TheSaffaGeek

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

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

Skills and Abilities

  • Distinguish between virtualization, automation and cloud computing.

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

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

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

 

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

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

 

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

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


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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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VCDX Spotlight: Matt Vandenbeld

Name: Matt Vandenbeld

Twitter Handle: @vcloudmatt

Blog URL: www.cloudmatt.com

Current Employer : Long View Systems

VCDX #: 107

How did you get into using VMware?

I was a young systems administrator working for an enterprise customer. I began to hear about this new-fangled VMware ESX thing. I started doing some research into ESX and loved the concept of it. We had access to a lab and I installed ESX 2 and began to play with it. Thankfully the company I worked for also saw the value of the product and we were able to move it from the lab to running some staging machines – this was ESX 2.5. From then on my primary job was designing, configuring and installing VMware environments. I was very lucky to be in the right place at the right time.

 

What made you decide to do the VCDX?

I’ve always been the type to take on a challenge and there is no greater challenge in the virtualization industry. The more I learned about the certification, the process and the community the more I wanted to be one.

 

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

9 months from start of design to successful defence, that’s duration. I don’t really want to count how many hours I spent – probably 600+.

 

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

Start early, give yourself a LOT of time and work with a group. The more time and discussion you have about your design prior to submission the better. That being said it’s a fantastic learning opportunity – I highly recommend attempting it.

 

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

Give myself more time, not rush attempts.

 

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

The interesting thing about the VCDX certification is the journey is the part that improves you most. My work had acknowledged this and noted my improvements as an architect prior to obtaining the cert. They also supported my pursuit of the designation without wavering. I have moved to a new role within the organization and all-around it has been extremely positive. Having employer support is a very good thing.

I’m still pretty fresh to being a VCDX; the response in the community has been fantastic. This has been the best experience of my career and I look forward to seeing where it takes me.


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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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VCDX Spotlight: Joep Piscaer

Name Joep Piscaer

Twitter Handle http://www.twitter.com/jpiscaer

Blog URL http://www.virtuallifestyle.nl

Current Employer OGD ict-diensten

VCDX # 101

How did you get into using VMware?

I started using VMware in 2006 while I was a sysadmin at a large community college. They were just upgrading their Novell NetWare servers to Novell SLES and were testing VMware virtualization for both SLES and NetWare. I used VMware Workstation for my Novell CNE certification virtualizing NetWare and SLES to practice for the exams. Later that year, I switched to a different college, where they already had VMware infrastructure based on version 2.5 and 3.0, some blade chassis and other pretty advanced stuff, I thought. I became more interested and took on more and more responsibility of the VMware infrastructure. I quickly convinced my boss to send me to the VI ICM training course and attained VCP3.

That was the start of my VMware certification journey. I have collected all versions of VCP since v3, VCAP4- and VCAP5-DCA and –DCD, and even VCA310 and VCD310, the predecessors of VCAP (which I needed to drive 380 km for; the VCA and VCD exams were only available in Frankfurt).

What made you decide to do the VCDX?

I wanted the personal challenge. It was simply a matter of seeing if I could actually do it. On a more subtle level it was about proving to myself that the route I took towards VCDX-level experience and knowledge could pay off.
I had attended the vSphere Design Workshop, and was really interested in following the VMware way in designing an infrastructure and learning from that experience. In essence, I wanted to accelerate the process of learning a fundamentally different way of doing designs, since I had built up my own set of processes and tools over the years. I found the experience of VCDX immensely useful from that perspective, and am still working on integrating all the lessons-learned into my day-to-day work.

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

I’ve been considering going for VCDX since the VI3 days; but even reading through the blueprint was something I dreaded for a very long time. Seriously, I had that file on my desktop in multiple versions for over two years. So obviously, I thought I wasn’t ready yet.

From the moment I decided to actually, really, really, really go for it, it took me about a year and a half.

Somewhere in the spring of 2011, I attended a VMware PEX on Tour in the Netherlands. During the reception, I had a discussion with a couple of peers about VCDX. During the next couple of months, a VCDX study group was formed. Besides myself, Duco Jaspars, Arjan Timmerman and Marco Broeken took seat in this study group. During a preliminary meeting, we discussed methods of preparation, exchanged some study materials and drafted a rough planning. We agreed to meet every month or two to monitor progress and motivate each other.

I was given one day a week by my employer to work on VCDX and worked evenings and weekends for months.

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

The best tip I have for anyone thinking about the VCDX certification: attend a VCDX Boot Camp.

Make sure you don’t go through the process on your own. You need your peers for review. Everyone takes a different approach and has a different angle, and you’ll need that fresh lookout on your design. Secondly, make sure you plan very conservatively. You might run into a writers-block or otherwise. The peer pressure of the study group might make the difference.

Make sure your partner and employer are on board. You’ll need their support during the whole process! Thankfully, my employer agreed to free up some time (about one day a week in the last month-and-a-half) to focus on VCDX.

You know how people tell you you need to know your design by hard? That’s true. Very, very true. I have some references to a Microsoft Exchange Server Database Availability Group (DAG), and got asked more about Exchange than I’d expected. Just so you know: your panel might not stop asking questions outside of the VMware-box. Know your design in-and-out, out-and-in. Let peers review your design and have them write-up a list

of weak points or otherwise point out parts of your design that grabs their attention. You’ll want to dedicate extra time to those areas.

I had a blackout during one of the tougher questions on recovering from a split brain scenario and VMware HA. I just couldn’t explain the how and why, although I did know the answer and had dedicated a whole section of the testing plan to this specific area. I could only say “I don’t know, but I know I have documented this specific part in such and such document”. Tip: if you don’t know, say so. Don’t fool yourself, be honest and concentrate your effort on the next question.

I did make sure I had some fun stuff planned to take my mind off the waiting. Since the hard work was behind me, I felt I deserved some time off to horse around. I have completely re-built the home media centers (Raspberry Pi’s with XBMC with a central MySQL library database), the central media server (Microserver with Windows Server 2012), re-organized the eBook collection using Calibre (since I won a Kindle at VMworld Barcelona!) and spent lots of time with family and friends, whom I had neglected in the months prior. Tip: make sure you plan a cooling down period with lots of fun activities with friends, family and hobbies.

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

I have combined two real world designs into a single fictitious design. I wouldn’t take this path again.

I would have started either source projects or any future project with VCDX in mind. Having all the required documents alongside when you’re actually designing an environment makes all the difference. Taking each step with the VCDX blueprint in mind gives you the chance to actually align with all the requirements of the application, and is way easier than having to accommodate those application requirements post facto. I effectively did a post-mortem on two designs while integrating the two.

I felt I didn’t whiteboard enough. I had a whole list of diagrams in my head that I wanted to whiteboard, but I simply blacked out: I had a hard time coming up with that list once I stood there. I decided not to worry, and to just wing it. I should have practiced diagramming out various specific parts of the design more. I believe a study group is of immense value here: whiteboarding out parts of your design for the study group trains your muscle memory to be ready for the real deal. Tip: practice whiteboarding specific diagrams in a mock defense session.

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

Professionally, things haven’t changed a lot. I did get an insane amount of congratulations, as I made sure people knew what VCDX was all about before defending. Otherwise, I am still working on integrating everything I have learned in the VCDX process in my day-to-day work, which means adopting a couple of new ways of doing design documentation, working with the Zachman framework more often, and most of all: making sure my lessons-learned are passed on to other consultants for their benefit.

Concluding: I’m still waiting for the surprise party I’m sure my boss is going to throw me Smile.


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EMEA #vBrownbag

vBrownBagLogo-150x150That’s right, after having spoken to the infamous APAC and US vBrownbag teams at VMworld and via the VMware vExpert communities Arjan Timmerman and I have thrown our hats into the ring and have asked to borrow the guys vBrownbag’s and show the world that the EMEA VMware guru’s are the some of the best in the world.

We are looking to start doing them within the next few weeks and need all the VMware talent in EMEA to put their hands up and come present and for everyone to join the calls/webinars and contribute. We are looking to possibly follow two different tracks so as to not repeat what the APAC and US guys have done and so will be looking for people to present on objectives in the VCP5-IaaS and VCP5-DT exam blueprints. You can do any of the objectives so if you want to do the last objective for the IaaS then first come first served/booked.

We are thinking of doing it every fortnight on a Tuesday starting on the 23rd of October although if there is a very good amount of interest which I trust there will be then we can make it a weekly occurrence. We are currently looking to do it at 7PM GMT to allow everyone in Europe the time to get home.Please spread the word and lets show the VMware community the talent EMEA has to offer. You can register here for the webinars

We have created a Google form for people to start putting in their interest and what they want to talk about here.

Gregg and Arjan


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VCDX Spotlight: Artur Krzywdzinski

Name: Artur Krzywdzinski

Twitter Handle: @artur_ka

Blog URL: http://vmwaremine.com

Current Employer: GlassHouse Technologies

VCDX #: 77

How did you get into using VMware?

It was beginning 2005 I saw article in internet about virtualisation using Windows Virtual PC software. After few weeks I started looking around for software which supports Novell Netware and Linux as a VM and I found VMware and VMware workstation – which I still use in my HomeLab. That’s how I started. Next step was a small implementation of VI 3.5 (2 nodes + vCenter) – this was a big deal for me at that timeJ.

What made you decide to do the VCDX?

I got my first VMware certification VCP3 in 2007 and next step was VCDX. As always my professional goal was to become an IT Architect I thought that having VCDX accreditation would help me to achieve that goal.

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

I started my VCDX journey when I was working at IBM (2008 – 2011 Brno, CZ). During that time I met Stephane Bourdeaud (IBM Architect), he was an account architect on one of the IBM customers which me and my team in Brno provided support on. Thanks to Stephane I started doing VMware designs for IBM customers, we spent tens of hours hanging on the phone talking about my designs. Thank you Stephane one more time.

I finish my journey in May 2012 on VCDX defence panel in Toronto.

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

· Take your time and get experience in technology and design.

· Make sure that you started you VCDX design project at least few months before submission dead line – good design is 50% of success.

· Make sure you sent your design to peers for reviewing – is a must if you want to have your design accepted.

· Before VCDX defence panel make few mock defences with friends which know technology

· On defence itself, don’t get stressed, panellists are very friendly and very helpful.

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

From a project, preparation for defence or defence itself perspective – I would do exactly the same way as I did. Why? Cause I passed on a first attempt. What I would do differently would be before I start a VCDX project I would find a company which would be interested in heaving VCDX certified on board and sponsoring whole project J, is quite expensive accreditation especially if you have to pay for everything (defence fee, travel, hotel) yourself, as I had to.

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

Not to enthusiastic, to be honest. Nobody even noticed I got VCDX.

Was it worth it? Hard to give a straight answer, there are two aspects. First – community, VCDX accreditation is seen as very big achievement which not everybody can reach it. Second is business – unfortunately VCDX is barely recognized by IT managers, directors, head-hunters and demand for VCDX certified professionals is very, very low. But I’m still hoping it was worth it


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VCP 5 Exam Experience.

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

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

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

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

Gregg