VCAP5-DCD–Exam Prep Materials and Upcoming Videos

So I have spent the past 2 weeks going through the VMware Exam Blue Print for the VCAP5-DCD exam and have come up with the following materials / strategy to start in my preparations for writing this exam.

The Blue Print itself has links to many (many) other resources, I have been reading most of them, but am having a hard time digging out the nuggets of information that can be found on other study guides (see below), or al least that information that I feel may be on the exam.  So for my own exam preparation, I have decided to create video presentations that will be guided by the Blue Print itself.  This will not be a replacements for the vBrownBag series (again see below) but a different way of looking at the info presented on the Blue Print which will in turn help me digest and understand the pieces that have been pulled from the additional readings.

I am still planning on using the “VCAP5-DCD Official Cert Guide” for the majority of my study, but it has been delayed for shipping yet again (should of just bought the Kindle edition) so I will be waiting a few more weeks until I get my hands on it.

To supplement the above, I also plan to utilize the following resources:

• ProfessionalVMware.com VCAP5-DCD Study Notes
• vBrownBag episodes aligned to the VCAP5-DCD exam blueprint by Nick Marshall
• VMware vSphere 5.1 Clustering Deepdive by Duncan Epping and Frank Denneman
• DRBC Design - Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity Fundamentals
• TrainSignal – Designing VMware Infrastructure by Scott Lowe
• General Google VCAP5-DCD searches (I find something new every time)

As for the upcoming videos, once I figure out how to properly record them, I will start to create the presentations and delivering them as I have time, so stay tuned.

What I hope to see at VMware 2013

This year it looks like I will be lucky enough to attend my first VMworld

As I have been searching the blogs for session information and the who’s who of the presentations, I started to put together a list of what I hope to see at this years event.

The following are areas that I hope VMware makes major announcements / changes to:

The Horizon Mash Up

With Horizon View (include ThinApp in there), Mirage and Horizon Workspace, VMware has 3 great but only sort of tied together products.

I am really hoping to see Horizon 6.0 announced which will allow for Mirage to deploy and manage ThinApp’s to View Desktops and through the Horizon Workspace along with AppBlast finally being GA and tied into the suite to run apps through a browser.

vCloud Director for EUC

Wouldn't it be cool if end users (with approval of course) could provision their own desktops and / or application suites?  If VMware does announce some sort of Horizon 6.0, I hope it also includes the ability to self provision desktops similar to what is possible with vCloud Director.

Self Tuning Resource Pools (aka DRS on Steroids)

With vCOPS, we now know what is “normal” for our VM Guests and we can also run reports to figure out which ones are Over Provisioned against that normal baseline.  If VMware can take this normal range and automatically decrease or increase the resources that are assigned to a given VM, think of the consolidation ratios we would be able to achieve.

Servers & Desktops in the Same Pool

This one still bugs me.  For VMware to state that it is “best practice” to separate your Server and Desktop workloads onto separate physical hardware controlled by separate vCenter Servers, to me it doesn't make sense since it breaks the whole model of true consolidation.  Today, even with resource reservations and limits, it is a requirement for any large scale VDI deployment to be separated, but if VMware can produce something like the DRS on Steroids, I truly believe that Desktops and Servers should be able to play nicely on the same resources, controlled by the same vCenter server,

I’m not sure if any of this will be addressed at this years VMworld, but i cant wait to be there to find out.

VCAP5-DCD Exam Preparation

One of my goals for this year was to get one of the VCAP5 certifications. My company has just given me the green light to go ahead and start preparing for the Data Center Design (DCD) exam and I must admit, I am a bit scared and over whelmed at the idea if writing this exam.

The reason that this exam frightens me is that it is based on “design solutions” which, unlike the VCP exam, doesn't necessarily have defined information you must know to pass, its really based on ones ability to digest customer requirements and deliver “the best” solution for that scenario.

The over whelming part is the massive amount of readings that are listed on the exams blueprint and the incredible length of the exam itself. I know there were 10,000+ pages of suggested readings for the VCP exam, but with a good amount of hands on knowledge (which I was lucky to have already) most of the questions could be answered without having read all the materials. I do take comfort that 92 to 94 of the questions will be multiple choice / drag and drop and the other 8 to 6 will be the Design scenarios.

Over the next couple of weeks I will post up my notes that I am studying from as well as links to other blogs / study sheets that I come across and find useful.

I have pre-ordered a copy of Paul McSharry’s book “VCAP5-DCD Official Cert Guide” and am really looking forward to getting my hands on it and checking it against my study notes to ensure I am on the right path with my studies.

Wish me luck and check back often for my study note updates, hopefully they will help in your studies for the VCAP5-DCD exam.

Ohh no feedly!

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I guess they did a bit too much advertising about feedly replacing Google Reader :)