How to pass the VMware VCAP-DCD exam (it’s tough!)
Posted on 28.Oct 2011 by Ray Heffer in ESX, ESXi, VCAP-DCD, Virtualisation, VMware
Since the days when exams were written with chalk and slates and blog posts were cave paintings, it is obligatory to share the experience of taking exams within the community. I hope the title didn’t get you too excited as I signed an NDA and really can’t tell you how to pass this exam. But, what I can do is give you advice and help you focus your study where it really matters. For starters, if you are reading this then you are probably wondering about the VCP5 and the VCAP5 exams. I wouldn’t blame you if you are opting to hold on for the release of the VCAP5 exams, but as it stands whilst I write this post we have no idea when they will be released. It’s likely to be next year sometime, but that is a pure guess. Gregg over at TheSaffaGeek has already started compiling some material to help you with studying for the VCAP 5 exams. However, if you have decided to jump straight in and sit the VCAP-DCD4 (VDCD410) exam then here are my thoughts.
This exam is HARD-ass. There are a few peeps that say it’s easy, but I personally found this harder than the VCAP-DCA due to the shear number of questions (113 in total as stated in the blueprint). If you are a native English speaker then you get 3 hours 45 minutes (4 hours for non-native), and the key to passing this exam is primarily being able to skim-read a case study or scenario and understand design requirements, constraints, risks, assumptions and translate these into one or more of the possible answers. If you spend time reading each question in detail then you are likely to run out of time. It’s also a hard exam to study for because it tests your general experience with vSphere and design knowledge, so you are not just remembering where something is configured. 
1.1 VCAP-DCA Study Guide – Implement and Manage Storage, part 2
Posted on 26.Jul 2011 by Ray Heffer in ESX, ESXi, VCAP-DCA, Virtualisation, VMwareThis is the second part to my VCAP-DCA study guide on storage (section 1.1 of the blueprint). As mentioned in part 1, I intend to focus these study notes on what you need to know with essential learning points. There is a big section on LUN masking using PSA related commands in this part of my study guide, and also an introduction to analysing performance stats with esxtop. Whilst esxtop is covered in many of the VCAP-DCA blueprint sections, 1.1 is the first section it is mentioned in regards to assessing storage performance, so at the very end of this post I have included the topic ‘Using ESXTOP for Storage Performance Analysis’.
1.1 VCAP-DCA Study Guide – Implement and Manage Storage, part 1
Posted on 04.Jul 2011 by Ray Heffer in ESX, ESXi, VCAP-DCA, Virtualisation, VMwareThis is the very first subject on the VCAP-DCA blueprint, and I intend to focus these study notes on what you need to know with essential learning points. Throughout my study notes I have made a few assumptions about the reader. You will:
- Already have a good grasp of vSphere and are comfortable using the vSphere client.
- Have a good understanding of storage types, RAID levels, iSCSI, fiber channel, NFS.
- Have some basic Linux knowledge, such as using Vi or Nano, and navigating around the file system.
- Not be very familiar with using the vMA, PowerCLI, Service Console, or DCUI (at least not for anything advanced).
- Need further guidance on using ESXTOP / RESXTOP and other performance and troubleshooting methods.
With that in mind I recommend that rather that following the exam blueprint in order, you try and focus on the topics you find the hardest. If I’ve not included notes on some topics (RAID for example) it is because there is already a wealth of information available. This way, your VCAP-DCA study can be focused on key learning points that target gaps in your knowledge or areas of weakness. Also bear in mind that at the time of writing this I haven’t taken the VCAP-DCA yet, but as a former virtual infrastructure team lead and admin, in addition to recent knowledge in the field I hope my notes help not only myself, but others to pass the certification too.
Customising the default profile in Windows 7
Posted on 13.May 2011 by Ray Heffer in Tech Tips, Virtualisation, VMware, VMware ViewConfiguring the default user profile in Windows 7
When creating your base (parent) image you may want to configure the default user profile so when new users log into the desktop for the first time, it retains certain customisations such as the desktop background colour, shortcuts, etc. Prior to Windows 7 you were able to copy a user profile to the default user profile, but Windows 7 does not permit this method. Instead, you must create an unattend.xml (unattended installation file) with Windows System Image Manager (WSIM) which is part of the Windows Automated Installation Kit.
8.1 VCAP-DCA Study Guide – Getting Started with PowerCLI
Posted on 21.Apr 2011 by Ray Heffer in PowerCLI, VCAP-DCA, Virtualisation, VMwareIf you have no or little experience with Windows PowerShell, but want to jump straight into VMware PowerCLI then you may find you have some gaps in the knowledge required to get started. How do you add the VMware PowerCLI snap-in (VMware.VimAutomation.Core) for example? How do you construct a foreach statement? How do you work with variables? There are some excellent resources available on the web, and one of my favourites is Alan Renouf’s website Virtu-Al. He also has a great article on Working with events. Definitely work a look!
VMware ESXi 4.1 Kickstart Scripted Deployment with UDA (PXE BOOT)
Posted on 18.Mar 2011 by Ray Heffer in ESX, ESXi, Linux, Scripts & Commands, Tech Tips, Virtualisation, VMwareIf you are looking to deploy multiple ESX/ESXi servers then there are plenty of methods and tools out there, some more complex than others. There are vendor specific deployment products available such as HP Rapid Depuployment Pack (RDP) which uses Altiris, or alternatively there are free deployment tools such as ESX Deployment Appliance (EsleeDA) and Ultimate Deployment Appliance (UDA). UDA is my favorite tool for the job as it offers great flexibility such as the use of subtemplates (discussed later), and therefore this will be the basis of this article. It was created by Carl Thijssen and thanks to Mike Laverick of RTFM, it also supports ESX/ESXi deployments, and the latest build supports ESX/ESXi 4.1.
8.3 VCAP-DCA Study Guide – Configuring vMA for Logging
Posted on 07.Mar 2011 by Ray Heffer in ESX, ESXi, Linux, Scripts & Commands, VCAP-DCA, Virtualisation, VMwareIn this article I detail the steps required to configure your vMA as a Syslog server, and configure your ESX/ESXi hosts to send logging information to the vMA. Logging is often overlooked, but when managing multiple hosts it is far easier to send your logs to a Syslog server. I’m studying for the VCAP-DCA exam, and using vicfg-syslog is a requirement of the exam (Section 6.1) and the vMA is also essential to understand (Section 8.1). I hope my notes help you as they have helped me.
VMware View 4.6 released!
Posted on 25.Feb 2011 by Ray Heffer in Business & IT, VDI, Virtualisation, VMware, VMware View
Good news everyone!
VMware View 4.6 has just been released which includes over 160 bug fixes and support for PCoIP with Secure Gateway servers. See the release notes here: http://www.vmware.com/support/view46/doc/view-46-release-notes.html
8.3 VCAP-DCA Study Guide – Introduction to vMA (vSphere Management Assistant)
Posted on 24.Feb 2011 by Ray Heffer in ESX, ESXi, Tech Tips, VCAP-DCA, VMware
The vSphere Management Assistant (vMA) runs a 64 bit operating system (RedHat Enterprise Linux) and features the VMware vCLI in addition to vSphere SDK for Perl, Java JRE, CIM vSphere profiles, VMware tools and an SNMP agent. The vMA virtual machine requires a single vCPU with 512MB memory and a 5GB virtual disk. If you are studying for the VCAP-DCA exam then you will need to know how to install and use the vMA to manage a vSphere environment. The best way to learn how to use the vMA is to setup your own home lab. I’ve already posted an article on building a whitebox VMware vSphere server for your home lab (click here), otherwise you can always use VMware Workstation on your PC or laptop.
VMware releases new vCloud technology training courses
Posted on 22.Feb 2011 by Ray Heffer in Business & IT, Virtualisation, VMwareI have just received an email from VMware Education Services highlighting the new VMware vCloud training courses that are now available. If you are new to VMware then they offer a 1-day vCloud Overview course (see below), for seasoned VCP’s they offer a more advanced 3-day course Architecting the VMware vCloud, in addition to other courses and e-learning available.
Bye Bye Old Friend, end of the line for VMware vCenter Lab Manager
Posted on 16.Feb 2011 by Ray Heffer in Business & IT, Virtualisation, VMwareThis week VMware officially announced that VMware vCenter Lab Manager will not see further major releases and support will continue until 1st May 2013. Over the past few years I have spent a considerable amount of time supporting a large development team with Lab Manager since version 2.5 so I’m kind of sad to see it go, but this is an exciting time in a new era of VMware vCloud Director…
VMware vSphere 4.1 Update 1 released today
Posted on 10.Feb 2011 by Ray Heffer in Business & IT, ESX, ESXi, Virtualisation, VMware
VMware have released vSphere 4.1 Update 1 which adds support for additional operating systems (RHEL 6, RHEL 5.6, SLES 11 SP1 for VMware, Ubuntu 10.10, and Solaris 10 Update 9). ESX/ESXi 4.1 Update 1 now supports 160 logical processors. Looking at the number of patches for ESX and ESXi below, it makes me wonder whether this will be the last release of ESX, in favour of ESXi?
8.3 VCAP-DCA Study Guide – Changing the vMA IP address
Posted on 09.Feb 2011 by Ray Heffer in Tech Tips, VCAP-DCA, Virtualisation, VMware Here is a very quick and dirty tech tip on changing the IP address of your VMware vMA. There are two ways of doing this, the Linux way or the VMware Setup Wizard.
VMware vSphere 4.1 – HA Admission Control Slot Calculation
Posted on 07.Feb 2011 by Ray Heffer in ESXi, Tech Tips, Virtualisation, VMware
VMware HA (High Availability) admission control is something I wanted to understand better so I started making notes gathered from various sources on the subject, and in particular the way slot sizes are calculated. Duncan Epping’s Yellow Bricks site already covers HA very well and I bow down to his knowledge on the subject, well worth checking out. Also I would strongly recommend VMware vSphere 4.1 HA and DRS Technical Deepdive by Duncan Epping and Frank Denneman which I purchased at Comcol.nl which they shipped to me in the UK in just two days.
That said, I thought I would share my own views and notes I have taken on the subject. The vSphere Availability guide states “A slot is a logical representation of memory and CPU resources. By default, it is sized to satisfy the requirements for any powered-on virtual machine in the cluster.” – In simple terms a slot can be consumed by a single virtual machine, but a virtual machine may consume more than one slot.
1.0 VCAP-DCA Study Guide – Overview
Posted on 07.Feb 2011 by Ray Heffer in VCAP-DCA, Virtualisation, VMware
If you are an existing VMware VCP then you are probably already aware of the VCAP-DCA exam which is why you’ve landed here. There are two VCAP certifications available, the DCA (Datacenter Administration) and DCD (Datacenter Design). Just a few days before writing this post, VMware announced the new Desktop Certification Program, the VCA-DT (VMware Certified Associate, Desktop), VCP-DT and VCAP-DT. This is great news as it strengthens the VMware certification even further with a recognition into the valuable skills a desktop virtualization specialist will have.
I intend to share my study guides, based on what you need to know with essential learning points. If you are studying for this exam then I will assume you are already a VCP, and I would be surprised if you don’t already know the difference between different RAID levels. With that assumption in mind, I will also guess that you are not that comfortable (like me) with commands like esxcfg-mpath. It is not my intention with my study notes to regurgitate the exam blueprint, but I will follow the order and provide key learning points for each topic.
Use Cases for VMware ESX 3.x DisallowSnapshotLUN and ESX 4.x Force-Mount
Posted on 21.Jan 2011 by Ray Heffer in ESXi, SAN Storage, Tech Tips, Virtualisation, VMware
If you are involved in DR for your organisations IT infrastructure and are replicating virtual machine VMFS datastores then you may be familiar with DisallowSnapshotLUN in ESX 3.x. Let’s start with a background on what these advanced settings are and why they are there.
Since virtualization changed the landscape for disaster recovery some time ago now, most businesses have embraced SAN storage replication for DR (see my other post). This is old news now, but unless your SAN vendor integrates with something like VMware Site Recovery Manager (SRM) then you will have a number of manual tasks involved in your DR recovery process.
VMware vSphere ‘Whitebox’ Server Lab Setup – Part 3
Posted on 04.Jan 2011 by Ray Heffer in ESXi, Home Lab, Tech Tips, Virtualisation, VMwareThe third part of this series continues with the vSphere build on my whitebox server, the Asus Rampage II Extreme with Intel Core i7 2.8Ghz and a 120GB SSD. Following on from the video in part 2 where we installed ESXi on to the USB drive, we are now ready to access the physical ESXi host and start creating some virtual machines. Since this is a home vSphere lab environment, accessing the lab from anywhere (not just at home) is a major advantage for me, so I’ll be taking you through the steps to create a Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 virtual machine with an RD Gateway (Remote Desktop Gateway). We will also need shared storage in order to use vMotion, so I will also guide you through the setup of an OpenFiler iSCSI virtual SAN.
VIDEO: VMware vSphere ‘Whitebox’ Server Lab Setup – Part 2
Posted on 10.Dec 2010 by Ray Heffer in Home Lab, Tech Tips, Virtualisation, VMwareFollowing on from part 1 of my VMware vSphere ‘whitebox’ sever series, this video provides an overview of the build, and installation and configuration of ESXi.
VMware vSphere ‘Whitebox’ Server Lab Setup – Part 1
Posted on 07.Dec 2010 by Ray Heffer in Business & IT, Home Lab, Tech Tips, Virtualisation, VMwareIntroduction
Way back when VMware VI3 was released in 2006 (doesn’t time fly!), I built a home-brew lab server for ESX 3.0 and used it partly to study for my VCP exam. That particular machine is now my home theatre PC (HTPC) as it wouldn’t stand a chance of running VMware vSphere, so here is my mission to build a whitebox VMware vSphere lab server. I must also give credit to Simon Seagrave and Simon Gallagher their vSphere lab server articles which have inspired me to do something about it and build a vSphere lab at home. Simon has lots of great articles on building a vSphere lab, and I urge you to visit his site.
Veeam Backup & Replication v5 out today
Posted on 21.Oct 2010 by Ray Heffer in Virtualisation
Veeam Backup and Replication version 5 has been released today and has been very much anticipated due to a number of new features. At VMworld 2010 Veeam was awarded Best of Show and Best New Technology because it addresses addresses “major problems that virtualization administrators have“. Their new product version has 5 patents pending providing their vPower technology.
