questions. Even if you are a consultant and work with customers daily and are good at presenting, the VCDX defense session is at another level and you will want to be ready for it.

    If you could do the whole VCDX journey again what would you do differently?

    I am pretty proud of my VCDX journey, don’t think that there is anything that I would change about it. Well I would have loved to pass on my first attempt. I should have taken a few more vacation days before each defense attempt to feel more prepared.

    Life after the VCDX?  How did your company respond?  Was it worth it

    It’s only been a short time since I was notified of my success. But my company values the VCDX program very highly and offers unprecedented support to those who wish to pursue.

    For me it was absolutely worth it. To make the VCDX attempt it required me to push my technical and soft skills to a much higher level. So whether I was successful or not that was worth it for me. Granted being awarded the certification brings with it a lot of recognition both from the community and customers. But it was really about challenging myself and that was accomplished.


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    VCDX Spotlight: Tim Antonowicz

    Name: Tim Antonowicz

    Twitter Handle: @timantz

    Blog URL: whiteboardninja.wordpress.com

    Current Employer: Mosaic Technology

    VCDX #: 112

     

    How did you get into using VMware? In early 2004, I was a SysAdmin at Bowdoin College in Maine.  Running out of datacenter footprint, we consolidated our servers with ESX 2.01 retiring 50 physical servers and leaving us 80% virtualized.  After Katrina in 2005, we worked with LMU in Los Angeles to co-host each other’s VMs for DR purposes. This project was one of the inspirations behind the development of VMware’s SRM solution.

     

    What made you decide to do the VCDX? After moving into the Partner space, I began seeing and designing for several different customer environments. The VCDX program not only recognized those at the pinnacle of our profession but also advocated those skills and abilities needed to become the best at what we do. If I wanted to become a successful Architect, I should aspire to be a VCDX.

     

    How long did it take you to complete the whole VCDX journey? Overall, the process was almost 3 years in length. I spent over a year getting my VCAPs and had a few attempts as a design, but nothing serious until about a year ago. My first design attempt didn’t make the deadline for submission, and I had to wait for PEX13 for my first official submission and defense invitation. While unsuccessful at PEX, I learned from my mistakes there and applied my experiences to my successful defense at VMworld13.

     

     

    What advice would you give to people thinking of pursuing the VCDX accreditation? Don’t attempt this unless you really want it. The VCDX process is not something you can go into half-committed. It will tax and test you all along the way, both technically and mentally. It is not for the faint hearted. With that in mind, if the VCDX is something that you want to do, and you are committed to becoming the very best you can be in your field, go for it. It is a journey that pays back 1000 fold what you put into it. By going through the VCDX, I am a better Architect than I was before. I’ve changed the way I approach each project, and my company, my customers, and I are better off as a result of my work and dedication. Aside from the actual certification, I am better at my job today for just going through the process. Holding the VCDX after it all is just the validation that I was on the right track all along.

    If you could do the whole VCDX journey again what would you do differently? Looking back, I wouldn’t have waited so long between getting my VCAPs and actually working on a design for submission. I should have started the process a year earlier than I did. Also, I only did one ‘Mock Defense’ for my first attempt. To all prospective VCDX applicants: “Mock, Mock, Mock!” Realtime, live interaction can do nothing but help you with your preparation for your defense.

     

    Life after the VCDX?  How did your company respond?  Was it worth it? Since it has only been a few days since I received “my number”, nothing has changed for me professionally at this time. Personally… For the first time in over a year, I haven’t woken to thoughts of my design, potential flaws, and defense preparation scenarios running through my mind. It’s nice to hear the birds outside my window.


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    VCDX Spotlight: Kenny Garreau

    Name: Kenny Garreau

    Twitter Handle: @kennega

    Blog URL: http://dudewheresmycloud.com

    Current Employer : Lumenate

    VCDX #: 115

    How did you get into using VMware?

    My first exposure to VMware came when I was starting as a System Admin for a financial services company. I invested a lot of personal time learning the technology, and was eventually given the task of re-architecting our virtual infrastructure. This was a formative time for learning and putting into practice VMware, networking and storage design skills before I dove into the consulting arena.

    What made you decide to do the VCDX?

    I spent a couple of years consulting before I felt I had enough customer presentation and design experience to suitably defend a design. The design I submitted for my VCDX application was my first design at my second consulting job, and I remember thinking “Wow, this would be a great candidate for a VCDX defense.” It turns out that VMware and the panellists agreed.

    How long did it take you to complete the whole VCDX journey?

    I began by completing my VCAP-DCD and VCAP-DCA at the end of October 2012. I submitted my initial design in early December of 2012 to defend at PEX. I didn’t pass, so I took a couple of months off to recharge. I went back at it for VMworld 2013, and passed. So about 10 months.

    What advice would you give to people thinking of pursuing the VCDX accreditation?

    Understand it’s not about the size or the complexity of the design you’re submitting to defend. It’s about your skills in designing around customer requirements and constraints, and mitigating risk to the customer and the project. Know your design, and recognize that if you include something in your design, justify it and know it. Finally, make sure your significant other knows and understands the journey you’re about to undertake. You’ll need their support, but it’s equally important to make time for them as well.

    If you could do the whole VCDX journey again what would you do differently?

    I would engage my fellow applicants earlier – they will be much more critical of your design going through the process than someone outside of the VCDX program. I’d try to complete my design a couple of weeks ahead of the deadline and run through a mock defense. It will help you identify weak points in your presentation, both technically and grammatically. You can then improve your design for its final submission and review by the panel.

    Life after the VCDX?  How did your company respond?  Was it worth it?

    Spend some time decompressing; you are going to need it! I had an overwhelming response from my co-workers, but the community response was what inspired me. Those who have been through the program realize the time and effort that goes into the entire process. To be counted among many of the very best names in datacenter and virtualization design is a humbling honour.


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    VCDX Spotlight: Travis Wood

    Name: Travis Wood

    Twitter Handle: vTravWood

    Current Employer: VMware

    VCDX #: 97

     

    How did you get into using VMware?
    I’d seen a demo of VMware and like many people I was blown away by the concept of VMotion. The company I was working for won a deal to build a VMware environment and P2V about 100 servers into it, so I positioned myself to get selected for the project. It was intense working with such a new technology, stuff broke and we had to work through a lot of problems. P2V’s were far more complex then as Converter didn’t exist yet so we spent many late nights swapping NICs and disk controllers around trying to get the right combinations of hardware that’d work with P2V Assistant or using Ghost. But the experience was invaluable, at the time P2V skills were rare so this opened up many opportunities for me.

     

     

    What made you decide to do the VCDX?

    I remember where I was when I first heard of VCDX. It was described as the pinnacle of VMware certification and extremely difficult to obtain. The concept of defending before a panel sounded intimating but challenging at the same time, I knew immediately this was something I’d have to do! At the time I was working in a projects team, building VMware environments with little design experience so I knew I’d have to start working my way towards a design role.

     

     

    How long did it take you to complete the whole VCDX journey?
    It depends when you measure it from. When I received my VCDX certification in 2012 I’d been working in IT for about 10 years, and each step along the whole process eventually got me here. I first heard about the certification in 2008 and decided I would go for it but the journey really started when I joined VMware in 2009, so it took about 3 years.

     

     

    What advice would you give to people thinking of pursuing the VCDX accreditation?

    Start with your end goal, VCDX and then figure out where on the scale you are now. Then create a plan to get there through a series of small, iterative but measurable steps. Figure out what you need to do and how you will do it. Secondly when it comes to submitting your design, read the blueprint. It is quite specific one what you need to cover.

     

     

    If you could do the whole VCDX journey again what would you do differently?

    I was quite happy with my journey, really the only thing I would’ve changed is tried to get more of the documentation done during the actual project that I used in my submission. When I decided to submit I reviewed my design against the blueprint and noticed there were areas I needed to cover but weren’t a part of this design, so that meant a bit of extra work ensuring I’d covered off everything.

    Life after the VCDX?  How did your company respond?  Was it worth it

    Before VCDX I was in the VMware Professional Services team for Australia & New Zealand which gave me the necessary experience to get the certification. My VCDX certification got me noticed by the right people in the company to get tapped on the shoulder to join the Global Professional Services Engineering team as a Solution Architect. Now I am responsible for creating the services that VMware Professional Services offer as well as being an escalation point for the field and interacting with our product teams. I am also now a VCDX panellist which I find very interesting seeing how people approach design problems.


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    VCAP-CID Objective 1.2 – Identify and Categorize Business Requirements

    Knowledge

     Identify discovery questions for a conceptual design (number of users, number of VMs, capacity, etc.)

    • These questions are ones you are going to ask during the design workshop for the design/project. For the workshop you need to make sure you have the applicable project participants/stakeholders who can join the workshops (depends if you want one big one where people come and go at certain points or multiple ones where you speak to each business unit/ team). For the stakeholder meetings/design workshops I personally like to try bring in the following people, this does vary depending on the project and what has been chosen but 9/10 times these are the people you want to speak to:
        • Virtualisation administrators (if applicable. If not already present then future administrators of the solution)
        • Server Hardware Administrators
        • Backup Administrators
        • Storage Administrators
        • Desktop/OS Administrators
        • Network Administrators
        • Application Administrators (these are very important as their applications may have very specific requirements)
        • Security Officer
        • Project Sponsors
        • End users/ Help desk personnel (this I find is helpful to find out what are the current support desk tickets/problems the company are facing and if these will impact the project in any way. Also these discussions are easy to have in the hallway/over a coffee but have alerted me to unknown risks that would have severely impacted the design and delivery)

    vcap

    Identify the effect of product architecture, capabilities, and constraints on a conceptual design.

    • I may be looking at this the wrong way but I think this is actually around how specific products architecture, capabilities and constraints isn’t applicable in a conceptual design as for a conceptual design you are only creating a “napkin” design diagram of how the whole environment is going to be delivered.

    Skills and Abilities

    Relate business and technical requirements to a conceptual design.

    • From one of the VMware service delivery kits available to VMware partners they give a great breakdown of what requirements are and what business and technical requirements are:
      • Requirement – Documented statement that depicts the requisite attributes, characteristics, or qualities of the system
      • Business requirements – Describes what must be achieved for the system to provide value
        • System must provide self-service capability
        • System must provide x% availability
        • System must provide optimal scalability and elasticity
      • Technical requirements – Describes the properties of a system which allow it to fulfill the business requirements
        • System requires a Web portal where users can log in securely and deploy virtual machines based on defined policies
        • System must have fully redundant components throughout entire stack (host, network, storage)
        • System leverages virtualization technology and associated features
    • As mentioned these requirements will be gleamed from the Design Workshops/Stakeholder meetings and then put into the conceptual design. This is where you would work out if the customer requires a private, hybrid, public or even community cloud deployment. For example if the customer requires certain data to remain in a country for regulatory reasons then in the conceptual design you know compute resources, networking and connectivity between that country and the primary site need to be available. The speeds, number of hosts, make of hosts and amount of memory and vCPU are not in the conceptual design as this is the “napkin” design just covering the concept of how it will all work out and may actually change once you get to the logical and physical designs.
    Number Requirement
    R001 Virtualise the existing 6000 UK servers as virtual machines, with no degradation in performance when compared to current physical workloads
    R002 To provide an infrastructure that can provide 99.7% availability or better
    R003 The overall anticipated cost of ownership should be reduced after deployment
    R004 Users to experience as close to zero performance impact when migrating from the physical infrastructure to the virtual infrastructure
    R005 Design must maintain simplicity where possible to allow existing operations teams to manage the new environments
    R006 Granular access control rights must be implemented throughout the infrastructure to ensure the highest levels of security
    R007 Design should be resilient and provide the highest levels of availability where possible whilst keeping costs to a minimum
    R008 The design must incorporate DR and BC practices to ensure no loss of data is achieved
    R009 Management components must secured with the highest level of security
    R010 Design must take into account VMware best practices for all components in the design as well as vendor best practices where applicable
    • For Technical Requirements a great way of doing it is to break them down into sections like:
      • Virtual Datacentre Requirements – eg: Allocation model Virtual Datacenters reserves 75% of CPU and memory
      • Availability Requirements – eg: VMware vCloud Director (clustering, load balancing)
      • Network Requirements – eg: Organizations have the ability to provision vApp networks
      • Storage Requirements – eg: Different tiers of storage resources must be available to the customer (Tier 1 = Gold, Tier 2 = Silver, Tier 3 = Bronze)
      • Catalogue Requirements – eg: Catalog items are stored on a dedicated virtual datacenter and dedicated storage
      • SLA Requirements – eg: SLA Requirement #1 – Networking 100%
      • Security Requirements – eg: Organizations are isolated from each other
      • Management Requirements – eg: Only technical staff uses remote console access
      • Metering Requirements – eg: Metering solution must monitor vApp power states for PAYG
      • Compliance Requirements– eg: Solution must comply with PCI standards
      • Tenant Requirements – eg: Customer requires the ability to fence off vApp deployments
    • To make sure you are doing the design in a VCDX-like manner which should push you to do it at a very high level, don’t forget to refine the customer-specific technical requirements and validate that they are specific, measurable, accurate, realistic, and testable (SMART).

    Gather customer inventory data.

    • This is what is going to be on the new vCloud system whether it is existing workloads or new workloads. A good way of getting this if the customer allows it is to run a VMware Capacity Planner collection on the existing workloads that are going to be migrated in so you know sizes, I/O and current state analysis values. The Capacity Planner can only be run by VMware partners so if this isn’t possible for you then manual collection and recording is going to be required. Another method is via the VMware vCloud Planner which is another tool only available to VMware Partners so maybe getting a VMware partner in to do this for you prior to the project running would be a good idea
    • Also knowing what the customer already has can help you understand possible future constraints for example that all their current servers are IBM and so this is likely to be the server platform for this design.
    • There may also be a requirement to use existing legacy physical kit already present in the datacentre which needs to be recorded and fully understood so that the risks and constraints of using this infrastructure are fully understood. For example if you are using legacy network switches which can’t do stretched VLANs this will impact your design substantially if you have two sites and a requirement for the Management cluster to be failed over/migrated in the event of a disaster.

    Determine customer business goals.

    • This is plainly what is the customer looking to gain from the deployment of this solution? At the end of the project what do they hope to achieve? These are sometimes not as clear as you may hope as people have different ideas of what they want the solution to achieve so as the architect you will need to take all these business requirements, set expectations if they are unrealistic due to varying reasons like cost or pre-selected hardware and then define them and get sign off from the customer that they agree to these before any additional work is done. This is very important as if these aren’t defined and agreed to by the customer then scope creep can happen which could cause the project to fail.

    Identify requirements, constraints, risks, and assumptions.

    • I’m not going to go into great depth here as I think the definitions of each will give you a good idea of what each is. During the design workshops/stakeholder meetings these are worked out, recorded and agreed to by the customer. Always remember that for any design you need to collect all of these and then look at it in a holistic manner and understand the impacts of each decision.
      • Requirements – Documented statement that depicts the requisite attributes, characteristics, or qualities of the system. See above portions around Business and Technical requirements plus the examples.
      • Constraints – Requirements that restrict the amount of freedom in developing the design
        • Hardware which already exists and must be used (for example,host or storage array)
        • Physical limitations (distance between sites, datacenter space)
        • Cost $$$
      • Risks – Potential issues that may negatively impact the reliability of the design
        • Lack of redundancy for specific hardware component
        • Support staff has not had any training
      • Assumptions – Suppositions made during the design process regarding the expected usage and implementation of a system
        • Provides a sounding board for design decisions which must be validated
        • Hardware required is installed before vCloud implementation
        • Network bandwidth is not a limiting factor for external end users
        • Appropriate training is provided to existing technical staff
      • For assumptions and risks I like to get these highlighted to the customer right away as you normally don’t want any assumptions if possible and for the assumptions you record in your design you want these to be realistically clarified already so that the assumptions are only there to ensure that if what they promised would be there isn’t you can refer them to the assumptions they signed off.

    Given customer requirements and product capabilities, determine the impact to a conceptual design.

    • This I think is covered above in places but is also something you can only really learn from actually doing a design and understanding how requirements shape a design and what impacts each of them have. On a conceptual design it isn’t as much of an impact as in a logical and physical design but limitations like keeping workloads in specific geographies and the capability of vCloud stretched clusters between the two locations for example are something that will impact the conceptual design. I would also read the Service definitions listed below in the recommended tools from the blueprint and the implementation examples from the vCAT.

    Tools

    If you feel I have missed something or am wrong on something then please do comment as I don’t proclaim to be the best and am always learning and welcome constructive criticism and feedback

    Gregg


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    VCAP-CID Objective 1.1 – Create a Conceptual Design Based on Business Requirements

    Due to an imminent customer engagement I am due to be working on I have been refining my vCloud skills and dusty away the cobwebs. One of these tasks was to book the VCP5-IaaS and sit it so that it forced me to learn the basics again and be sure I had a solid base knowledge with no gaps. My experience of the exam and the resources I used for it are mentioned in my VCP5-IaaS Exam Experience blog posting. I have now been using the VCAP-CID blueprint as a structure for perfecting my vCloud design skills and so I thought I would slowly post up each objective for my own benefit but also hopefully help other people looking to take the VCAP-CID. I will be consolidating all the objectives on my blog page here

    Skills and Abilities

    • Distinguish between virtualization, automation and cloud computing.

      • This could be defined in a number of ways (I’m more than happy to be corrected here) but the way I piece it all together is:
        • Virtualization is what VMware has been doing for years with vSphere and its complementing technologies. This is nothing new to anyone preparing for this exam and if it is then I hate to tell you this but this exam isn’t for you.
        • Automation ties perfectly into the NIST definition of on-demand self-service which is :  Unilaterally provision computing, as needed, automatically without requiring human interaction
          • This can be done through multiple technologies and mechanisms like VMware’s vCenter Orchestrator, vCAC,vFabric Application Director and third party tools like Puppet, Razor and IBM’s Virtualization Automation solution. Without true automation you can’t have a Cloud.
        • Cloud computing is perfectly defined by the industry recognised NIST cloud requirements which are:
          • On-demand self-service: Unilaterally provision computing, as needed, automatically without requiring human interaction
          • Broad network access: Capabilities are available over the network and accessed through standard mechanisms
          • Resource pooling: The provider’s computing resources are pooled with virtual resources dynamically assigned and re-assigned according to consumer demand.
          • Rapid elasticity: Capabilities can be rapidly and elastically provisioned, in some cases automatically, to quickly scale out and be rapidly released to quickly scale in.
          • Measured service: Cloud systems automatically control and optimize resource use by leveraging a metering capability. Resource usage can be monitored, controlled, and reported providing transparency of the utilized service.
        • For VMware’s IaaS definition from which they define the VMware vCloud blueprint is:
          • A cloud must be built on a pooled, virtual infrastructure. Pools include not only CPU and memory resources but also storage, networking, and associated services.
          • The cloud should provide application mobility between clouds, allowing the consumer to enter and leave the cloud easily with existing workloads. The ability to use existing consumer tools to migrate workloads to or from the cloud is highly desirable. Mobility of workloads between clouds requires cross-cloud resource management.
          • The cloud should be open and interoperable, allowing the consumption of cloud resources over open, Internet-standard protocols. Access to cloud resources does not require any other specific network protocols or clients.
          • Cloud consumers should pay only for resources they consume or commit to consuming.
          • The cloud should be a secure, trusted location for running cloud consumer workloads.
          • Cloud consumers should have the option and the ability to protect their cloud-based workloads from data loss.
          • Cloud consumers are not responsible for the maintenance of any part of the shared infrastructure and do not need to interact with the cloud provider to maintain the infrastructure. They are not responsible for storage and network maintenance, ongoing cloud infrastructure patches, or business continuity activities. The cloud should be available to run high-availability workloads, and any faults occurring in the cloud infrastructure should be transparent to cloud consumers as a result of built-in availability, scalability, security, and performance guarantees.

    • Distinguish between private, public, hybrid and community cloud computing.

      • These are defined perfectly in the vCAT 3.1 introduction document as:
        • Private cloud: A private vCloud (also known as an internal vCloud.) operates on private networks, where resources are accessible behind the firewall by a single company. In many cases, all the tenants share one legal entity. For example, a university might offer IaaS to its medical and business schools, or a company might do the same for various groups or business units. The private vCloud can be managed by the enterprise and hosted on premise or operated on a dedicated infrastructure provided by a vCloud service provider or systems integrator. In any case, a private vCloud must conform to the organizational security constraints.
        • Public cloud: A public vCloud offers IT resources as a service through external service providers and is shared across multiple organizations or the Internet. This can be viewed as a vCloud infrastructure that is operated by one organization for use by multiple, legally separated organizations. A public vCloud is provisioned for open access and might be owned, managed, and operated by one or more entities. A public vCloud provider might also support a private, community, or hybrid vCloud.
        • Hybrid cloud: A hybrid vCloud combines the benefits of the private and the public vCloud, with flexibility and choice of deployment methods. A hybrid vCloud consists of multiple, linked vCloud infrastructures. These distinct vCloud infrastructures can be private, community, or public, they but must meet a set of requirements defined by the providers and agreed to by the consumers. Connecting these vCloud instances requires data and application mobility as well as management. When load-balancing between vCloud instances (cloud bursting), use a consistent monitoring and management approach when migrating an application or data workload.
        • Community cloud: A Community vCloud is a specific public vCloud use case where the cloud is shared, and typically owned, by a group of organizations with a common set of requirements. In many cases, the organizations also include some level of legal separation. Community vCloud resources are shared, with some parts under central control and other parts with defined autonomy. A vCloud built for government, education, or healthcare might be an example of a community vCloud. A community vCloud can be offered by a traditional service provider, by a member of the community, or by a third-party vendor and hosted on one or more sites. It can be placed on-premise at one or more of the organizations’ sites, off-premise at a vCloud provider site, or both on- and off-premise.

     

    • Analyze a customer use case to determine how cloud computing can satisfy customer requirements.

      • For this I would recommend you read the Service Definitions document from the vCAT as this covers all the definitions and how they map to customer requirements and fulfil these requirements. Also the VMware vCloud Implementation Examples document also from the vCAT shows you how varying implementations can benefit businesses in differing ways

     

    • Given a customer use case, determine the appropriate cloud computing model.

      • This is one I feel you can only do once you have a firm understanding of the capabilities of all the different Cloud offerings and how each of them meet varying requirements and also have differing constraints/disadvantages.


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    VCP5-IaaS Exam Experience

    This morning I sat the VCP5-IaaS exam and am very pleased to say I passed it and with a pretty good score too! I decided to do the exam as I have been busy with a number of vCloud engagements and had a spare few days to prepare and get it done whilst the ability to gain the VCP5-Cloud if you have the VCP5-DCV was still available.

     

    Resources

    My preparations for the exam were fairly short as I only had two weeks of solid study before sitting the exam, that’s not to say I didn’t have a solid understanding of vCloud prior and I have been working with vCloud since the 1.0 days and have done a number of vCloud design and deployment engagements. The resources I used for the exam are as follows:

    – The Trainsignal VMware vCloud Director Essentials videos by David Davis. I used these videos quite a while ago when they first came out which helped me gain a very good base knowledge and used a few of the videos again as the VCP5-IaaS exam is based on vCloud 1.5 and I have been using vCloud 5.1 most recently so needed to try remember/block out a few things.

    – I also used the Trainsignal VMware vCloud Director Organizations set of training videos done by Jake Robinson. These are also based on vCloud 1.5 but give a great view of how an organisation administrator would do tasks.

    – I used a third set of Trainsignal videos for my preparations were the VMware vCloud Director 5.1 Essentials set of videos by VCDX #104 Chris Wahl. These are for vCloud 5.1 whereas the test is vCloud 1.5 but the videos were brilliant and Chris explains vCloud networking amazingly which is the hardest part to get your head around in vCloud.

    – For the above three sets of videos I followed along whilst doing it all in my lab and would HIGHLY recommend doing it this way as I don’t think you can understand vCloud without actually doing it yourself.

    – Paul McSharry created three practice test for the VCP5-Iaas which can be done here VCP5-IAAS Practice Test 1, Test 2 and Test 3. These were great as a last minute practice test late yesterday to make sure I wasn’t missing anything.

    – VMware vCenter Chargeback Manager is a big portion of the exam and I used the VMware vCenter Chargeback Fundamentals course to get my knowledge up to speed on the product. This course is really good and massively important as if you haven’t used Chargeback before you will be lacking in the exam.

    – We did a few of the VCP5-IaaS objectives on the EMEA vBrownbag and I watched these as the way the guys cover the components are extremely helpful. They can be downloaded from iTunes here

    – Lastly I used the vCloud Architecture Toolkit (vCAT) pdf’s which I read through and made sure I understood it all. This was probably a bit of overkill as the VCP5-IaaS exam is the entry level exam whereas the vCAT is geared more towards the CIA and CID but it gave me a great holistic view of how everything worked so if you have the time I would recommend reading them or at some of them.

     

    The Exam

    Due to my last two exams being the VCAP5-DCA and VCAP5-DCD I was used to having to burn through the exam/questions so having to go through the 85 questions was quite refreshing and the exhibits and questions were also fairly straight forward. I finished quicker than I thought I would which I put down to being used to the VCAP exams pace and felt the questions were easier than the ones for example were in the VCP5 (DCV).

     

    Conclusion

    Good luck to anyone looking to do the exam. I felt it was really fair although I may still be in a VCAP mind-set and is much shorter than the VCP5-Cloud so if you have your VCP5 already then I would say go for this whilst the “upgrade” path is still available. For me I think I am done for quite a while now and will be focusing on slowly building my VCDX design for a future submission.

     

    Gregg