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Tag Archives: VCDX


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VCDX Spotlight: Tim Antonowicz

Name: Tim Antonowicz

Twitter Handle: @timantz

Blog URL: whiteboardninja.wordpress.com

Current Employer: Mosaic Technology

VCDX #: 112

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

 

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

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

 

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


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VCDX Spotlight: Kenny Garreau

Name: Kenny Garreau

Twitter Handle: @kennega

Blog URL: http://dudewheresmycloud.com

Current Employer : Lumenate

VCDX #: 115

How did you get into using VMware?

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

What made you decide to do the VCDX?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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VCDX Spotlight: Travis Wood

Name: Travis Wood

Twitter Handle: vTravWood

Current Employer: VMware

VCDX #: 97

 

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

 

 

What made you decide to do the VCDX?

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

 

 

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

 

 

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

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

 

 

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

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

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

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


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VCAP-CID Objective 1.2 – Identify and Categorize Business Requirements

Knowledge

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

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

vcap

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

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

Skills and Abilities

Relate business and technical requirements to a conceptual design.

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

Gather customer inventory data.

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

Determine customer business goals.

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

Identify requirements, constraints, risks, and assumptions.

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

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

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

Tools

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

Gregg


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VCDX Spotlight: Jonathan Kemp

Name: Jonathan Kemp

Twitter Handle: @ActuallyVirtual

Blog URL: http://www.actuallyvirtual.co.uk

VCDX #: 100

How did you get into using VMware?

It all started about April 2008 when the company was looking to setup a brand new branch office. This was for about 120 people and my first design brief was “Can we do anything interesting with virtual desktops?” At that point I had only been with the company 6 months and my virtualisation experience consisted of a MS Virtual PC machine I used to test SMS packages. I did a quick search on virtual desktops and came across VMware’s VDI 2.5 solution. I was able to setup a small test lab using a couple of desktops and an old server running a virtual iSCSI san appliance. Up to that point the company had run entirely traditional desktops and server environments with local storage.

Having proven that it was possible, the first design was a bit of a stab in the dark as far as requirements were concerned. I was able to get the company to send me on the VI 3.5 Fast Track course, which was really well done with a great trainer and great facilities to do the exercises on. This really helped with improving the desktop design and migrating our datacentre over to virtualisation.

 

What made you decide to do the VCDX?

It was after I took the VCP 3 that I read about the VCDX certification. I made the decision then that I wanted to work towards that goal although I knew it would take some time.

I attended the vSphere 4 Design Workshop course to get a better understanding of the method that should be used to design infrastructures. At that point with the newly released VCAP certificates being made available I really began working towards the VCDX goal I had set. I took the VCAP-DCD first as the design course was still fairly fresh in my mind and the DCA was the exam I was dreading the most (and still do). Once I had both of these under my belt it was really down to finding the ideal design to use for the VCDX itself, which took a little while.

 

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

The whole journey took about 4 years, although in reality it was probably only the last two years that I was able to think of it as a possibility. I had read the blueprints for both the VCDX 3 and 4 and realised that I wasn’t going to be ready for 3 and needed a lot more practical experience for 4. I had got the pre-requisite certifications for VCDX 4 done by the end of 2011 and then it was down to choosing the right design to submit. This was the bit that took a bit of time as I wanted the submission to be as real a design as possible. Although a wholly fictitious design is possible, it is easier to defend decisions based on real requirements and constraints. Finally in August 2012 I had a design I felt was a good candidate with a few minor changes to cover the requirements in the blueprint. I spent about 3 weeks solidly working on completing the design documents to fit the requirements. I spent a lot of time reading the blogs of existing VCDX holders and the tips on the VMware site, trying to put all that advice into practice.

I submitted and defended the design at Barcelona in October 2012 and happily, along with seven others, received confirmation I had achieved VCDX about two weeks later.

 

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

Firstly go for it. The whole process is worth it.

Lots of research. Read the experiences of others who have already been through the process, there is a wealth of advice out there. Also read the advice tips given on the VMware site, especially the tips on what not to do.

Read the blueprint. Read it again and then again. Make certain your design covers the objectives, adding to your original design if necessary.

Plan your time and then possibly double it to allow for unforeseen problems.

Peer review. Get as many people to read through your documents as possible and I would say get a mix of technical experts and non technical people. Can someone with little or no experience understand your design and see why they would implement your design? You may be asking them to make a big investment.

Run some mock defences. Again I would say try to include someone who is not technical on the panel. A non technical person may well ask you to explain something that a technical person will take for granted. Try and keep to the real time limits so you get a feeling for how quickly it passes. Remember you have to defend all aspects of the design so, for example, why did you do X? Could you have done Y differently?

Print your documents out and proof read them, both by yourself and someone else. Get yourself a red pen and be ruthless.

Finally, if you have the opportunity, attend a VCDX boot camp. I attended the one in Barcelona two days before my defence and I can say it made a huge difference on the day.

 

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

Not much, knowing my own personality. I should have started the design submission documentation earlier and made time for a mock defence or two.

 

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

The company, I think, is a little unsure of what it all means but my colleagues were certainly impressed. I am encouraging our other VCPs to begin the journey themselves and put the lessons I have learned into greater practice.

Was it worth it? Categorically yes. The process was, for me, more a personal goal rather than something I felt was professionally required. Had I not been successful at Barcelona then I would definitely have been back for another try.


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VCDX Spotlight: James Charter

Name: James Charter

Twitter Handle: @DavesRant

Current Employer: Long View Systems

VCDX #: 106

 

 

How did you get into using VMware?

I first saw VMware Workstation 4 and was really impressed with what you could do with it. When we first adopted ESX 2.5 at my workplace I was totally hooked, and within a couple years was working as a consultant in the virtualization team at my current employer.

 

 

What made you decide to do the VCDX?

A friend I have a lot of respect for was pursuing it and I thought it was an interesting challenge. I applied to the VCDX3 program and completed the enterprise admin and enterprise design exams, and started refining an existing design I had completed for a client.

 

 

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

A couple of years. I was planning to apply for a VCDX3 defense, but with a young family I was finding it very challenging to make the deadline, and put it on hold. Some friends asked why I hadn’t picked it back up, so at VMworld 2012 I took a deep breath and said I would submit an application to defend at Partner Exchange.

 

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

Support is really important, and your family needs to be behind you, it’s a lot of work and time away from them. Employer and peer support is incredibly important and makes a huge difference. I was fortunate on all three counts.

 

 

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

I would have followed a more structured preparation plan and started earlier. I can’t stress that one enough, have a structured plan with contingency and follow it – life gets busy.

 

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

My company has been extremely supportive and believes in the value of investing in advanced certifications and training. It was definitely worth it, and has helped me advance my design and consulting skills. For our consulting practice it has changed the way we approach designs and solutioning


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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: Simon Long

Name: Simon Long

Twitter Handle: @simonlong_

Blog URL: www.simonlong.co.uk

Current Employer: VMware

VCDX #: 105

 

 

How did you get into using VMware?

Around 5/6 years ago the company that I was working for at the time installed ESX 3.0 to use as part of their Dev/Test environment. The “VMware stuff” as we knew it then, was installed by a contractor as our team didn’t really know too much about it. Once the installation was complete, the contractor left and we were left to fend for ourselves. I nominated myself to look after the “VMware stuff”, and that’s how this love affair began.

 

 

 

What made you decide to do the VCDX?

It’s hard to put my finger on one thing. I think working closely with Frank Denneman during my time at VMware Professional Services certain contributed to me wanting to aim high.

I also like to make goals for myself and I made the VCDX one of those goals. However I didn’t put a time frame on it. I could have probably defended a lot earlier than I did, but I was never really completely ready for it until 2012.

 

 

 

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

 

It’s hard to say as I guess it includes VCP, VCAP exams as well. A lot of these exams I just took as and when I had time to take them, so there wasn’t a sense of, if I take the VCAP’s by this date, I can then submit for the VCDX. It just happened really. I had both VCAP’s, then one day I decided I was going to go for it.

 

 

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

Don’t be scared. A lot of people who talk about going for VCDX are reluctant because they have heard “It’s really scary and the panellists are after your blood” etc, but this really is not the truth. The panellists actually want you to pass.

Pick a design you have architected yourself, and that covers most of the areas of the Blueprint. If you use a design that is not completely yours, you may find it hard when asked question on those sections.

Know that design inside out (read every word). Know why you chose each feature, understand what each feature you chose does and understand why you didn’t choose the other features.

The technology is not the only focus in the VCDX. Make sure you fully understand and have documented; Risks, Constraints etc that affected your design.

And don’t be afraid to say you don’t know to something. The guys who are asking questions will know if you’re making it up or not.

 

 

 

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

Nothing. It went pretty smooth I thought. Smile

 

 

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

My Company were pleased for me. No pay rise as yet….. 😉 But I think this is normal in the majority of companies.

I think it was worth it. It certainly improved me as an architect. I now have great attention to detail (when needed). This has come from the scrutinizing of my design over a period of months.

And if, in the future I decide to leave VMware, having VCDX #105 on my CV might improve my chances of securing another role.


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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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Safe and Legit Storage Design Completed

Below is my thoughts, additional questions I felt needed to be asked/things to be clarified and the Design decisions,justifications and impacts due to these decisions for the Safe and Legit Storage design. If you missed the posting where I detailed the mock scenario you can read it here 

 

Note: This is a learning exercise for me so if you feel I’ve missed something or made a wrong decision then please write it in the comments and I’m more than happy (it was one of the main reasons I’m looking to do this series of postings) to discuss and I’ll amend the design accordingly if it makes sense and hopefully I along with other people reading these postings will learn from it and become better.

 

Additional Questions

As I said there probably would be and which 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.

 

Q: What other questions do you feel should be asked?

Additional Functional Requirements

-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

Below are the constraints I felt were detailed in the scenario. These will possibly change as I go further through all the other sections but so far these are the ones I felt were applicable:

– 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.

Assumptions

Below are the assumptions I felt had to be made. These will possibly change as I go further through all the other sections and normally I try to keep these as minimal as possible but for a project of this size it would be extremely difficult to not have any as you do have to trust certain things are in place:

– There is sufficient bandwidth between the UK DC’s to allow migration of the existing workloads with as little of an impact to the workloads as possible

– All required upstream dependencies will be present during the implementation phase.

– There is sufficient bandwidth into and out of the privately owned DC to support the bandwidth requirements of all three DC’s workloads

– All VLANs and subnets required will be configured before implementation.

– Storage will be provisioned and presented to the VMware ESX™ hosts
accordingly.

– Power and cooling in the privately owned DC is able to manage the addition of the required physical infrastructure of the Virtual Infrastructure whilst for a certain amount of time having older physical machines still running alongside

– Safe and Legit have the existing internal skillset to support the physical and virtual infrastructure being deployed.

– There are adequate licences for required OS and applications required for the build

 

Risks

– 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

Storage Array

Design Choice EMC FC SAN with two x8GB SP
   
Justification -EMC due to constraint of having to use EMC storage due to previous usage
-EMC VNX 5700 with Auto-Tiering enabled
– 8GB to ensure high transmission speeds to the storage,12GB is too high and expensive for this design
   
Design Impacts -Switches will need to be capable of 8GB connectivity
– FC Cabling needs to be capable of transmitting 8GB speeds
-HBA’s on ESXi hosts need to be capable of 8GB speeds
   

Number of LUNs and LUN sizes

Design Choice 400 x 1TB LUNs will be used
   
Justification -Each VM will be provisioned with 50GB average of disk
-So with around 15 vm’s per lun + 20% for swap and snapshots, 15x 50GB / .8 = 937.5
– So 6000 total VM’s / 15 VMs per LUN = 400 LUNs
   
Design Impacts -Tiered storage will be used with auto tiering enabled to balance storage costs with VM performance requirements
   

Storage load balancing and availability

Design Choice -EMC PowerPath/VE multipathing plug-in (MPP) will be used.
   
Justification

-EMC PowerPath/VE leverages the vSphere Pluggable Storage Architecture (PSA), providing performance and load-balancing benefits over the VMware native multipathing plug-in (NMP).
   
Design Impacts -Requires additional cost for PowerPath licenses.
   

VMware vSphere VMFS or RDM

Design Choice -VMFS will be used as the standard unless there is a specific need for raw device mapping . This will be done on a case by case basis
   
Justification

-VMFS is a clustered file system specifically engineered for storing virtual machines.
   
Design Impacts -Usage of the VMware vSphere Client to create the datastores must be done to ensure correct disk alignment
   

Host Zoning

Design Choice

-Single-initiator zoning will be used. Each host will have two paths to the storage ports across separate fabrics.
   
Justification -This is keeping to EMC best practices and ensures no single point of failure with multiple paths to targets across multiple fabrics
   
Design Impacts -Zones will need to be created for each portion by the storage team
   

LUN Presentation

Design Choice

-LUNs will be masked consistently across all hosts in a cluster.
   
Justification -This allows for virtual machines to be run on any host in the cluster and ensures both HA and DRS optimisation
   
Design Impacts -The storage team will need to control and deploy this due to the masking being done on the storage array
   

Thick or Thin disks

Design Choice -This provisioning will be used as the standard unless there is a specific need for thick provisioned disks . This will be done on a case by case basis
   
Justification

-The rate of change for a system volume is low, while data volumes tend to have
a variable rate of change.
   
Design Impacts -Alarms will need to be configured to ensure that if disks reach an out of space condition there is ample time to provision more storage
   

Virtual Machine I/O Priority

Design Choice -Storage I/O Control will not be used
   
Justification -This is due to the storage utilising Auto-Tiering/FAST which works at the block level to balance and is therefore a better way of balancing
– Due to the likelihood that VMware SRM is going to be used then SDRS and SIOC is not supported
   
Design Impacts – FAST/Auto-Tiering will need to be configured correctly by the storage vendor
   

Storage Profiles

Design Choice -Storage Profiles will not be configured
   
Justification -Storage will be managed by the storage team
   
Design Impacts -Storage team will need to configure storage as the virtual infrastructure requires
   

Describe and diagram the logical design

Attribute Specification
Storage Type Fibre Channel
Number of Storage Processors 2 to ensure redundancy
Number of Fibre Channel Switches (if any) 2 to ensure redundancy
Number of ports per host per switch 1
Total number of LUNs 400 (as mentioned above)
LUN Sizes 1TB (as mentioned above)
VMFS datastores per LUN 1

image

Describe and diagram the physical design

Array vendor and model EMC VNX 5700
Type of array Active-Active
VMware ESXi host multipathing policy PowerPath/VE MPP
Min/Max speed rating of storage switch ports 2GB/8GB

I’m looking for the correct EMC diagrams to create the physical design diagram  so will update this postings this week with the diagram promise Smile

Well that’s my attempt at the storage design portion of Safe and Legit. Hopefully people will agree with most of the decisions I’ve made if not all of them and I have to admit it took me most of my Sunday just to do this piece and think of all the impacts and as stated there may be additional constraints and risks further down the line.

 

Gregg