2.1 VCAP-DCA Study Guide – Implement and Manage Complex Virtual Networks
Posted on 20.Sep 2011 by Ray Heffer in ESX, ESXi, VCAP-DCA, Virtualisation, VMwareNetworking is a critical component of any virtual infrastructure, and often it’s the management networks that are overlooked. Back in the day before virtualisation, management networks were considered less important than production, and it wasn’t too much of a big deal as it only provided console access (E.g. iLO, DRAC), SNMP monitoring, web interfaces, and so on – it just didn’t impact production. I have noticed that this mindset has crept into some vSphere designs where management interfaces lack any form of redundancy. Why is this so important? Well for starters ESXi uses the Management network for vMotion, Fault Tolerance (FT) and HA. In fact if your management interface has no redundancy you’ll get a warning as described in VMware KB 1004700. Without redundancy on your management networks, these features will not work. In addition, you may be faced with mixed ESX and ESXi environments where the management networks are different between ESX/ESXi. Management on ESX uses the Service Console network, but ESXi uses a vmKernel network called Management Network. Duncan Epping of Yellow Bricks has an excellent article on VMware HA here, also check out Frank Denneman and Duncan Epping’s HA and DRS Technical Deepdive book is an excellent read and I recommend this especially if you’re studying for the VCAP-DCA. 
VCAP-DCA4 Results and Exam Experience (I passed!)
Posted on 08.Sep 2011 by Ray Heffer in VCAP-DCA, Virtualisation, VMware
Update: VCAP-DCA4 no. 386 (cool!)
Juggling work, travel, kids, and personal time, whilst trying to study for any exam is no easy feat especially when you have a family that demands your undivided attention. I’m sure many of you are all in the same boat. Despite that I managed to squeeze in a lot of time into my home lab and study for the VCAP-DCA exam, so it is possible (just damn difficult!). So to set the scene, I woke up early in a hotel in Ireland yesterday following an intense but enjoyable week working on Vblock, and I noticed an email from VMware certification on my phone… Opening that email and the attachment with the results seemed to take forever, but what a relief to see that I passed.
I can’t share specific details of the exam as I’d be tracked down and assassinated, but I can share my experience and study tips to help you.
1.3 VCAP-DCA Study Guide – Configure and Manage Complex Multipathing & PSA Plug-ins
Posted on 16.Aug 2011 by Ray Heffer in ESX, ESXi, VCAP-DCA, Virtualisation, VMwareThis section on storage continues on from section 1.2 in the blueprint (Manage Storage Capacity in a vSphere Environment) which at the time of writing these study notes, I haven’t completed yet. I felt that managing multipathing and PSA plugins deserves more attention, at least for me anyway. This is very command line heavy but remembering that during the VCAP-DCA exam documentation is provided (see key materials below), and the fact you can use command line help makes this a little less scary. Just try and remember what you need to achieve and have a good idea of which commands are used!
Knowledge Required
- Explain the Pluggable Storage Architecture (PSA) layout
Key Focus Areas
- Install and Configure PSA plug-ins
- Understand different multipathing policy functionalities
- Perform command line configuration of multipathing options
- Change a multipath policy
- Configure Software iSCSI port binding
Key Materials (VMware PDF’s & KB articles)
- iSCSI SAN Configuration Guide
- Fibre Channel SAN Configuration Guide
- vSphere vSphere Command-Line Interface Installation and Scripting Guide
4.3 VCAP-DCA Study Guide – Configure a vSphere Environment to support MSCS Clustering
Posted on 12.Aug 2011 by Ray Heffer in ESX, ESXi, VCAP-DCA, Virtualisation, VMwareI remember when I first started using Microsoft Cluster Servers with SQL 2000 and Exchange 2003, and I had plenty of experiences (good and bad) especially once when I lost the quorum disk and I was due to go on holiday the next day! When I saw this topic on the VCAP-DCA blueprint I thought ‘oh’. Funnily enough, whilst I have had plenty of experience with physical clusters, I’ve never had to implement clustering in a vSphere environment. Due to certain complexities of MSCS you can achieve unwanted downtime (such as when I lost the quorum disk, or through mis-configuration) and can be a headache in itself. I’m not sure to what level the VCAP-DCA exam will require us to configure MSCS, but I am confident that it’s just configure the vSphere environment and not the other things you would normally have to do (SAN zoning, shared quorum disk, etc).
The first and only document I will use for this section on MSCS is Setup for Failover Clustering and Microsoft Cluster Service, and it’s only 36 pages so don’t worry you won’t be spending the next three weeks on MSCS alone! In fact, the VCAP-DCA blueprint lists each section in order on this document so it’s a safe bet!
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.
8.3 VCAP-DCA Study Guide – vMA (vSphere Management Assistant)
Posted on 04.Jul 2011 by Ray Heffer in Tech Tips, VCAP-DCA, Virtualisation, VMware
If you haven’t already used the vMA (vSphere Management Assistant) then I strongly encourage you to do so as it’s an essential tool in managing your ESX and ESXi hosts, and it really makes the transition from ESX to ESXi straight forward. Understanding and using the vMA is part of section 8.3 in the VCAP-DCA blueprint.
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!
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.
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.
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.
1.0 VCAP-DCA Study Guide – Overview
Posted on 07.Feb 2011 by Ray Heffer in VCAP-DCA, Virtualisation, VMwareIf 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.
