Plain Virtualization

Missed the vForum locally in your country especially the one in Singapore? No worries, there is still a chance to attend some of the tracks and win some gifts for yourself. Check out the events that are coming up this week  here . Don't miss out and chat with the expert and get your questions answered. Still not sure whether you can make it? Register first, and attend the sessions you are available to join. What are you waiting for?

Something new just starts out from VMware Palo Alto. There is a new twitter handler, VMware vExpert Pro . It just posted something a few hours ago. We know what is a vExpert program. If you do not do check out here . The vExpert came a long way from a general vExpert to now another three more tracks namely: vSAN, NSX, Cloud and now Pro. So what is really vExpert Pro? This is someone volunteered in the individual country as a vExpert recruiter. So how is the person been selected? A short requirement is as below: A current vExpert who excels in their local region, adding value to the program and giving back to the community. This person has a strong relationship with the local IT community in general, and works as an advocate to the vExpert program, recruiting, mentoring and training people. I am fortunate to be selected out of the many vExperts in Singapore. Not because I am an employee in VMware (initially information was sent to my personal email and the program team from...

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...

The yearly VMware vForum 2018 Singapore is announced to be on 4th Oct and can be registered here just as when VMworld 2018 is running. You will be expecting some content from VMworld for sure. What's New? One new program that is coming out from vForum this year in Singapore, will be vWarrior Championship. This is going to be one of it's kind. This is going to be a Hands-on Lab competition and teams will be competing in completing tasks in the correct manner. Of course, there will an introduction session beforehand for those who ain't familiar. We don't expect everyone to know everything that is for sure to be fair. Here are the details: Grand Prize:  Go Pro Hero 6 Black per member Runner Up Prize:  Amazon Echo Dot 2 nd   Gen per member Short description:   Showcase your technical capabilities in our Hands-on Lab environment across the VMware portfolio of solutions in Software-Defined Data Center (SDDC) and End-User Comput...

As a technical professional, it is always very ignoring to see honesty been bridge using marketing words. How many times have you seen creative words been used to justify for something which is not true? Or when they claim they are and they are not? That comes to the topic in my subject. Have you come across products stating that they are validated and compliance instead of Certified and Approved? And you have to explain the meaning behind this. There is a lot of confusion created due to the use of words and to clarify this, we will use an example with sources you can testify what is really Certified and Approved instead of following Validated guidelines or Compliance to follow certain requirements. Let's use VMware products as a discussion. You can find out that VMware vSphere, NSX and vSAN is an Approved DISA STIG solution. If you head over to STIG Viewer , you can see the guidelines given to all the approved solution. You find VMware vCenter, NSX, and ESXi as an approved l...

While I was doing some presentation slides for one workshop, I happen to look for 3rd party virtual switches support on vSphere. This is the KB that is from VMware. Just for those who are not aware, VMware has announced the end of support for third-party virtual switches on vSphere and vSphere 6.5 Update 1 will be the last release to support these switches with vSwitch APIs. While reading through the pointers I came across one point that caught my attention: What about Cisco AVS, which is part of the Cisco ACI solution? Are you also discontinuing support for AVS?   VMware has never supported Cisco AVS from its initial release. This might come as a surprise but there are customers who have implemented the above without knowing that VMware does not support. Just by using the above for discussion. there are many solutions currently on the market that claims or market to support certain hardware or software. However, with further research, this has been a one-sided clai...

Many times I have heard comments on software support from other vendors externally by customers as well as internally working in principle. The interesting part is many does not know how these support services measure their support quality or success criteria. This article is just to illustrate how a support ticket goes through and how it is closed or close temporarily till a user response. Typically when we raised a support request, there are always three levels or severity. I would go into the details. But you can check out my past  post on that. An engineer typically response to a support request upon receiving a support based on the severity SLA if it's raised online. If that is over the phone, the user will have to wait for the next available engineer to answer the user. Once a call is completed with the user, they will reply to the user based on what was communicated over the phone. This then follows the next step typically awaiting user to perform a certain task a...