Plain Virtualization

If you have not heard of Dell VxRaill appliance, you might just want to check it out. Just giving a short summary, this is a purposeful engineered appliance between Dell and VMware. Optimized to run vSphere, and vSAN which is VMware hypervisor and HCI solution. It comes with its own lifecycle management deeply integrated with VMware vCenter Server for lifecycle management as well. Such a beast of all appliance definitely comes with some design and best practices which will help you get the most out of it. So the right guy who have it al written down would be, Victor Wu . Victor is no stranger to Dell and VMware. He has been a great advocate on the two and more. This is not his first and won't be his last book I suppose.  I was fortunate to have received a copy from him. Definitely worth a read if you are trying to get updated and understand more why some of the design and best practice. Some of it could also be used on other systems.  Do check it out  Dell VxRail System D...

Without any announcement made, the VCAP-DCV Deploy 2021 based on vSphere 7 is now available! It available for booking now. If you are interested in the VCAP-DCV Design 2021 based on vSphere 7, it is available at the same time here . If you head over to VMware VCAP-DCV Deploy  exam, you will see you are given two options based on vSphere 6.7 or vSphere 7. Not sure how long the vSphere 6.7 exam will last but at least the vSphere 7 now made available. You can refer to the exam guide here to understand what the questions are testing you on with the resources provided. I am glad to be part of the team to develop this exam. And this is not an easy effort to burn off many midnight oils for conference meeting since I am only one based out in APJ. It was a wonderful experience to have work with members in the team to develop this exam and getting our hands dirty to also test out validating the exam. All thanks to these folks and not forgetting the exam project manager,  Lourdes Soler ...

VMSA-2020-0006 & CVE-2020-3952 Yes you read it correctly. There is a known vulnerability which may affect your vCenter Server running version 6.7 regardless is it on virtual appliance (vApp) or Windows. It affect new deployment as well as upgraded version from 6.x to 6.7. Here is the article to read more about it. Often to hear from some to wait for a while before patching. I like to bring out a point that software patches and security patches are two different subject. Security patches This affect an immediate vulnerability been address, it should be action on to avoid breaches and compromise. This is utmost important unless your organization does not deem security loophole been important to be addressed or your organization is claimed to be highly secured. Software patches This type of patches is to address bug fixes and some times to upgrade from and update or it can also be release of some features which was delayed, etc. Often, this may not impact many cu...

There is three certifications release before VMworld 2018 announced here . Namely VCAP-DCV 2018 Deploy, VCAP-CMA Deploy 2018 and VCP7-DTM 2018. Here is something new is the naming convention. The certification is no longer tied to the version of the product. Though this is also mentioned in the article as well as in the certification page. This is a long awaiting certification since vSphere 6.5 was released more than a year ago and the Design exam was available since last year and Deploy was not till now. This applies the same for Cloud Automation exam too. For VCP-DTM, this is more of an update to match Horizon 7.5. I do welcome the naming convention as it also allows testers to know when they last took their exam especially VCP is valid for two years. As mentioned in my last blog on VCAP6.5-DCV Design, the difference between VCP and VCAP testing of capabilities is different. The way Design and Deploy testing criteria is also different for the different audience between an a...

If you head to VMware Certification site, you will be able now to book the following VCAP6 exams at USD400 each and USD100 for the beta exam: Data Center Virtualization VCAP6-DCV Design  (GA) VCAP6-DCV Deploy Network Virtualization VCAP6-NV Design (pending release) VCAP6-NV Deploy Cloud Management and Automation VCAP6-CMA Design  (GA) VCAP6-CMA Deploy Desktop and Mobility VCAP6-DTM Design VCAP6-DTM Deploy Apparently only VCAP6- NV Design is not yet release.   During this period, passing VCAP6-NV Deploy will give you direct access to be VCIX6 waving the two VCAPs requirement.  So if you are keen, do be fast.   This is also stated here . As for the rest of the track, well you will need both VCAPs in Design and Deploy to be VCIX unless you are upgrading our certification from VCAP5.  Read more about it in my previous post . Update One of our VMUG SG Member pointed this out.  Apparently only the VCAP6-DCV Design and VCAP6-CMA Design...

Wasn't aware till my colleague mention about it here .  Design VCAP exams for the threes tracks namely: Data Center Virtualization, Cloud Management and Automation, Desktop and Mobility has been release. You can register for the beta exams while seats last.  So if you are keen to do the VCAP6 for any tracks, head over to the page.  At the time of writing, only the Data Center Virtualization and Cloud Management Design is available at USD100.  The date for the exam starts on 15th Feb 2016 onwards. You will of course need to meet the following requirements.  Using Data Center Virtualization VCAP6 as example, you will need:VCP6 or VCAP5 DCD/DCA. Upon passing, you will be granted VCAP6-DCD and if you are holding existing VCAP5-DCA, you will be also given VCIX6-DCV if the new certification roadmap announced earlier still applies. I will head over and register for it and update once again after I taken the exam.  Wish me luck! Update 8th Feb 2016 App...

With the release of vSphere 6, there were some changes to the certification as posted earlier. VMware announced the retirement of VCAP for vSphere Design and Administration and replaced it with VCIX which requires equivalent of both VCAP category exam with half the exam time . As announced recently, VMware Education has listen to feedbacks and instead of retiring VCAP certification all together it will still have it valid however VCIX will only been granted to individual with double VCAP for each track in Design and Administration except for VCIX-NV which will be the only direct VCIX certification with no option of VCAP. With this announcement, individual can now still be recognize in passing one of the category in each track and granted VCAP or VCIX for earning a double VCAP in any track. The upgrade path for existing VCAP does not change as announced earlier.  To achieve VCIX, existing VCAP with either category need just pass the other category in version 6. ...

VMware has announced a proper migration/upgrade path many of us might be still wondering after VMware announced the version 6 certification roadmap awhile ago.  All these currently do not require a class. VCP6 I read through a few times to make out how the migrates works.  Before we start with the example, let's understand some of the acronyms for the track. VCP-DCV = Data Center Virtualization VCP-DTA = Desktop & Mobility (formerly VCP-DT = Desktop) VCP-CMA = Cloud Management & Automation (formerly VCP-Cloud = Cloud) VCP-NV = Network Virtualization For existing VCP5-DCV, you can upgrade this without a class via a VCP6-DCV Delta exam (this is yet to release) similar to VCP5.5-DCV Delta exam. For new users trying to get certified, you will be taking the VCP6-DCV inclusive of a class as usual. Since there are already new some version 6 exams: VCP6-DT and VCP6-Cloud, already released (Check here ).  These certification will be automatic upgrade to V...

With the new year of 2015, VMware education also did some amendments to their certification roadmap to adapt to the industry requirements.  However there isn't a big change but one major one I see is the VMware Certified Advanced Professional (VCAP) has been renamed to VMware Certified Implementation Expert (VCIX).  You can view more details here .  The roadmap diagram is as below: You can also find the more updated charts for version 5 and version 6 here . In fact I was seeing this coming since under Network Virtualization track it has already started with VCIX. Although VCIX6-NV started with only an administration exam, I believe all tracks will contain both design and administration exam as mentioned under VCIX section. The other change would be under the Cloud Management & Automation track where there are two different VMware Certified Associate (VCA) but only one VMware Certified Professional (VCP) track.  This will be focused on VMware vRealize A...

Just got back from company kick off and haven't got the time to put in something new this month.  Hectic month for me. Taking a step back and viewing what I have done so far, I realize I did some sharing on VCAP DCD on networking when I first passed my VCAP 4 DCD. I almost forgot about this till someone approached me and this still stay very relevant till today irregardless of version as the fundamental should remain the same other than the new features added to networking in vSphere 5.  This brownbag can still be viewed here and with also some others related been done by my colleagues in other areas in storage, host design, etc. I have thus completed my VCAP 5 DCD and DCA as well. Though I am not a network expert in any field, I do like to highlight that the exam focus on your knowledge in terms of networking on vSphere and not particularly pertaining to any hardware in specific. As much I have shared, it is tested on things that should work irregardless of type of...

Decide to start a new chain of post on articles and reference done by various expert that I refer to and read about which might be good to take note of. I will be updating this post as often as possible and updating the date so it will be the first post whenever I update it. For those who are into know more on planning for DRS and Availability I would strongly encourage that you read about the VMware vSphere 5 Clustering technical deepdive. Storage DRS Have datastore clean formatted as VMFS 5 datastores.  This does not just helps but it will also put the load when perform any storage activities like Storage DRS, Storage vMotion to the storage subsystem if VAAI is supported.  Having upgrade the datastore from VMFS 3, would still result in sub-block sizes especially if there are not formatted using 1MB blocksize which is standardize in vSphere 5.  In such, the lod legacy datamover (FSDM) will be use which slow down such activities and making benefits from Storage ...

A friend of mine asked me this question: "Any idea roughly how much IOPS should we estimate for a VM? My estimate is about 400 IOPS per VM – taking physical server for comparison. SAS disk is about 200 IOPS and typically, a server would have 2xHDD for OS, so total IOPS is about 400 IOPS. However, this number can be quite big especially if we have many VMs. I’m now struggling with provisioning more capacity than needed for VMware environment to meet the IOPS requirement. This actually drive up the storage cost." My reply as was follows after a short thinking: Correction. Typically server with RAID 1 does not have 2 x IOPS. It has 1 x IOPS. Its not writing to two HDDs but its mirror to one by the raid controller. Two things to note. Yes take the physical server IOPS using the worse scenario; 1. for database server, 2. for a normal app server. Size two types of datastores, 1. with higher IOPS cater for database; 2. for normal app server. If you can use SSD ...

Yes I have passed my VMware Certified Professional 4 in Data Center Design on 31st Mar 2011.  You will get you result immediately unlike VCAP-DCA. Talk to people who have passed the beta exam and got to do my last minute reading up for things I might have missed out. The blueprint is a must to follow. If you must attend a course, go for the VMware vSphere: Design Workshop [V4x]. It provided me an insight of the things I might have missed out during implementation. Blogs like Sean Crookston is a good place to get all your guide at once. Luckily for me, I was did some switches configuration and thus it helped me understand much more on the switches portion. Yes you need to understand not just on VMware switches concept but in real work ones as well. And of course not forgetting storage. The drag and drop questions are like other typical IT exams where you are given some selection to place them in order or use some of the selection or not all. The design questions ar...