TheSaffaGeek

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Category Archives: VCAP


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VCAP5-DCD Retake

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.

 

Gregg


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Safe and Legit Storage Design

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 Winking smile

Gregg


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VCAP5-DCD Design Practice

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

Additional Functional Requirements (From Storage Design posting)

-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 Smile

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

Additional Questions (from Storage Design posting)

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

Gregg


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EMEA #vBrownbag VCAP5 Presentation

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

EMEA vBrownbag with Gregg Robertson Covering VCAP5 Study Materials and Experiences from EMEA vBrownbag on Vimeo.

Gregg


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VCAP5-DCD : My Experiences

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 DRBC Design – Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity Fundamentals course was another online course I did in my prep to fully understand DR and BC concepts but also how certain decisions impact how things are done. The course is free so I would highly recommend it.

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

 

Gregg


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My VCAP5-DCA Experience

Yesterday the day finally came and I attempted the VCAP5-DCA exam. For anyone that doesn’t know what the exam entails then the below description for the VCAP5-DCA Blueprint should help:

The VDCA510 exam consists of approximately 26 live lab activities and a short pre-exam survey consisting of 9 questions. Live lab activities consist of multiple tasks, where each task is scored. The total number of activities provided is based on the total number of tasks. Because of this, the actual number of lab activities may vary slightly between exams.

As I am under NDA and because I want to maintain the high level of the exam I’m not going to go into specifics but more my experience of the exam, what I used to prepare, how it compared to the VCAP4-DCA and what I would recommend to someone looking to attempt the exam.

The Experience

I did the VCAP4-DCA twice so I knew what to expect a lot more but my experience of this exam was fairly different. I arrived at the testing centre far too early (an hour and a half before my exam), my slot was at 11am but I wanted to miss traffic and forgot it is Half Term for UK schools so I had a very easy drive in. I waited in the testing centres cafeteria, ran through a number of commands, and advanced settings in my head that I wanted to remember just in case I was asked to do them in the exam. I was called through and did the usual security clearances, photo’s, signing sheets and removing my watch etc. as Pearson are very strict now on what you can take in (no drinks,watches,phones,food,sweets). I then got setup on my testing station, said a little prayer and began the test.

This is my third attempt at a VCAP-DCA exam although my first VCAP5-DCA attempt but for my VCAP4 attempts I had loads of problems of the screens hanging when I tried to flick over, making a stupid mistake by not reading a question carefully and essentially ending my exam early and for the VCAP5-DCA beta I never even got to question 1 as the lab wouldn’t show up for me. This time however the exam worked really well, the resolutions were much better and therefore allowed me to work in multiple screens without having to move around things too much and I made sure I read the questions very carefully so to not make any mistakes. Personally, I thought the VCAP5-DCA was harder than the VCAP4-DCA as for the VCAP4 they seemed to hand hold you a bit more and almost tell you what you should do to complete the task whereas for the VCAP5 they expect you to know what solution would fulfill the requirement outlined in the question. There were much less low-end questions and quite a few high-end ones where I had to rely on experience to know how to do things that I would not have learnt from any of my study resources. Although it was harder I personally enjoyed it more, now that’s not to say the exam is enjoyable as it REALLY tests your skillset but I felt it was more focused on real world requirements of a VI Admin/Consultant rather than the skill of regurgitating information. I was on my last task when my time ran out which I’m pleased about as it meant my time planning was almost perfect and I got through enough tasks and hopefully did them correctly to give myself a good chance of passing this time. I did skip one or two that I felt I wouldn’t be able to do in the fast paced way the exam requires you to do tasks but this did give me more time to do the things I knew correctly (I hope)

What I used to prepare and what I would recommend using

The resources I used to prepare are listed on my VCAP5-DCA and DCD Study Resources Page already so I’m not going to go into too much detail there but I do have to give special thanks to Josh Coen, Jason Langer,David M Davis and all the US vBrownbag guys as all their resources were priceless in my studying for the exam and I would highly recommend watching the vSphere 4 VCAP resources David did around troubleshooting and Management especially as even though they are on vSphere 4 they are highly applicable and as ever of a very high level.

What wasn’t and is not listed on that page which I did mention a bit about above that I needed in the exam was real world experience with the solution and the technology. I am very fortunate that I work for an IT consultancy specialising in virtualisation and for the past year I have been designing and rolling out vSphere 5 at an enterprise level to customers, which meant I had to really learn what everything did to ensure what I recommended and built for the customer was the best. Now I know everyone can’t/hasn’t had that kind of experience but what I also did that I didn’t do enough of for my VCAP4 attempts was spend loads and loads of time in my home lab building, breaking and fixing every single piece mentioned in the exam blueprint. I worked out that For the last month whilst preparing for the VCAP5 I spent around 55-60 hours practicing in my lab which is a serious amount seeing as I was at VMworld Europe a few weeks back. I believe this piece is as important if not the most important part of preparing for the exam as this exam isn’t like the VCP or any other exam I’ve done before as it is 100% lab based and you are under extreme time pressure to get things completed and so you need to know how to do something like it is second nature and know how things are connected. Micro servers are really cheap, it is worth the investment in getting one or two, and some shared storage and spending the time practicing.

Summary

The exam was very challenging but I hope I have done enough and the amount I have learnt by preparing for this exam is only going to help me do my job better and feel more comfortable doing my job now with the knowledge and skills I have learnt but preparing for the exam. If you are thinking of trying the exam then I would highly recommend it, it is a challenge but it’s one that isn’t impossible and it will push you to that next level. The resources out there for preparing are amazing and are extensive. Make sure you don’t cut any corners and practice, practice and practice some more as I was able to do a few things only due to me forcing myself to practice every single method of doing things. Also, let your partner know you are aiming for the exam, I know this is a drop in the ocean compared to the time you need for something like the VCDX but to fully prepare for the exam you will need to study in the evenings after work and for all of your weekends.

Good luck to anyone attempting the exam and hopefully I will be able to update this posting stating I passed in three weeks’ time

Gregg

*UPDATE* I’m super pleased to say that I got my results back and I PASSED!!! Super pleased and now onto my VCAP5-DCD


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VCDX Spotlight: Tom Ralph

Name: Tom Ralph

Twitter Handle: @tomralph

Blog URL: http://www.virtualserverguy.com

Current Employer: VMware, Inc

VCDX #: 51

How did you get into using VMware?

I first started by purchasing an IBM xSeries 1U rack mount server off eBay to try out this new product from VMware. I fired up the server in my home office, installed ESX 2.53, and started to learn about virtualization. After the first 20 minutes, I could see that VMware and server virtualization was the future.

What made you decide to do the VCDX?

As soon as I learned of the VCDX certification, I made it a goal to achieve the VCDX certification and a number under 100.

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

I had already had my VCP from 2007, I first took my VMware Design Exam in March of 2010, with the Administration shortly after that. I then defended my design in August of 2010. I then paced around VMworld awaiting my results, which finally came 2 weeks after the show ended.

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

If you want it, go for it! I learned more about technology, enterprise architecture, and process than I ever thought I would have. During your defence know when to say ‘I do not know’, it is a hard skill to master but a critical one. Know the smallest details of your design and know them through and through.

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

When I first attempted the VCDX certification, I was newly married to a wonderful woman that allowed me to focus 100% on the process. Now we have a 1-year-old child, I am not able to devote the time needed. I would take more time to thoroughly understand and complete my design.

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

My previous company did not know what to make of the certification or what it really meant. It wasn’t soon after I got the VCDX certification that I made the choice to leave that company and move to VMware. From there, my career has blossomed and continues to do so.


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VCDX Spotlight: Michael Webster

Name: Michael Webster

Twitter Handle: @vcdxnz001

Blog URL: https://longwhiteclouds.com

Current Employer : I own IT Solutions 2000 Ltd

VCDX #: 66

 

How did you get into using VMware?

In 1998 I started with the first early versions of VMware workstation on Linux while I was working at a large ISP. This allowed me some great options for supporting customers on multiple OS’s without having multiple machines. I started using ESX in 2002, and even with the very early versions could see the potential.

 

 

What made you decide to do the VCDX?

I wanted to achieve VCDX as a competitive differentiator from other consultants and consulting businesses and I wanted to prove to myself that I could be one of the best in the world at what I do. I also wanted to prove to VMware that I was a serious partner.

 

 

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

At least 10 years, if you include the work experience that leads up to it. I think the previous work experience I had was one of the factors that helped me be successful the first time through. If you’re just interested in the certificate path it took about 12 months in total from the time I passed VCP4, VCAP4-DCD, VCAP4-DCA and VCDX defence. Most of the time was spent waiting for the exams to become available.

 

 

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

Read the blueprints and application documents very carefully and do exactly what they say. Re-read them multiple times and make sure you cover everything. Make sure you know your design inside and out like the back of your hand. Be prepared to answer any questions on any aspect of it. Make sure you know where you made mistakes and can point them out and make sure you know where you deviated from best practices and why. Read all of the blog posts from the other VCDX’s about their journey and the tips that they give. Everything you need to know to be successful in VCDX is already publically available if you’re ready. Be prepared to invest hundreds of hours and a significant amount of money (yours or your companies). Do a mock defence with people that can ask pointed questions as a customer would so you have to explain and justify everything. Make sure you are comfortable presenting and can think and design and troubleshoot on your feet.

 

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

I don’t think I’d change anything.

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

 

Regardless of how my company and customers responded the process was definitely worth it. I loved the process and I learned a lot from it. Even if I wasn’t successful at the defence it would still have been worth it, just for the learning experience alone.

It has opened a lot more doors since I achieved VCDX and I have had the opportunity to work on a few more exciting projects that I may not have had otherwise. Some customers are specifying a requirement for VCDX in their RFP’s. So being one of such a small group really is worth it.

I get the opportunity to contact and work with quite a few other VCDX’s and this is very valuable, as everyone has different experience and there is always opportunities to learn more.

One thing that I constantly have running through my mind is “With great power comes great responsibility.” I think with having achieved VCDX people pay a lot more attention to what I say and do and I have to be a good role model. The number of followers and connections I have has certainly increased a lot. So there can be a lot greater consequences for what I say in public and I try to be mindful of that. But it’s not going to stop me speaking my mind. But I do consider the impact a lot more before I take a position on something.

But everybody is human, even VCDX’s. We can’t know everything, but we do try and know what we don’t know, and if we don’t know something say so. Integrity is of the utmost importance.

This is always nice also:

IMG_3437


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VCDX Spotlight: Chris Colotti

Name: Chris Colotti

Twitter Handle: @CColotti

Blog URL: http://www.chriscolotti.us

Current Employer: VMware, Inc.

VCDX #: 37

How did you get into using VMware?

This is actually a long story, but I will try to keep it brief. Back in late 2003, I began playing with ESX 1.5 in a home lab for my own personal education. At the time I was a business analyst working for the office of the Executive Vice President at PC Connection in NH, helping create a new custom application for the sales team. However, I really wanted to work in the IT department. I started to learn as much about VMware and virtualization as I could as part of the project. Once the project needed to move into implementation I saw my opening to pitch the use of VMware. I also knew that nobody in IT at the time even heard or it, so I ended up being the VMware expert and was moved into IT to run the implementation of the systems. I deployed PC Connection’s first groups of clusters on IBM hardware and storage with good success. At the time we were one of very few companies using VMware 2.x in Production at the time and we were a great story for IBM and VMware.

What made you decide to do the VCDX?

I’d like to say it was for career advancement, or recognition, but really the main reason was personal growth. As a VMware PSO employee at the time it was harder to find the time and the support from some managers back then to take the tests, let alone the defence. Like many things I do in my life, I do them just to see if I can and to help myself grow to a new personal level. It’s a challenge to myself to learn new things and VCDX was one I wanted to see if I could get. I simply wanted to be one of the first people in VMware PSO to achieve the certification and my mission was accomplished.

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

This for me took almost 2 years. I started the process by taking the original tests once they were released. Getting support from managers as a PSO person on delivery engagements was always a challenge, but there was also delays in the early stages of the tests and defences. Once I passed the tests, there were not many defences available to get into at first. I think I recall there only being ones at PEX and VMworld at that time. If memory serves there was not any outside of corporate events like the big two. I also think the limited spots were being given to VMware employees at fist in order to get the word out on the program for non VMware people. Travel budgets and other restrictions got lifted and finally made it possible at Partner Exchange in Las Vegas.

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

I think the best advice I can give is like any challenge, do it for you. Not for you’re company, your boss, the hope of a raise, or jumping ship with a shiny new certification to get you a new job. If you go into it with goals that are not for personal growth, it’s not going to be fun or rewarding. You should WANT to get your VCDX, you should not feel like you HAVE to get it. The other things may or may not come, but nothing is ever guaranteed except personal satisfaction. Prepare for the defence properly. It’s a conversation between you and the panel. It’s not a grilling session of you by them, or a 90 minute PowerPoint by you. Have fun with it and I say these days, enjoy the journey. I think the best part for me was the defence itself, and that is where most people freak out. I actually had fun talking about the solution and admitting where things were not really great in the design. Those areas gave me talking points for the panel. No design is perfect, you should admit where you made mistakes, and why they may have been bad decisions. Lastly, too many people worry about the names of the panellists and who they will get. Don’t worry about it, frankly it does not matter who you get on your panel.

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

 I’m not sure really. I passed the defence on the first attempt, so I really have nothing to look back on and change. Personally the written exams are tough for me. If I could change anything it would be to study for those more. Even today I have trouble with the exams to maintain my upgrade status. I cannot even say I’d want a different group of panel members as a joke. I liked having both Frank and Duncan in the room for my defence. We have all three been friends really ever since and found mutually newfound respect for one another. My journey led to many projects with both of them. I can’t say I’d personally change anything, I’d do it the same a second time around.

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

Trick question since I work for VMware. At the time it was so new and not well known so there was not much response to be honest. I think now as people pass it there is more visibility to it, so there may be more recognition internally. For me being #37 and the fact it was so new made it hard for people to understand what it meant. Life is the same as it was before for the most part. I’d say it was worth it for my personal growth like anything else I do, but for me it has not change anything in what I do or how I do it. Back then I wish it had more recognition, but as they say, it is what it is.


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VCDX Spotlight: Mike Brown

Name: Mike Brown

Twitter Handle: @vMikeBrown

Blog URL: www.mabrown.net

Current Employer : VMware

VCDX #: 71

 

How did you get into using VMware?

It was in 2007 and I just started working for an oil company in Houston TX. They had all of test/dev in ESX 2.x. The one guy who managed it all showed me vMotion and I was hooked. I managed to get on the “team” as Virtual Infrastructure 3 was being rolled out to production and the company adopted a Virtualization first policy. From there I got my VCP 3 and just read all I could find online and basically decided this technology is where I wanted to focus.

 

What made you decide to do the VCDX?

To be honest, it started as an ego thing. I thought I knew it all and that I would breeze right through the process. When I got to my first defense in November of 2010 I was handed a serious reality check. After that failure I re-evaluated what I was trying to achieve by obtaining VCDX certification. To me VCDX means you’re in the top of the field for architecting virtualization solutions, you know the platform like the back of your hand and why you would chose to do something one way instead of another, this is what I was missing.

 

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

From the time I took the VCDX 3 pre tests, enterprise administration and datacenter design (there were no VCAP’s then) till the time I obtained VCDX was close to 2 years. I ended up defending four times before I was successful. I really struggled in the defenses, my designs were good or I wouldn’t have been invited to defend so many times but I struggled with the justification of why I chose one way over the other and once I figured that out and really concentrated on explaining the pros and cons of each way and why it worked for this particular design I was successful.

 

 

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

Be prepared for the commitment and sacrifice that goes into a certification like this. This is hands down the hardest thing I’ve done in my 14 year IT career.

After you’ve passed the VCAP’s and are gearing up to start the VCDX application and design, get the blueprint and read it a few times. Just like with other VMware certifications the information you need to be successful is in there. Remember the journey whether you pass or fail is a great learning experience. And lastly don’t get discouraged, this is a hard certification to obtain and you may not be successful your first time through but remember the experience and improve upon what you just went through and you’ll be that much closer next time.

 

 

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

Nothing. Even though I spent close to 2 years trying to obtain this certification, flying across the world for defenses, the experience and knowledge I obtained was worth all the time I invested.

 

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

Shortly after I obtained my VCDX I took a hard look at the career path I was going down where I was currently working. I was a Senior Virtualization Consultant for a VMware Partner but most of the projects I was working on and saw coming down the pipeline weren’t VMware or even Virtualization focused, they were Cisco UCS/Nexus and NetApp focused. While I love those technologies I really wanted to focus solely on VMware products. In April of 2012 I joined VMware’s Professional Services Organization as a Senior Consultant on the Cloud Infrastructure and Management team. My first official job was to go to Toronto to be a VCDX panelist which was awesome and a relief to be sitting on the other side of the table. I love my job and while I could have joined this team without a VCDX, it certainly helped having it so yes it was definitely worth it.