Virtualisation, Storage and various other ramblings.

Author: David (Page 22 of 25)

VCAP6 Deploy Passed

Now I can rest…

I decided at around mid December to make passing the VCAP6 DCV Deploy exam a target. Today I can tick that objective off. As I have previously passed the VCAP5-DCD exam this should entitle me to the VCIX-DCV certification, but I may need to wait a bit for that.

My Experience

Precisely this time last year I passed the VCAP5-DCD exam. By cheer coincidence I picked exactly 365 days later to do the deploy exam on v6. I was quite nervous as I’ve never done a deploy VMware lab exam before. The lab itself was reasonably well laid out but the response times and general feel of the environment was a bit sluggish, but then again my home lab resides on SSD storage so perhaps I’m used to a snappy interface.

Tips based on my own prep

  • The study guide from vJenner is an absolute goldmine : http://www.vjenner.com/vcap6-dcv-deployment-study-guide/.
  • As with all VMware exams the blueprint is your main reference. If you’re comfortable with most of the objectives you should be good to go.
    • Additionally, there is a lot to cover. Naturally like myself you’re most likely going to have weak and strong areas. Don’t get too hung of up on (for example) nailing to commit the entire esxcli CLI namespace to memory.
  • If you’re finding it difficult to fully remember esxcli commands in their entirety remember there’s –help and –example flags.
  • use a VMware HOL (Hands on Lab) to get acquainted with the UI

Good Luck!

VMW-LGO-CERT-ADV-PRO-6-DATA-CTR-VIRT-DEPLOY-K

My Nested NSX Home Lab

With the ever growing popularity of SDDC solutions I’ve decided to invest some time in learning VMware NSX and sit the VCP6-NV Exam. For this I’ve re-purposed my existing homelab and configured it for NSX. I have a fairly simple setup consisting of a single whitebox “server” that will accommodate nested ESXi hypervisors and a HP Microserver acting as a iSCSI target.

Whitebox specs:

Motherboard: MSI B85M-E45 Socket 1150

CPU: Intel Core i7 4785T 35W TDP

RAM: 32GB Corsair DDR3 Vengeance

PSU: 300W be quiet! 80plus bronze

Case: Thermaltake Core v21 Micro ATX

Switch: 8 Port Netgear GS 108-T Smart Switch

Cooler: Akasa AK-CC7108EP01

NAS/SAN: HP Microserver N54L , 12GB Ram, 480GB SSD, 500GB mechanical.

 

ESXi is installed on the physical host with additional ESXi VM’s being created so I can play around with DRS/HA features too. The end result looks like this:

NSXLAB

From a networking perspective I have separate port groups on my physical host for Management, VM, iSCSI, vMotion etc. My nested ESXi hosts have vNIC’s in these port groups. Due to the nature of nesting ESXi hosts for this to work promiscuous mode has to be enabled on the port groups on the phyiscal host for this to work (management doubles as VXLAN Transport)

vSwitch

 

The actual installation of NSX is already well covered but this  covers the basics for what I needed to do.

VCP6-NV Study Materials

NSX is a very exciting technology and I’ve made it a personal goal to sit and (hopefully) pass the VCP6-NV Exam. I hear it’s a tough exam, so it should provide a good challenge.

In preparation for this my list of resources are as follows:

More resources will be added as I find them. To anyone else wishing to pass this exam – Good luck!

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