The EMEA vBrownbag team are currently looking for presenters to present on the EMEA #vBrownbag which is run live every Tuesday at 7PM GMT/BST. Currently we are covering several tracks which include:
-VCP5-DT exam blueprint objectives
-VCP5-IaaS exam blueprint objectives
– VCAP5–CID exam blueprint objectives
-VCAP5-CIA exam blueprint objectives
– Anything related to VMware or would interest VMware focused IT people. These can be VMUG presentations or even prep for a conference
It all started about April 2008 when the company was looking to setup a brand new branch office. This was for about 120 people and my first design brief was “Can we do anything interesting with virtual desktops?” At that point I had only been with the company 6 months and my virtualisation experience consisted of a MS Virtual PC machine I used to test SMS packages. I did a quick search on virtual desktops and came across VMware’s VDI 2.5 solution. I was able to setup a small test lab using a couple of desktops and an old server running a virtual iSCSI san appliance. Up to that point the company had run entirely traditional desktops and server environments with local storage.
Having proven that it was possible, the first design was a bit of a stab in the dark as far as requirements were concerned. I was able to get the company to send me on the VI 3.5 Fast Track course, which was really well done with a great trainer and great facilities to do the exercises on. This really helped with improving the desktop design and migrating our datacentre over to virtualisation.
What made you decide to do the VCDX?
It was after I took the VCP 3 that I read about the VCDX certification. I made the decision then that I wanted to work towards that goal although I knew it would take some time.
I attended the vSphere 4 Design Workshop course to get a better understanding of the method that should be used to design infrastructures. At that point with the newly released VCAP certificates being made available I really began working towards the VCDX goal I had set. I took the VCAP-DCD first as the design course was still fairly fresh in my mind and the DCA was the exam I was dreading the most (and still do). Once I had both of these under my belt it was really down to finding the ideal design to use for the VCDX itself, which took a little while.
How long did it take you to complete the whole VCDX journey?
The whole journey took about 4 years, although in reality it was probably only the last two years that I was able to think of it as a possibility. I had read the blueprints for both the VCDX 3 and 4 and realised that I wasn’t going to be ready for 3 and needed a lot more practical experience for 4. I had got the pre-requisite certifications for VCDX 4 done by the end of 2011 and then it was down to choosing the right design to submit. This was the bit that took a bit of time as I wanted the submission to be as real a design as possible. Although a wholly fictitious design is possible, it is easier to defend decisions based on real requirements and constraints. Finally in August 2012 I had a design I felt was a good candidate with a few minor changes to cover the requirements in the blueprint. I spent about 3 weeks solidly working on completing the design documents to fit the requirements. I spent a lot of time reading the blogs of existing VCDX holders and the tips on the VMware site, trying to put all that advice into practice.
I submitted and defended the design at Barcelona in October 2012 and happily, along with seven others, received confirmation I had achieved VCDX about two weeks later.
What advice would you give to people thinking of pursuing the VCDX accreditation?
Firstly go for it. The whole process is worth it.
Lots of research. Read the experiences of others who have already been through the process, there is a wealth of advice out there. Also read the advice tips given on the VMware site, especially the tips on what not to do.
Read the blueprint. Read it again and then again. Make certain your design covers the objectives, adding to your original design if necessary.
Plan your time and then possibly double it to allow for unforeseen problems.
Peer review. Get as many people to read through your documents as possible and I would say get a mix of technical experts and non technical people. Can someone with little or no experience understand your design and see why they would implement your design? You may be asking them to make a big investment.
Run some mock defences. Again I would say try to include someone who is not technical on the panel. A non technical person may well ask you to explain something that a technical person will take for granted. Try and keep to the real time limits so you get a feeling for how quickly it passes. Remember you have to defend all aspects of the design so, for example, why did you do X? Could you have done Y differently?
Print your documents out and proof read them, both by yourself and someone else. Get yourself a red pen and be ruthless.
Finally, if you have the opportunity, attend a VCDX boot camp. I attended the one in Barcelona two days before my defence and I can say it made a huge difference on the day.
If you could do the whole VCDX journey again what would you do differently?
Not much, knowing my own personality. I should have started the design submission documentation earlier and made time for a mock defence or two.
Life after the VCDX? How did your company respond? Was it worth it
The company, I think, is a little unsure of what it all means but my colleagues were certainly impressed. I am encouraging our other VCPs to begin the journey themselves and put the lessons I have learned into greater practice.
Was it worth it? Categorically yes. The process was, for me, more a personal goal rather than something I felt was professionally required. Had I not been successful at Barcelona then I would definitely have been back for another try.
I first saw VMware Workstation 4 and was really impressed with what you could do with it. When we first adopted ESX 2.5 at my workplace I was totally hooked, and within a couple years was working as a consultant in the virtualization team at my current employer.
What made you decide to do the VCDX?
A friend I have a lot of respect for was pursuing it and I thought it was an interesting challenge. I applied to the VCDX3 program and completed the enterprise admin and enterprise design exams, and started refining an existing design I had completed for a client.
How long did it take you to complete the whole VCDX journey?
A couple of years. I was planning to apply for a VCDX3 defense, but with a young family I was finding it very challenging to make the deadline, and put it on hold. Some friends asked why I hadn’t picked it back up, so at VMworld 2012 I took a deep breath and said I would submit an application to defend at Partner Exchange.
What advice would you give to people thinking of pursuing the VCDX accreditation?
Support is really important, and your family needs to be behind you, it’s a lot of work and time away from them. Employer and peer support is incredibly important and makes a huge difference. I was fortunate on all three counts.
If you could do the whole VCDX journey again what would you do differently?
I would have followed a more structured preparation plan and started earlier. I can’t stress that one enough, have a structured plan with contingency and follow it – life gets busy.
Life after the VCDX? How did your company respond? Was it worth it?
My company has been extremely supportive and believes in the value of investing in advanced certifications and training. It was definitely worth it, and has helped me advance my design and consulting skills. For our consulting practice it has changed the way we approach designs and solutioning
This Monday I re-sat my VCAP5-DCD exam after having marginally failed it the first time in January this year. I wrote a fairly extensive blog posting about my opinions about the exam and the additional resources I planned to use. I would recommend people read that posting first if you haven’t as I still maintain 95% of the pieces I said and mentioned in there are true about the exam. This time I thankfully passed the exam and with not a bad score of 333 also.
Resources used:
For this attempt i did use a fair portion more resources and actually think I studied more this time than I did for my first attempt. I thought I would list the resources I used or re-used for this attempt and am planning on adding the resources mentioned here on my VCAP5-DCA & DCD Study Resources page if they aren’t mentioned on there already:
– I read the official VMware book Building a Virtual Datacenter to try help me get the holistic view and mentality you have to maintain during the build of a virtual datacenter and how every decision can have an impact on another portion of your environment and design. The book was really good and I would recommend it but I have to admit I did skip certain portions as I had covered them in books that had them covered much better and in more depth.
-I bought the kindle version of the new VMware vSphere Design book from Forbes Guthrie and Scott Lowe. I bought the kindle version as the paperback version wasn’t out in Europe for a while and my timeframes for studying were very tight. The book is utterly brilliant and covers both vSphere 5 and 5.1 and I would HIGHLY recommend it for the exam and anyone who works with VMware.
-As I stated I would, I read the VMware press book Managing and Optimizing VMware vSphere Deployments by Harley Stagner and Sean Crookston which helped me gain more knowledge around all the portions of a design and the link each component in the design has. The main piece from this book that i really liked was the operational portions as you can’t do a design without having the end goal and plan of it being able to run for a long time after you have left (if you are a consultant like I am).
-The main thing I really focused on was going through the whole vSphere Design workshop course notes, lab guides and answers to the lab guides and made sure I understood every single portion and why certain decisions were made by VMware in the completed designs of the labs. If you haven’t been on the course I would beg management to put you on it as it covers every portion you need to know for the exam and gives some great tips for the exam (no I cant tell you what these are)
Exam experience:
I was more nervous for this attempt than my first attempt as I really wanted to pass it this time as with having a five week old little one my studying schedule took a knock and I actually postponed the exam for two week later from it’s initial date due to not getting through portions I wanted before the attempt.
Once I got into the exam and started making my way through the questions with each question I felt I had got correct or very close to correct i became more and more confident. I also think i managed my time a bit better this time and wasn’t as overwhelmed by what they were asking of me. Before the exam starts they tell you how many visio style questions you are going to get so I wrote down the numbers (1-6 for me) and marked them out after each one so that I knew how my time management was going. I did have two drag and drop questions in my last three questions which used up my time and meant i only had around 8 minutes left by the time I completed the last question. The result came up and very quickly and I was in shock that it stated congratulations and actually started feeling dizzy after not having been able to eat much before the exam due to feeling sick from nerves and not having drank much as I knew I couldn’t afford toilet breaks.
Tips:
For this attempt i came across and learnt a few tips for the exam which helped me with the visio style questions and allowed me to be sure portions were connected correctly.
-There is a scissors icon beside the bin in the right hand bottom corner that allows you to cut a connector/connection you have made in error without moving loads of portions across the page by trying to move the connection to the bin. I did this drag and drop mistake a few times in my first attempt and it really hurt me as it moved portions off the screen and so meant I had to redo pieces.
-Make sure connections have stuck to boxes by carefully trying to move the box and seeing if the connector follows. This is related to the piece above and is a good tip to make sure you have connected the boxes correctly. Also make sure you connect the correct portions together as I noticed once or twice I didn’t click the correct piece and so the pieces I meant to have connected were actually not connected so be careful where you click.
-Do practice designs at home on paint or visio or even word to allow yourself to visualise how you would do different visio style designs scenarios so that when you are in the exam and maybe see one of them you know what your final designs should look like.
Conclusion/what’s next:
So now that I have both my VCAP5-DCA and DCD I can start designing my VCDX infrastructure and submit the design for defence for the VCDX5 accreditation. I still need to do some soul searching and decide when I want to submit as it’s a serious amount of work to complete all the required documents and my planned design is only about 60% where I want it to be before submitting it so I’m estimating around 40 hours of work to get it all ready which isn’t easy to find with a 5 week old, a full time job as a consultant and my sanity maintained. I will most likely slowly start building my design and documents and submit for PEX early next year although I may be drawn to do it sooner or later.
For those looking to do either of the exams I would recommend starting right away and also booking a date for it so that you are pushed to get through everything, the exams are very challenging but there are amazing resources out there which will help you gain the knowledge to pass the exam and with loads of lab time and practicing you can pass them. Good luck to all those who are preparing or looking to do the exams and hopefully my resources page and this blog help you.
Around 5/6 years ago the company that I was working for at the time installed ESX 3.0 to use as part of their Dev/Test environment. The “VMware stuff” as we knew it then, was installed by a contractor as our team didn’t really know too much about it. Once the installation was complete, the contractor left and we were left to fend for ourselves. I nominated myself to look after the “VMware stuff”, and that’s how this love affair began.
What made you decide to do the VCDX?
It’s hard to put my finger on one thing. I think working closely with Frank Denneman during my time at VMware Professional Services certain contributed to me wanting to aim high.
I also like to make goals for myself and I made the VCDX one of those goals. However I didn’t put a time frame on it. I could have probably defended a lot earlier than I did, but I was never really completely ready for it until 2012.
How long did it take you to complete the whole VCDX journey?
It’s hard to say as I guess it includes VCP, VCAP exams as well. A lot of these exams I just took as and when I had time to take them, so there wasn’t a sense of, if I take the VCAP’s by this date, I can then submit for the VCDX. It just happened really. I had both VCAP’s, then one day I decided I was going to go for it.
What advice would you give to people thinking of pursuing the VCDX accreditation?
Don’t be scared. A lot of people who talk about going for VCDX are reluctant because they have heard “It’s really scary and the panellists are after your blood” etc, but this really is not the truth. The panellists actually want you to pass.
Pick a design you have architected yourself, and that covers most of the areas of the Blueprint. If you use a design that is not completely yours, you may find it hard when asked question on those sections.
Know that design inside out (read every word). Know why you chose each feature, understand what each feature you chose does and understand why you didn’t choose the other features.
The technology is not the only focus in the VCDX. Make sure you fully understand and have documented; Risks, Constraints etc that affected your design.
And don’t be afraid to say you don’t know to something. The guys who are asking questions will know if you’re making it up or not.
If you could do the whole VCDX journey again what would you do differently?
Nothing. It went pretty smooth I thought.
Life after the VCDX? How did your company respond? Was it worth it
My Company were pleased for me. No pay rise as yet….. 😉 But I think this is normal in the majority of companies.
I think it was worth it. It certainly improved me as an architect. I now have great attention to detail (when needed). This has come from the scrutinizing of my design over a period of months.
And if, in the future I decide to leave VMware, having VCDX #105 on my CV might improve my chances of securing another role.
I was a young systems administrator working for an enterprise customer. I began to hear about this new-fangled VMware ESX thing. I started doing some research into ESX and loved the concept of it. We had access to a lab and I installed ESX 2 and began to play with it. Thankfully the company I worked for also saw the value of the product and we were able to move it from the lab to running some staging machines – this was ESX 2.5. From then on my primary job was designing, configuring and installing VMware environments. I was very lucky to be in the right place at the right time.
What made you decide to do the VCDX?
I’ve always been the type to take on a challenge and there is no greater challenge in the virtualization industry. The more I learned about the certification, the process and the community the more I wanted to be one.
How long did it take you to complete the whole VCDX journey?
9 months from start of design to successful defence, that’s duration. I don’t really want to count how many hours I spent – probably 600+.
What advice would you give to people thinking of pursuing the VCDX accreditation?
Start early, give yourself a LOT of time and work with a group. The more time and discussion you have about your design prior to submission the better. That being said it’s a fantastic learning opportunity – I highly recommend attempting it.
If you could do the whole VCDX journey again what would you do differently?
Give myself more time, not rush attempts.
Life after the VCDX? How did your company respond? Was it worth it?
The interesting thing about the VCDX certification is the journey is the part that improves you most. My work had acknowledged this and noted my improvements as an architect prior to obtaining the cert. They also supported my pursuit of the designation without wavering. I have moved to a new role within the organization and all-around it has been extremely positive. Having employer support is a very good thing.
I’m still pretty fresh to being a VCDX; the response in the community has been fantastic. This has been the best experience of my career and I look forward to seeing where it takes me.
In my previous posting I created a fictitious company who requires you as the VMware Architect to design them a vSphere 5.0 environment to meet all their requirements whilst keeping within their constraints and mitigating risks. Now I didn’t list the constraints or the risks as I felt this was something that is very important to learn how to define in preparation for the VCAP5-DCD and vSphere designs in real life practice.
The first portion of the design I’m hoping to create (and get everyone’s opinions,participation and comments on ) is the storage design. So below are the portions I will be trying to fill out for the Safe and Legit scenario and hopefully people also wanting to learn and participate will fill out each of the sections with their own design decisions and then we can compare and hopefully learn together/off each other.
Storage Array
Design Choice
Justification
Design Impacts
Number of LUNs and LUN sizes
Design Choice
Justification
Design Impacts
Storage load balancing and availability
Design Choice
Justification
Design Impacts
VMware vSphere VMFS or RDM
Design Choice
Justification
Design Impacts
Host zoning
Design Choice
Justification
Design Impacts
LUN Presentation
Design Choice
Justification
Design Impacts
Thick or Thin disks
Design Choice
Justification
Design Impacts
Virtual Machine I/O Priority
Design Choice
Justification
Design Impacts
Storage Profiles
Design Choice
Justification
Design Impacts
Describe and diagram the logical design
Attribute
Specification
Storage Type
Number of Storage Processors
Number of Fibre Channel Switches (if any)
Number of ports per host per switch
Total number of LUNs
LUN Sizes
VMFS datastores per LUN
Describe and diagram the physical design
Array vendor and model
Type of array
VMware ESXi host multipathing policy
Min/Max speed rating of storage switch ports
Loads of bits to decide and design. I’m hoping to have my storage design decisions and what I thought were the constraints and risks for the design up by the end of the week and if not then by the latest next week Monday in my next posting. Happy designing
As some people may know I am currently preparing to re-take my VCAP5-DCD and I have reached the point in my preparations now where I am doing mock designs and also going through the labs from the VMware Design Workshop and so I thought I would follow the same idea and start creating a mock customer design scenario and also put down the same vein of questions I am being asked from the design workshop labs and hopefully if people are interested they can use it, write down what design choices,the justifications for these choices and the impacts these choices create on the rest of the design and hopefully everyone will learn from this. Below is a company profile that I made up and I also used some ideas from a scenario Matt Mould one of my Xtravirt colleagues sent me as few months back:
Company Profile • Safe & Legit, are a global trading company – they specialise in ground defence equipment
• 13,000 physical servers across 9 sites.
o 6k UK (3 sites)
o 2k CN (3 sites)
o 5k US (3 sites)
• There are two level 4 DC’s per country (for info on DC levels see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_center • DC’s are linked by an MPLS cloud from BT, Verizon, Colt and NTT (contracts end Q1 2015)
• One DC per country is privately owned and Safe & Legit want to retain the real estate, but make room to lease out sought after level 4 private suites, thus providing a new revenue stream, and hopefully make their own DC’s cost neutral in doing so. Therefore they are looking to virtualise as much of their physical estate as possible into vSphere 5.0
• The remaining DC’s are rented from BT, Verizon and NTT (contracts end Q1 2015) . The CFO has voiced his desire to cut the cost of these rentals and would ideally like to not have to renew the contracts if possible.
• ERP is centralised in the UK
• Each country has locally hosted Print, Domain, UC & Messaging
• Collaboration is centralised, again in the UK
• Typical/normal file sharing is not permitted, all ‘matter’ is recorded and audited in Safe & Legit’s collaboration system
• With the exception of ERP, all systems must move to a shared or distributed model. This is following a series of natural disasters in the US and China, that could have been avoided by having a DR and BC plan in place.
• All communication end points are encrypted, but new legislation is relaxing where encryption is required. This is achievable following an ERP upgrade that separates out sensitive and non-sensitive data.
• There are up to 5,000 3rd party users, that own a license to trade under Safe& Legit LLC, licensees are dropping as the competition develop newer, faster and cheaper ways to deliver access to their trading systems. Safe & Legit still require you to purchase expense fixed private comms to deliver their trading apps. They do not want these 3rd party users to be impacted at all during the migrations and for there to be a near zero RTO and RPO
• The UK site has been chosen as the first site to be migrated but due to Safe and Legit’s work on ground defence equipment they have not authorised the running of a capacity planner collection as they don’t want their data to leave the premises but have calculated that for each site to be virtualised the environment must be able to meet the following values:
-The 6k physical servers in the UK are comprised of 2000 Linux servers and 4000 Windows servers
-On average each windows server is provisioned with 20GB boot disk (average used is 15GB) and a 50GB data disk (average used is 30GB)
– Each Linux server is configured with 60GB total storage (average used is 30GB)
– Safe and Legit expect a 10 percent annual server growth over the next three years
-Safe and Legit have a long standing vendor relationship with EMC and Cisco and so have requested the usage of their equipment due to this relationship and in house knowledge of the administration of these vendor products
-They have created the following two tables from internal analysis and monitoring:
CPU Resource Requirement
Metric
Amount
Avg # of CPUs per physical server
4
Avg CPU MHz
3,400 MHz
Avg normalised CPU MHz
1,240
Avg CPU utilisation per physical system
5% (170 MHz)
Avg Peak utilisation per physical system
8% (272 MHz)
Total CPU resources req for 1k vm’s at peak
272,000 MHz
RAM Resource Requirement
Metric
Amount
Avg amount of RAM per physical system
4096MB
Avg memory utilisation
30% (1228.8MB)
Avg Peak Memory Utilisation
80% ( 3276.8MB)
Total RAM required for 1k VMs at peak before memory sharing
3,276,800MB
Anticipated memory sharing benefit when virtualised
50%
Total RAM req for 1k VMs at peak with memory sharing
1,638.400MB
Business Requirements
From workshops and SME meetings the following requirements were collected
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
R011
Any others you think I have missed from the scenario
-5K 3rd party users will need to be able to gain access into the environment without any impact during the migration and consolidation
-Rented DC’s kit needs to be fully migrated to the privately owned datacenter before Q1 2015 to ensure the contracts don’t need to be renewed
Constraints and Risks
You tell me in the comments
Constraints from Storage Design posting:
– Usage of EMC kit
– Usage of Cisco kit
– Usage of the privately owned DC’s physical infrastructure for the consolidation of all three UK DC’s.
Risks from Storage Design posting:
– The ability of ensuring near-zero downtime during the migration of workloads to the privately owned DC may be at risk due to budget constraints impacting the procurement of the required infrastructure to ensure zero downtime
This is something I feel is really important when doing real world designs is trying to think of as many questions around a customer requirements so that you can ensure you have their requirements recorded correctly and that they aren’t vague.The additional questions and the answers to them are listed below:
Q: Is there any capability of utilising the existing storage in the privately owned UK DC?
A: Due to the consolidation and migration of the other UK DC’s and the current workloads in the privately owned DC a new SAN is a better option due to the SAN being 3 years old now and so it is more cost effective to purchase a new one. Also due to the probable need for auto-tiered storage to meet the customers requirements a new SAN with these capabilities is needed
Q: Is there no way a minimal planned outage/downtime can be organised for the migration of the workloads due to the likely higher cost of equipment to ensure this near-zero downtime?
A: The customer would prefer to try keep to the near-zero downtime and so it is agreed that after the conceptual design of the storage and the remaining components in the whole design further meetings can be held to discuss a balance between cost and the desire for near-zero downtime
Q: With the leasing out of the private level 4 suites in the future will there be a requirement to manage/host other companies processes and data within this infrastructure being designed?
A: No there is currently no plan to do this due to security concerns and the number of compliancy regulations Safe and Legit need to maintain and fulfil. There is however a possibility of internal consumption and charging for usage of the DC’s resources to other departments.
Summary
So that is the company profile and my idea around it. I obviously created 90% of the above from my head so there will be additional questions around it but I think this gives a really solid amount of information for people to start thinking. I’m going to do the first posting around Storage Design for Safe and Legit quite soon and will put up what questions and component you normally have to think of but if people want to think of what they would choose prior then hopefully we can get a good discussion going around it.
As I add each section to the design I am hoping to keep updating this posting and then once complete making it all linked on a single page on my blog
Last night on the EMEA vBrownbag’s that I co-host I presented my London VMUG Presentation around the VCAP5 exams, the resources I used for them and my experiences. We had the largest turnout yet for it which is great and very promising for future sessions where hopefully the numbers will keep on growing. I have uploaded the recording to Vimeo and embedded it below. Also all the resources covered in the session and more are listed on my blog page here
I thought I would put out a posting around my experiences of the VCAP5-DCD exam I sat yesterday and what I felt helped me in my preparations and what I plan to use to better my knowledge for my resitting.
Yep I am going to need to re-sit the exam as unfortunately I just failed the exam but I do feel that what I studied was extremely helpful as without having done it I wouldn’t have been close so that is very positive and now i have a great idea of what I need to do in preparation before my retry.
The Resources I used this time
The resources I used for yesterdays attempt of the exam were quite extensive to say the least but I am learning design from the ground up almost as I have only been doing enterprise level designs for the past year having previously been a VMware Administrator. The resources I used are on my page here but I wanted to list out the exact ones and what i felt they helped me with and why I think they are essential for the exam:
I know this is going to be a strange one but it did really help me in my preparations and that is having studied for my VCAP5-DCA prior to doing this exam as it helped me learn the new technologies, how to physically create them and the level logical and physical designs have to be to allow the VMware administrator (if this is a different person) to build the solution
The VMware vSphere: Design Workshop [V5.0] was extremely beneficial and really gives you a great idea of what doing designs for a living is like but also how there are many different options for each solution. Unfortunately for the VCAP5-DCD exam there is only one way of doing something and that is the VMware recommended way and this is my first BIG piece of advice before doing the exam. Make sure you learn the VMware way of doing design as in the exam the way you think it should be done or have done it in the past may not be the VMware recommended way of doing it and it is therefore incorrect. Also the course is only three days so I would HIGHLY recommend trying to do all the lab work from the course at home and then make sure you go to your transcript under VMware learning, click next steps under the course name and then download the completed design scenarios that you followed during the course so you can learn how VMware would have built it.
Next piece of material I used was the VMware vSphere Design book from Scott Lowe,Forbes Guthrie and Maish Saidel-Keesing. The book was amazing and I would recommend it to no end to anyone doing the exam and anyone doing VMware designs in general as they cover everything and it is extensive to say the least. I did read the version 4 version as the version 5 is meant to be out within the next few months and it gave a really great covering of all the components as 85% of vSphere 5 is the same as vSphere 4 and most of the concepts are exactly the same
The vSphere 5 Clustering Tech Deepdive book by Frank Denneman and Duncan Epping was amazing in giving me a deep understanding of the vSphere 5 cluster, it’s components and technologies and the advanced settings you can create and use for certain scenarios. This book is an absolute must for the exam and covers parts I haven’t seen mentioned anywhere else. My recommendation on this book is read and understand and be able to apply EVERYTHING in this book prior to your exam.
As I mentioned I did my VCAP5-DCA prior to attempting this exam and therefore I used resources for that exam like the VMware vSphere 5 Training trainsignal videos by Elias Khnaser and David Davis and all the VMware vSphere 4 VCAP Training Package videos David did for the VCAP4-DCA exam. These helped me build a solid understanding prior to the DCD exam as I believe how can you design something if you don’t know how it works and how each part integrates.
Talking of Trainsignal videos a MASSIVE resource I used for the DCD was Scott Lowe’s Designing VMware Infrastructure Trainsignal set of videos. These were amazing and Scott gives some brilliant descriptions and examples of what Risk,Assumption,Requirements and Constraints are and how to apply them. I personally battled with differentiating between Functional and Non-Functional requirements and Scott’s videos helped with this as did an article that Victor Forde sent me when I asked if anyone could try help me clear up the definitive differences and Bas Raayman did a great posting asking these questions here . The videos don’t just cover the terminology but cover every facet of designing a virtual infrastructure and how they are are holistically interconnected. I plan to re-watch a few of these videos and also the second last one where Scott brings all the pieces together to create a final design as I think this is very important for the exam and real world designing
The APAC vBrownbags were another resource I used extensively and is something that helped loads in my preparations and understanding of certain things. The content covered in a number of the sessions were amazing and I took down loads of notes during them and made sure I watched them whenever I could including the gym
The resources I will be using and re-using next time
The above resources were really great and all the notes I created from all of them will be used extensively again to try get everything into my mind.
The official VMware book Building a Virtual Datacenter will be a book I am planning to read in my aim of trying to get myself into the VMware mind-set of designing and what are the recommendations for every component. The book was given to me a while back so I am planning to start reading through it very soon
Harley Stagner and Sean Crookston’s VMware press book Managing and Optimizing VMware vSphere Deployments is another book I am planning to read prior to my re-take as they have covered how to take your existing knowledge of all the components and apply it to a design as well as having done a mock design which I’m hoping I will learn loads from.
As I mentioned above I attended the design workshop VMware course and so I am planning on going through all the course notes and the lab work and actually trying to create every portion as I don’t think there was near enough time in the workshop to be able to complete all the lab work. Also as I highlighted in red I was fortunate to notice (no one tells you these are available if you did the course) that the completed designs from the lab work have been done for you by VMware and therefore you can use these to see how VMware recommend doing them and thereby hopefully I will learn the VMware way of designing every portion.
Doing some mock designs of my own and then trying to apply VMware recommendations (notice I never say best practices as supposedly there are none but for the exam there has to be as only one answer is correct) and hopefully learn how to apply these for the Visio like questions
Talking of the Visio like questions, I am planning on trying to create my own mock questions while using these kinds of ideas so that i know how to create all portions super fast as the time frames in the exam are very tight.
Conclusion
I felt the exam is passable which is fairly comforting for me, the exam reminded me a lot of the Microsoft Design exams I did for my MCSE’s but on steroids. As for when I am going to re-try the exam that is still something I need to work out as I was hoping to also get my VCP5-IaaS and thereby my VCP5-Cloud before the VCP5-Cloud exam is released and the upgrade path is gone. A lot of people said if you have been doing design for years then don’t really bother studying and just go do the exam but I disagree massively on this as if you have been doing designs for years you know there are many many ways of building a solution but in the exam there is only the VMware way and so experience may work against you as maybe that isn’t the VMware recommended way of doing it. Good luck to anyone doing the exam, I hope my thoughts above haven’t stressed you out and maybe help you study places I missed or didn’t know would need to and thereby you pass the exam
TheSaffaGeek 