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Category Archives: VCDX


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VCDX Prep Advice Series – The design scenario

For every VCDX round, I normally run unofficial face to face mock as the last hurdle and prep for all those defending the VCDX that round in the UK and for anyone wanting to come to assist with the mocks and learn from them. I have run these for a number of years and have got really great feedback from them but last year alike to so many things I was unable to run any due to Covid and who knows if I can this year. So I thought I would do an updated series of postings around the advice I normally give in these mocks, advice I give in the VCDXPrepGroup slack channel I founded and run and link to postings where I summarised previous advice. I will break the series into distinct areas along the path to VCDX to try help people wherever they are along the path *NOTE* All advice here is keeping within NDA’s and despite me now being a VCDX panellist it is the same as when I wasn’t one.

The design scenario is the portion of the defence after you have defended your design. This is where the panellists now become your customer and is where you show how you can get the information from the scenario slides and the panellists to get a logical design laid out.

From my experience doing mocks for the last number of years, it is the part that most people either run out of time to prepare for or underestimate the importance of this piece of the defence. The design scenario shows your panellists that if they, for example, couldn’t attend a customer design meeting, they could confidently send you, and you will get the information required from the customer and have a logical diagram/design that you can send to them post the meeting.

When I was preparing for my defence for my second attempt, I spent countless hours planning out how I wanted to ask my questions and how I wanted to layout my whiteboard to show my skills and ensure I showed a journey to my “customers”. The method I used (Note: I practiced loads by myself to see what worked for me, so certainly try out what works for you best) is one that Rene van den Bedem and Larus Hjartarson and I had done together when we were part of each others study groups. They were two of my mentors for my second attempt.

  • I had a list of questions I wanted to ask for each pillar of the blueprint (my list is old for some things as it was for vSphere 5.x), as this allowed me to get the information I wanted. I always did that gave me confidence as if I was doing another mock scenario.
  • I made a list of conceptual questions that I would go through again like a “script” as I wanted to drum into my mind all the pieces I wanted to ask so that I could go into that automatic mode when under pressure. It is in the second part of this posting.
  • The best method IMO is one blogged about by Rene van den Bedem. Rene created this when preparing for his second VCDX attempt, and I was preparing for my first. The questions and whiteboard layout are great ideas and allow you to collect and record information whilst allowing the panellists to see your thinking and your essential whiteboarding skills.
  • Stemming off of Rene’s method above Larus Hjartarson, who had Rene as his mentor, took the technique one step further and blogged about it here. I used Larus’ method in my second defence preparations and recommend it highly as it allows you to show your skills and get your diagrams logically drawn up on the whiteboard by the end.
  • Get yourself a whiteboard and practise it again and again and again. There are several example design scenarios out there that you can use and adapt. I would use some as a starting point but would change the answers I was expecting the panellists were giving me or changing the answer they gave me halfway through to practice how I could look at what I had written down and drawn and change it due to that requirement change. Indeed, practice talking about what you are doing on the board and continually ask questions to try to gleam out information. Make sure you have good reasons to ask those questions, as sometimes the panellists who are role-playing as customers might have to email someone to get the answer to your question.
  • The design scenario is the place where you want to try to score points in places you felt you didn’t in the previous phase of the defence, so when I’ve done loads of mocks in the past, I see far too often people trying to recreate the design they submitted. Now I’m not saying don’t use some skills you learnt from your design, and if, for example, you had HCI in your design and the precise method for the scenario is taking you down that route, then not to do that but try show you know things outside your “comfort zone”.
  • As I said in my The X in VCDX posting, try to show that eXpert level of knowledge by maybe showing that something needs to follow a particular route, but if that isn’t possible, then there are alternate routes, but you didn’t recommend that because of x, y and z.
  • KEEP IT LOGICAL
  • KEEP IT LOGICAL. Yes, I’ve done it twice, as again, far too many times in mocks, I have seen people go from getting a few requirements to custom network configurations in a matter of seconds. A good architect will keep it in the conceptual and logical, and whilst the answer is VMware, it doesn’t mean you need to go into deep technical configurations as that is what a VCAP level person does. A senior consultant would do on a project, not the lead architect you are trying to prove you are.
  • Listen to what the panellists are saying; this is true in both phases of the defence, but despite what people believe, 99,9% of panellist want to see you pass (I don’t know the 0.1 ). They aren’t giving you answers to trip you up, and it’s possible and probable they are trying to get you to show skills in an area so they can score you on it ideally at a good level.
  • I would recommend reading Rene and Larus’ postings above to read Josh Odgers VCDX Defence Essentials – Part 2- Preparing for the Design Scenario posting.

The design scenario shouldn’t be a nerve-wracking experience, and I believe from my experience in my defences that the more I practiced, the less nervous I was and the more it felt like I was doing another mock. There is a reason in so many professions people practice drills so that when an event comes, despite them being nervous or full of adrenaline, their training and practice comes through.

Gregg


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VCDX Prep Advice Series – The Supporting Documents

For every VCDX round, I normally run unofficial face to face mock as the last hurdle and prep for all those defending the VCDX that round in the UK and for anyone wanting to come to assist with the mocks and learn from them. I have run these for a number of years and have got really great feedback from them but last year alike to so many things I was unable to run any due to Covid and who knows if I can this year. So I thought I would do an updated series of postings around the advice I normally give in these mocks, advice I give in the VCDXPrepGroup slack channel I founded and run and link to postings where I summarised previous advice. I will break the series into distinct areas along the path to VCDX to try help people wherever they are along the path *NOTE* All advice here is keeping within NDA’s and despite me now training to become a VCDX panellist it is the same as when I hadn’t gone through the training.

I’ve built the design but what are all these other documents needed?

Naturally, most people focus on their design as this is what you are defending but the VCDX requires you to also submit at a minimum:

  • An installation guide
  • An implementation plan
  • A testing plan
  • A Standard Operating Procedures document

I will break down what each of these is if you’ve never come across them or if you think some of them are the same thing.

  • Installation Guide

The installation guide is a document that shows for someone that is of VCP level skillset how to install the solution. This can have links to VMware documentation but it has to be personalised to your environment/solution as just a plethora of links will not suffice. I always tell people to do this document like you are providing it to a paying customer as they will want it at a level that their staff can follow it if they have to, for example, build the environment from scratch without you. I get asked sometimes if screenshots are needed and whilst it isn’t likely a hard rule, naturally if the person using the document can see a screenshot that looks exactly like the one they are on it will make it easier for them to follow

  • Implementation Plan

This is your project plan where you have to set out all the roles, responsibilities and the timeframes for each portion of the design. Again this has to be specific to your project so even if you have a generic timeline from your vendor or company you need to amend it to your design and trust me the panellists review all the documentation so don’t put your design being accepted to defend at risk by not doing this or any of the supporting documentation properly.

  • Testing Plan

This is where you now prove your design and components by running it through tests to prove it works. I personally like to number all of my tests as even though it isn’t a requirement for your VCDX submission I find using a Requirements Traceability Matrix and showing how you have taken all the requirements from the conceptual design all the way to the testing and validation phase and proven the design you have created meets these helps you ensure you’ve not missed something. Alike to what I mentioned in the implementation plan section you have to provide a testing plan specific to your environment as generic tests of just pulling some cables etc will not suffice.

  • Standard Operating Procedures

The SOP is all the steps and procedures needed to keep the environment running whilst you are away as well as steps your end customer must follow in the event of certain failures. A good design is one where at the end of the project when you leave the end customer can run it with as little effort as possible. If your design is so complex and requires so much continual manual monitoring and tweaking to keep it running then you have very possibly over-engineered it and the project is at risk of failing. This document should be covering places where the end-user can do checks on all the dashboards, automated reports, configured alarms and how to troubleshoot and build out the environment once you have left.


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VCDX Prep Advice Series – Building your submission

For every VCDX round, I normally run unofficial face to face mock as the last hurdle and prep for all those defending the VCDX that round in the UK and for anyone wanting to come to assist with the mocks and learn from them. I have run these for a number of years and have got really great feedback from them but last year alike to so many things I was unable to run any due to Covid and who knows if I can this year. So I thought I would do an updated series of postings around the advice I normally give in these mocks, advice I give in the VCDXPrepGroup slack channel I founded and run and link to postings where I summarised previous advice. I will break the series into distinct areas along the path to VCDX to try help people wherever they are along the path *NOTE* All advice here is keeping within NDA’s and despite me now training to become a VCDX panellist it is the same as when I hadn’t gone through the training.

The mysterious VCDX Design

I hear from a lot of people about various challenges and hurdles in building their design and below are the main ones:

  • Ive Never seen a “VCDX Design”

When I defended my first VCDX I received a fair few messages from people asking if they could see my design as they too wanted to submit but said they have never seen a design that got invited to a VCDX defence. What I shared instead was the table of contents so people can possibly understand the flow (in my personal opinion) a good design should have. I have posted screenshots below of my table of contents from my actual VCDX-DCV submission and there is also the blog posting Derek Seaman posted a while ago around this exact topic. Every person and design is different but outlines like Derek and I’s are relatively the outlines most DCV designs follow that have a good flow from conceptual to logical to physical and cover all the pillars.

  • I’m waiting for the right project before starting my design.

This partly refers to my first posting and how I always tell people to just get started. It is highly unlikely you will find the right project and for most people, I’ve spoken to and including my own, your design will normally be a merger of two or more designs where maybe for the main design the customer didn’t ask you at that point to add certain features until later phases or not at all but you added them to your design to show you design skills and the lessons you learnt from another project which had those features are now in this design.

Basing it on real-world projects helps you refer to those real challenges you had that will come to light when you have to defend your design and I can’t even remember what was and wasn’t in the main project that I based my design on as after a while it became its own sole project.

  • I haven’t passed my VCIX yet

Whilst you need the VCIX in your chosen track before submitting there is no reason you can’t start building your design whilst getting the certification as it takes a fair amount of time and effort to build your submission and you don’t want to wait until you have your VCIX and then realise it might take you much longer than you planned to build the design and submit. I have seen far too many people sadly lose the motivation at this point.

  • My customer/company won’t want me to use my current design.

This one is a tough one sometimes and I want to say that for high-security customers you should get approval before submitting as my normal advice to people for this is that you can sanitise the design and change all the name to something generic which is actually fairly common for people to do but if it is military or government this is normally not enough so do get it checked. 

Sanitising your design is fairly easy and most companies outside the edge cases I mention above are fine as long as you remove their names and their information from the design and normally if they review it to ensure they feel it has been done sufficiently. The designs are only shared with those scoring the designs as well as your panellists if these are different people and once your defence is completed these are removed so no one has them.


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VCDX Prep Advice – Building your submission

For every VCDX round, I normally run unofficial face to face mock as the last hurdle and prep for all those defending the VCDX that round in the UK and for anyone wanting to come to assist with the mocks and learn from them. I have run these for a number of years and have got really great feedback from them but this year alike to so many things I was unable to run any due to Covid. So I thought now I have a chance to catch my breath after my first year as a VMware employee I would do an updated series of postings around the advice I normally give in these mocks, advice I give in the VCDXPrepGroup slack channel I founded and run and link to postings where I summarised previous advice. I will break the series into distinct areas along the path to VCDX to try help people wherever they are along the path *NOTE* All advice here is keeping within NDA’s and despite me now training to become a VCDX panellist it is the same as when I hadn’t gone through the training.

I don’t know where to start

Building your VCDX submission can seem a massively daunting task and the more you work on it the larger it seems to get but my first piece of advice I always give people is to just get started as soon as possible. 

  • Start with the conceptual design and ensure your requirements are clear and concise and verified. Far too often I have done reviews for people and sadly they haven’t recorded the requirements very well and have built their design around these but because they aren’t clear it can make their design fall apart fairly quickly with very simple questions. One example I see often is people not recording availability and recoverability correctly where they have a requirement of 99.99% availability but it isn’t clear what this applies to and when. You need to ensure of you have SLA’s, RPO’s, RTO’s and MTD defined that it is very clear where this does and does not apply.
  • Once you have completed the conceptual design get it reviewed before moving onto logical. Like above I see it far too often where people don’t have their requirements clearly defined and to then change it at a review a week before submission deadline is nigh on impossible. Getting someone to have a quick review of them will then help you ensure you have them defined well and is something I see far too often in real life where requirements are defined clearly and then the customer isn’t possibly happy as you misunderstood their requirement. For this, I did a Requirements Traceability Matrix for my defence and I use one on all major projects I work on to ensure that the requirements I have recorded and got approval for can be tracked all the way to the verification tests at the end of the project. This RTM is one part I changed about my design after my first VCDX failure as blogged about here: What Changed Between My Two VCDX Design Submissions
  • Get yourself a mentor and into a good group of people also aiming for the VCDX. When I did my first VCDX I didn’t have a mentor and I built the whole design “alone”. By chance when I had to pay for my VCDX design review the link to pay didn’t work and when they sent a new link they included the other people also submitting and even though I knew Bobby Stampfle was submitting I didn’t know Rene Van Den Bedem (Quadruple VCDX) was going for his first. Out of this, we three built a study group that became the basis of my now pretty successful VCDXPrepGroup slack channel. The amount I learnt from those two in that first defence is why I made the channel and the number of people who have benefited from all the help those in the channel provides from NDA permitting advice to mocks to design reviews I personally feel is invaluable. I know there are people who have passed without a prep group but why not use a good group of people who have gone through the process already to soundboard off of and who understand the grind and can show you the journey you are on is worth it (in our opinions). If you are really looking to defend within the next twelve months then please contact me and I will add you to the Slack channel. (realistically is if you at least have your VCP and one VCAP in your planned track and are planning to do the second VCAP and start your design very soon if not already)

In the next posting, I will cover off something I hear often and have heard from numerous people over the years of “I am waiting for the right project”. If you want me to cover something then please do leave a comment or message me on Twitter @greggrobertson5 and I will try to incorporate it into this series.

Gregg

 


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Hello VMware

I have been meaning to post this for a few weeks but between pieces needing to be done around the news, AWS re:Invent and just the holiday period I haven’t managed to until now.

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As of last week Monday (8th of December) I now work for VMware PSO as a Staff Consulting Architect after having been transitioned across along with a handful of others whose skillsets fitted better in VMware than Dell EMC. The move is bitter sweet as I have really enjoyed and grown with Dell EMC and have done some cutting edge projects but with my skillset being pretty heavy in VMware technologies,my being a 9 time vExpert ,a VMware fanboy for so long and having so many really good friends working for VMware I am really excited to join.

I am really looking forward to making my mark within VMware and I love the company ethos and especially the way the company is moving. A massive thanks to all those I worked with at Dell EMC, I would highly recommend the company and special thanks to Tim Gleed who headhunted me just over three years ago to be a global cloud architect.

Gregg


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#AWS #ReInvent Day 1

The first official day of AWS ReInvent kicked off yesterday with the number of people arriving for registration and the Expo hall and sessions open and in full swing. If you missed my Day 0 recap then have a look here.

 

My Day 1 started with me getting up early due to my body clock still being on UK time and going for a run whilst the streets were quiet, its something I like doing and getting some “fresh” air rather than recycled casino or hotel air is really helpful I find. I managed to hit a fair number of steps by the end of the day after my run and the amount of walking around the conference to different sessions and I was careful too book as many as close as possible to each other

 

For a number of these conferences I enjoy meeting up with people in the community who are doing the same kinds of things and through my work and time within the VMware community I am very fortunate to have built a good amount of friends and being able to speak to people doing different projects with the same technology or knowing that person who is doing the same thing you are for a customer helps you reach other and learn from each other. I met up with a few London VMUG, VCDX and vBrownbag crew for breakfast at the non politically correct named – eggslut

 

Next I went to a session all around Amazon Aurora and it’s now GA offering and some lessons learnt from a customer Pagerly who has already used it as well as a preview of what the offering does and enables you to do. It amazed me how many people kept taking pictures of each and every slide when the sessions are recorded where you can see the slides as much and for as long as you want. The offering looks amazing and it certainly has it’s place but I was saddened to hear they weren’t supporting the latest version of PostgreSQL which most of my customer use and would require it to support

 

The next session I went to was unfortunately full by the time I got there as they open up the waiting line ten minutes before the start and my reserved seat got taken so I met up with and chatted to a company who are working with me on my current customer and discussed my thoughts of using them for some customers I have not just doing DC migrations but also to help them move workloads to the cloud and track them efficiently.

 

After lunch I went to a session all around the AWS Well Architected Framework which was a whiteboard session and was very interesting. If you haven’t heard of or used the framework for your deployments then I would highly recommend it as it reminds me of VMware vCAT solution that helps you with a large amount of broad best practices but is pen enough for you to utilise it to your customer/companies requirements.

 

The expo hall was then opened and I walked around numerous times talking to people at the VMware booth all about VMware Wavefront, the AWS booth around security and compliancy and the Dell EMC booth as I had a few friends working on there.

 

I had some dinner with some friends and then was an old man and went to my hotel as my lack of sleep and number of steps had caught up with me and I anted to get a good sleep before the vBreakfast running this morning of around 30 VMware community people attending eh conference all meeting up for breakfast and hopefully starting something we can do annually

 

Gregg


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Why you should attend VMworld 2018

VMworld has something for everyone from those just learning about virtualisation to those who have been part of the industry for a number of years and are looking to those in depth sessions and discussions with the evangelists and guru’s of VMware plethora of offerings and solutions. If you haven’t yet booked your place then let me list some of the reasons I think you should attend as they are the reasons I try to attend every year:

  • On the Sunday of VMworld US the vBrownbag crew along with the VMUnderground crew are again running opening acts and then the VMUnderground party in the Evening (keep an eye out for tickets as these sell out very fast). The opening acts are always well attended and if you are a vExpert then it is a brilliant way to meet many others and if you are not then you can come and get motivated to submit by Ariel Sanchez. I blogged about my attending and being on a panel last year in my day 1 recap posting here (I’m the nerd in the blue VCDX shirt in the picture).

vbrownbag

  • My next reason is about the community again but this time the ability to network with like minded individuals at the bloggers tables, fellow vExperts, fellow VCDX at the VCDX townhall on the Saturday before VMworld and all those I hope to meet over lunch and at the vBrownbag TechTalks who are working in collaboration with the VMTN team to run the infamous TechTalks. If you have never heard of the TechTalks then a brief overview is below:
    • Tech Talks originated at VMworld 2012 where they provided an opportunity for community members, whose presentation submissions were not accepted into the main catalogue, to present the core of  a topic.  #TechTalks are a ten minute presentation by a community member for the benefit of the community. Since almost everyone working in technology has solved problems and learned something almost everyone could present a #TechTalk.  The format can be a slide deck or simply talking, they are usually about how to solve a problem or get the most out of a product. The TechTalk is captured on video and published on the vBrownBag YouTube channel.
    • If the conference Internet connection allows, the talk is also live streamed from the show.
    • #TechTalks are for community members to reach other community members, any topic that will help other people is good.  The one thing that TechTalks are not is an opportunity to present the corporate slide deck about a great product you would like us to buy.  #TechTalks are about up skilling and education, the only marketing should be from the TechTalk sponsors who help make the whole thing happen.
  • Next are the breakout sessions, group discussions and expert panels. The content catalog is packed with amazing sessions by some of the biggest names in the industry and those up and coming in the industry. I’m personally really looking forward to all of the VMware Cloud on AWS sessions as it bridges my existing knowledge and interest in VMware with my exponentially growing interest in AWS. The sessions are also recorded so if you can’t make it to a sessions due to a conflict then by registering for VMworld you get access to all the recorded sessions after the conference for you to watch in your own time.
  • My next reason are the VMware Hands-On Labs which cover all VMware technologies and allow you to play with the latest releases and offerings not just from VMware but also VMware partners. Alike to the sessions the hands on labs are available after the conference but I would recommend going to a few that really interest you (again I’ve allocated some walk trough’s of the VMConAWS solution) and then you can do the remaining ones after the conference. If however you really want to hit the labs hard then I know they normally give a free pass to next years VMworld to the top few people who have completed the most labs.
  • The solution exchange is my next reason as this is the perfect opportunity to speak to those vendors who are offering the latest solution that might save your business and team loads of money and or time and this is the perfect opportunity to speak to that vendor who might be offering the solution that will fix the issues your company is experiencing and take that knowledge back to your company and impress your management with how you’ve found a great solution and to prove that your going to VMworld was worth it and that they should send you again next year. I would be remise if I didn’t encourage you to go speak to Dell EMC and hear about their amazing offerings all the way through the stack as well as pre-packaged and validated solutions for SMB’s all the way to large enterprises.
  • If you are looking to obtain that next VMware certification or want to speak to the certification team about the performance of your latest VCAP-Deploy exam then there are loads of  VMware Certification opportunities. You can also book reduce cost exams at VMworld which I have personally never decided to do but loads of the community swear by it and due to the reduced cost it means if you unfortunately don’t make it then it isn’t that much of a dent to your pocket and lets you scope out the exam to better prepare for next time.
  • Last is the parties and due to the conferences being in Vegas and Barcelona you can imagine the amount of them there are and the amount of meet ups after the parties that happen.  There are parties for everyone so if you are looking for a chilled drinks evening then there are loads of opportunities for that and if you want to party all night (save some sleep to be able to attend the conference) then there are plenty of those as well. If you haven;t got a ticket to VMUnderground on Sunday then the Welcome Reception kicks off the conference experience with food, drinks, and networking in the Solutions Exchange. There are normally loads of announcements about the parties closer to the time so keep an eye out on social media as the parties fill up fast and remember the strip is big so unless you plan to uber it then getting to three parties in a night might not be possible. The VMworld party finishes off the conference on Wednesday night.

If you are looking to attend then sign up here  and make sure to come find me and say hi as well as I encourage you to attend the TechTalks which are due to be added to the content catalog very soon.

 

Gregg


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#UKVMUG 2017

I was again very fortunate to attend the UKVMUG today. I have been a supported of the London VMUG for a number of years although due to work commitments and billable work obviously winning out I haven’t managed to attend as many as I would like. For this year I was also able to attend my first vCurry which for those who don;t know is a curry (who would have guessed) and a typically British quiz night but with a technology slant to it.

vCurry

The vCurry was really great and was held inside the motorcycle museum in Solihull next to where the UKVMUG is. It was great to see many faces from the community and even some #vBrownbag crew in Rebecca Fitzhugh who I presented a session with today and Emad Younis . The quiz was really good fun with loads of amusing question like some of the below around some of the famous VMware faces and their unknown previous job (just one is true)

 

My table/team won which was nice and there were loads of good laughs during the evening followed by some drinks and chatting to people.

The UKVMUG

I arrived fairly early for registration and then chatted to a few old colleagues and some people from the community around IoT and my growing interest in the area especially with Dell Technologies having a play in the space.

The day started with a welcome from Simon Gallagher and then moved onto the keynote by VMware EMEA CTO Joe Baguley. As usual Joe’s keynote was really interesting and shows where the industry might be going and focused on edge computing which as I mentioned earlier fit right into what I am currently learning around Dell’s IQT offerings. I wrote about my perspectives around it a few months ago here if interested. Joe also covered the need for not just understanding IT like we do day to day but also OT now that these edge devices are in the domain of OT people who have been using very specialised and critical systems to do their day to day job.

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Joe also covered how there is now becoming a need for not just the normal data centres but now micro and nano data centres

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Next I went and chatted to a number of the sponsors to learn what they are offering and to see how their offerings might fit for my customers or for some how their offerings are a competitor to Dell EMC. I also chatted to the UKVMUG crew who are also the London VMUG crew. If you want to attend a UKVMUG or even better want to present then please do reach out as they have their next meeting very soon:

  • Thursday 18th January
  • Thursday 22nd March
  • Thursday 14th Jun

After lunch I attended the Virtual Design Master session by Chris Porter, Gareth Edwards and Kyle Jenner which was really interesting and seeing as I managed to watch the recordings of this years one it was great to see and hear what the guys learnt from the whole process.

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Next was mine and Rebecca’s session around “How failing the VCDX made me a better architect”. The session went really well and we had some good questions and discussions afterwards with a few people coming up and declaring they are aiming to submit and defend for VCDX. I’m planning to maybe do a vBrownbag for mine and Rebecca’s session so I don’t want to cover it here but one point from our session was something I mentioned in my VCDX passing posting around the videos I used to watch which had Eric Thomas speaking in them about how badly do you want it and about giving up after my first failure. The full piece of this speech I found fairly recently which is here and is something I watch often and I would highly recommend. I also finished his book this past week and again highly recommend it. This quote over my desk is one of my favourites of his

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After my session I spoke to a few people about IoT pieces as well as VMware Cloud on AWS and VMware HCX and then made my way home to miss traffic. The day was really great and as always I really enjoyed presenting and certainly need to up my game and try present more at VMUG’s ,on the vBrownbag and hopefully Dell EMC world and VMworld next year

 

Gregg


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VMworld Day 1 recap

VMworld kicked off formally today and there were whole bunch of announcements and some awesome sessions and demo’s I was able to attend and blog about but firstly I would like to recap Saturday and Sunday’s activities so if you just want to hear about today then skip the paragraphs below and go straight to the Monday/Today heading.

Saturday:

I purposely flew in on Friday fro the UK so that i could attend the VCDX workshop and then the VCDX Town hall afterwards. The VCDX workshop and town hall were hosted at the cosmopolitan hotel and the workshop started off early at 7:30 am with some breakfast/desert seeing as it was coffee and donuts. If you don;t know what the VCDX workshop is it is a workshop for those thinking of going for the VCDX soon and is aimed to give those aiming for it valuable information and advice around the whole process, what to do and not to do in your preparations and during the defence and also to clear up some possible misconceptions and ideally show that obtaining the VCDX is achievable with hard work and dedication. I’ve blogged about this achievability as well as my personal opinion of doing it for the “right” reasons here https://thesaffageek.co.uk/2017/02/17/why-do-you-want-the-vcdx-accreditation/ . It was really great to see that a very large amount of the people attending the workshop felt it was something they wanted to attempt and felt it was more of a realistic target after the workshop.

After this was the VCDX town hall which is for current VCDX to speak with the VCDX certification team, have a chance to hear from Pat Gelsigner the CEO of VMware and three of the VMware CTO’s before some food and drinks. The town hall was really good and there were some very tough questions asked of the certification team around the direction of the program, how we could get the certification known more widely and aid those looking to obtain it. Chris Colotti wrote a really pointed but accurate posting around a fair few of the topics brought up by the existing VCDX as despite what many might think current VCDX do want more people to join the ranks. We then had the honour of Pat Gelsigner speaking to us and answering some of out questions. It was greatly appreciated that Pat would take time out of his very busy schedule to spend time with us and as always you could see his passion for technology shining through. Next was the CTO panel with Chris Wolf, Guido Appenzeller and Ray O’Farrell. The panel was brilliant and again the three CTO’s were extremely interested to hear for the VCDX crowd and be open and honest with their future plans. Lastly was the drinks and food where we got to socialise which was really nice to chat and joke with fellow VCDX and learn what they are up to and doing.

Sunday:

Sunday is customarily when Partner exchange happened and this year was no different. Even though I work for a partner in Dell EMC I decided to instead attend and support the VMunderground and vBrownbag opening acts. The opening acts are a community event where a number of panels are run discussing various topics by the community for the community. I was very honoured to have been asked to be part of the second of the three panels of the day around How Failing Made Me Better. The panel was very enjoyable to be on and the advice given from all of the people on the panel seemed to be well taken by the crowd. As always the opening acts allowed me to also chat with others from the community some who i have known for years and others i have only met recently. It certainly helped that it was hosted at the beerhaus.

Media preview

After opening acts I wandered off to the solutions exchange to talk to some vendors as well as grab some food and drinks that were on offer. The solutions exchange was buzzing as you would expect and I managed to get over to the Datrium booth and collect my vExpert gift of an arbuboy. I then made my way back to the new york new york hotel for the VMunderground party which was happening at the beerhaus where I got to chat to loads of the community and meet up with some old friends. The VMUnderground party is always one of my favourites due to it always being in a location where you can chat to people without it being too dark or too loud (yes i realise i sound like an old man). After VMUnderground i made my way back to my hotel due to my need to be on a work conference call this morning.

Monday/Today

The day started off with me ensuring all my scheduled blogs had posted as the NDA for a number of the announcements was 5am this morning. I then made my way to the convention centre and decided to watch the keynote from the VMVillage bloggers tables as I had a session straight after the keynote and I wanted to make sure I made it in adequate time. There were a number of announcements in the keynote but the ones that I feel were the best coincided with the ones i blogged about which were:

After the keynote I attended a VMware Design Studio UX design session around VMware Cloud on AWS. The feedback around the UX seemed to be really helpful to the team and one portion I found really great was the number of woman that were part of the various team from VMware which is brilliant and certainly inspiring for my daughters futures if they decide to pursue technology as a career.

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Next I attended a session on VMware Cloud on AWS: Storage Deep Dive which was highly informative and gave some great overviews of not just VMC’s usage of vSAN in the current offering but also some possible future plans around Disaster Recovery, usage of various storage providers technologies, options for backup via partners like Dell EMC and growth abilities of the solution both outwards and upwards. When the recordings of the sessions come out I highly recommend watching this one. I really like the way VMC is heading and I think it will be a brilliant offering and product.

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After this I attended an invite only demo of VMware Cloud on AWS. The demo was highly informative and again I was left feeling really excited and enthused by the direction the offering is taking and the possibilities of it. When the partnership was first announced i was very unsure of how it would work and fit but I can certainly see the use cases and potential and now with VMware Cloud Services having been announced it means that you will be able to mange not just VMC but also Google Cloud Platform, Azure and your traditional vSphere environment in VMware Cloud Foundation.

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The announcements have been really good and with today’s now released GA of Pivotal Container Service there are very exciting things coming from VMworld from VMware and their eco-system of partners.

Gregg


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#VCDX Design Scenario “Tips”

Yesterday I ran some face to face mocks at Dell EMC’s offices in Brentford UK and during part of those at the end we discussed the design scenario and what i recommend people practice. I have partly mentioned some of it already in a posting i did after the last face to face mocks here. Additional to that I was showing those people that were going to defend this coming week the plan I had around the things I wanted to ensure I asked and also what I felt I needed to keep in mind during the design scenario. Now i have to make it clear I am not a panellist nor have i seen nor know the rubric the scenario is scored on but what worked for me at least are the following:

Question any information that doesn’t make sense!!!!

Compute

1. NUMA aware applications/OS’s?

2. If not how wide is the VM that is not NUMA aware?

3. Amount of growth?

4. Total vCPUs? Divide that by 5

5. Peak GHz for CPU?

6. Peak RAM for Memory?

7. PCIE connected hardware or USB dongles?

8. Rack or Blade? If blade are they half or full and logical diagram spreading across chassis. FDM mention

9. What kinds of applications are on these servers?

10. Scale up or scale out? N+ value

11. Right size VM’s after conversion

12. Add N+ value

 

Storage

1. FC,FCoE,iSCSI,NFS,VSAN,vFRC

2. Existing Tiers of Storage?

3. Amount of Free space? Is this dedicated to the project? How long is the support for this?

4. PEAK IOPS

5. Average IO size

6. Read/write ratios

7. SP speeds? Active passive,active active, ALUA?

8. Standard access switch and core setup?

9. Speed of existing FC switches if applicable?

10. Existing HBA’s? speeds of these HBA’s?

11. Software or hardware initiators?

12. CHAP?

13. IOPS, Amount of required storage?

14. Amount of growth?

 

Network

1. Traditional or CLOS?

2. North/south or East/West traffic?

3. vSS,vDS on N1KV?

4. Hybrid or vDS only?

5. 1GbE or 10GbE?

6. Converged Network Adapter or 10GbE?

7. Peak network throughput required?

8. Speeds of Network Switches

9. MTU for Jumbo frames 9000

 

VIM

1. HA and DRS? (limit 32 hosts and 3000 VM’s)

2. Dedicated management cluster?

3. Virtual vCenter or VCSA?

4. Linked Mode?

5. vCenter heartbeat

6. VUM and UMDS?

7. BC/DR?

8. vCenter design to separate vCenter from DB

 

I also did a second prep list that is very much alike to the one above but some slight addtional parts and for the cenceptual were the questions i had made a sentence out of to remember to ask them as i felt they gave me a good start and it was what i asked myself during each practice of the design scenario so when i did it in the defence it just felt like another practice and so calmed my nerves

 

Conceptual

  • Pick out the main objective of the project (design a cluster for the migrated workloads)
  • Write down all other requirements ,assumptions ,risks and constraints
  • Availability Requirements? <- if over 99.9 then warn of additional costs
  • N+ requirements
  • If existing hardware then how old? Is it dedicated to the project? What speeds and free space does it have? Processor family? NIC speeds? Room for growth? Anything missing that is required (HBA cards or 10GB NICS)
  • Consolidation and containment seem to always come up so ask about the steps for migrating the servers to vm’s and minimizing the risk of server sprawl….
  • Licencing?
  • Budget?
  • BC/DR? <- How soon is the requirement for the failover site and is the site even built? Distances and latency if already built

 

Compute

  • Total number of CPU’s <- Question/highlight if really high or low
  • Are applications/OS’s NUMA aware? What is the largest non numa aware vm?
  • Calculate number of required hosts
  • Very quick mention that could work it out with Peak CPU and Peak RAM also but DON’T DO THIS CALC
  • Add N+ to the total number and make sure the cluster doesn’t go over 32 or 3k vm’s (This was applicable to my vSphere 5.0 design where the limit was 32)
  • Right size VM’s after conversion

 

Storage

  • Peak Storage ,Peak IOPS,Average IO,Read/write? <- Question/highlight if really high or low
  • Storage Protocol?
  • Active/Active, Active/Passive,ALUA?
  • Different workloads require different tiers of storage?
  • Allocate RAID levels to different tiers

 

Network

  • Traditional Core access switch setup?
  • Total Peak throughput <- Question/highlight if really high or low
  • North/south and east/west
  • 1GB or 10GB
  • CNA or 10GB
  • vSS,Hybrid or VDS based on licencing question and on amount of required throughput and storage protocol

 

VIM

  • HA and DRS with the N+1 portion from earlier included
  • If avail was high and they keep to it then vCenter heartbeat
  • Dedicated Management Cluster
  • Separation of database and vCenter for resiliency
  • vSphere licences from conceptual questions