VCAP - v12n.io

VCAP

A collection of 18 posts

VMware Exams Retiring August 30th 2019

A number of VMware exams will be retired on August 30th 2019. The table below shows the exams to be retired and the exams taking their place: Retiring ExamReplacement Exam2V0-620 / vSphere 6 Foundations Exam2V0-01.19 / vSphere 6.7 Foundations Exam2V0-602 / vSphere 6.5 Foundations Exam2V0-01.19 / vSphere 6.7 Foundations

VCAP6 exams retiring in September 2018

If you're looking at taking one of the VMware Advanced Professional exams listed below, you might want to get your skates on as they're being retired at the end of September: * VCAP6 – Data Centre Virtualization Design (VCAP6-DCV Design) * VCAP6 – Cloud Management and Automation Design (VCAP6-CMA Design) * VCAP6 – Desktop and Mobility

VCAP6-CMA Deploy Exam Launched

Last week the VMware education and certification team released the VCAP6-CMA Deploy exam. This is a lab-based exam intended to test a candidate's knowledge of how to deploy and administer vRealize Automation (also in conjunction with Orchestrator, Business Standard, Application Services and vCloud Air). It's the next tier up from

VMworld 2014 - Day 3

It's also the the day after the night before for some, and hence often quieter first thing in the morning (as was the case again this year). For some reason, all of the sessions that I had originally planned to attend, and already had in my calendar, I had been

VCAP5-DCA... Passed!

I'm not the world's biggest fan of exams and I've been putting this one off for a while. But, after Gregg Robertson volunteered me (at VMworld Europe) to pursue VCDX in 2014, I thought I ought to get it scheduled. I took the VCAP4-DCA back in 2011 and became the

VMware Certifications

Whilst doing the rounds in the VMworld Solutions Exchange, I got into a conversation about VMware certifications on VMware's stand. I was there for quite a while and learned a lot about how VMware choose questions and tasks for their exams. It's quite an involved process and one designed to

VCAP-DCA... done!

[https://blog.v12n.io/content/images/wordpress/2011/04/pass.gif]Where do I begin? I am so glad it's over. It's been a long time since I took an exam where I had to wait for the results. Maybe even 14 years! Even then though, I knew the exact

Objective 1.1 – Tools and Summary

Well, that one objective dealt with. Just another 30 odd to go. Don’t forget that reading is not everything, you need to have done as much of this stuff as possible. There are links to VMware’s product documentation throughout, be sure to be familiar with it as the

Objective 1.1 – Analyse I/O Workloads

To put an application into a virtual environment you must first understand its I/O requirements to make sure that it will perform adequately on the storage that you have configured. This is very much like the process of determining how much CPU and Memory resource an application will need

Objective 1.1 - LUN Masking and PSA-related Commands

What is LUN masking? [http://www.sansecurity.com/faq/lun-masking.shtml] explains what LUN masking is in layman’s terms (in case you have a NAS only background). See Storage Masking? [http://www.yellow-bricks.com/2010/02/05/storage-masking/] for the Yellow Bricks advice on LUN masking. For an overview

Objective 1.1 - VMFS Resignaturing

VMFS Resignaturing [http://virtualgeek.typepad.com/virtual_geek/2008/08/a-few-technic-1.html] is worth a read. See also the section on Managing Duplicate VMFS Datastores in the ESX Configuration Guide [http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vsphere4/r40/vsp_40_esx_server_config.pdf].

Objective 1.1 - vCenter Storage Filters

From the ESX Configuration Guide [http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vsphere4/r40/vsp_40_esx_server_config.pdf]. When you perform VMFS datastore management operations, vCenter Server uses default storage filters. The filters help you to avoid storage corruption by retrieving only the storage devices, or LUNs, that can be

Objective 1.1 - Raw Device Mapping (RDM)

Read Performance Characterization of VMFS and RDM Using a SAN [http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/performance_char_vmfs_rdm.pdf]. It may be for ESX 3.5 but still holds true. The conclusion from the document is: VMware ESX Server offers two options for disk access management—VMFS and

Objective 1.1 - VMware Storage Best Practices

Obviously the choice of storage vendor and the underlying technologies play a part here but there are some general guidelines that apply regardless. VMware themselves have a short page [http://www.vmware.com/technical-resources/virtual-storage/best-practices.html] on this which I have copied below: Many of the best practices for

Objective 1.1 - RAID levels for VM workloads

There isn’t a single rule for this – there are more like thousands of rules! Basically have an idea of what workloads VMs are generating in terms of IO and try to balance them out but also bear in mind that write intensive loads will perform better on RAID 10

Objective 1.1 - NPIV

From How NPIV-Based LUN Access Works [http://pubs.vmware.com/vi35/wwhelp/wwhimpl/common/html/wwhelp.htm?context=fibre_san_config&file=esx_san_cfg_manage.8.17.html] : > SAN objects, such as switches, HBAs, storage devices, or virtual machines can be assigned World Wide Name (WWN) identifiers. WWNs uniquely

Objective 1.1 - VMware DirectPath I/O

DirectPath places some limitations on VMs and so is used with caution. Generally, any VM that uses DirectPath becomes tied to an ESX host – vMotion and DRS will not work. DirectPath must first be enabled in the ESX host's BIOS. As a consequence only certain systems support this. A PCI

Objective 1.1 - Revision

RAID Levels Surprise, wikipedia has a decent overview of different RAID levels [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_RAID_levels]. As such there is no point reproducing it here! In practice, levels 0, 1, 5 and 6 are most commonly used in commercial storage systems. Know these off by heart.