VCAP-DCD/DCA anyone ?

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Hi all,

See as CF seems a little quiet at the mo I thought I'd start off a discussion amongst the virtual fanbois on here so here it is:

Who is thinking of taking exams further to the VCP and what do you hope to gain from them.

Personally I quite fancy having a bash at the DCD5 when its released (after tons of studying), mainly because I would love to move into a consulting role and I'm starting to get rather fed up with support these days. I think that whilst larger organisations have jumped on the cloud/virty bandwagon and are probably mostly sewn up I think that consulting within the SMB market would be pretty exciting as they are just starting to cotton onto it properly and vendors are releasing alot more storage and other previously datacenter products at a more reasonably obtainable SMB price point.

Personally I also really like Xenserver (its logical to me coming from a mostly vmware background) so I might have a go at a xenserver cert too if one exists. Hyper-v I'm not so bothered about whilst it does the job it seems kinda clunky to me.

 

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I have been on the VCP-DCD for 4.1 and the course was really enjoyable. It was more of an open forum with everyone talking about their experiences and ways they design infrastructures.

In relation to XenServer, an interesting read is this 23 page article http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/vmware-vsphere-features-comparison-ch-en.pdf

I have been thinking about doing the VCP-DCD exam however time is against me at the moment as I'm currently implementing a large VMware environment for a customer.

 

Thanks for the pdf, i'll have a read of that later, looked at the first comparison chart though and had a little giggle. VMware have only just officially ditched esx so im not sure they can boast just yet about small footprints and not needing a linux os, anyway is 1 gigs really that big .

 

DCA and DCD are definitely on the horizon for me, we are about to do a POC vCD implementation here and there is a chance that View may get a look in as well so may well look at VCPDT5 at some point as well.

I may well see if I can get some time to update study material on my site, it's just finding the time

 

More sources of input is always welcomed Simon. I see the beta's have been released for the vcap5's so I'm looking forward to reading all the experience blogs when they are allowed to talk about it.

Craigie, Is that to do with the design you put forward and had scrutinised, all going well I trust!

 

Yes mate, both 3PAR SAN's, virtual volume sets, hosts sets and synch remote copy all working. Fabric is in and configured along with the VMware environment.

On the VMware side, we have tested all vMotion, FT, DRS, DPM, affinity and anti affinty rules, host isolation. I literally spent a day unplugging everything and testing all VM's.

Working on the MS infrastructure now before we move onto SRM.

 

Sounds like awesome fun there, How are you finding FT, Never needed to use it in production but would have thought if a VM is important enough to warrant it, it would probably have more than 1vCPU?

 

We use it for Domain Controllers and BES servers.

For the DC's overhead is low, I just like the idea of always having a FSMO role holder available. BES because Directors always want emails to BlackBerry but won't pay for anything above Express so you can get the clustering features.

 

I'm knee deep in doing my VCP but after that I want to take it to the next level but probably not until 2013. Like you Dales I'm getting sick of support and want to move out of support ASAP.

 

Ah thats true FSMO's holders are a good point, you should come along to a vmug there good fun you might be unfortunate enough to bump into one of us as well! @techtock yes I've been in support for years and have started to get bored of it now

 

Aye, VMUG sounds like a good crack!

Just about to start designing our internal VMware infrastructure. Rolling with enterprise plus licenses to compensate for the underlying SAN storage. We get licenses for free being an Enterpise Partner.

Not used storage DRS before but looking forward to seeing it in action.

Back on topic, design is what I really enjoy. Listening to a client about what they are trying to achieve as a business and then designing a solution it's wicked.

So much stuff to think abut from diverse circuits for electricity, how many commando sockets of what amp, to rack design, how many PDUs, what about cable management then actual cable scheme.

Then onto the storage what IOPS, does it need to be tiered, what capacity, what about SAN failure, does loosing cache cause an issue, what latency is needed, what growth is required, do they need to replicate, if so synch or a synch. Does the storage need to be compatible with SRM

Then onto VMware what features are required, do we need DRS, how much vRAM, how are we going to deal with host isolation, can we multi path, how many datastores are needed, where do we place the paging files. How many NICS for LAN, DMZ, vMotion, FT. Do we need DPM if so have we got the right iLO licenses. What about affinity and anti affinity rules, what about the VCentre database, what about host patching with VUM. Are we going to use separate switches for iSCI and vMotion/FT or VLAN. Are the switches capable of port caching if so what size?

The list goes on and that's before we even start on the ESXi hosts, do we scale up or out?

 

I just got done with the DCD 5 workshop (I did the DCD 4 workshop back in 2010) and to this point I still have not attempted the test
I am trying to get an invite to do the DCD5 beta now, but failing that I may wait till it comes out in a few months

The workshops are most definitely required for all but the most experience, although to those with it, it can be boring in all but the case study lab portions

ready to sit DCD, wanted to sit it at PEX for the 50% off but ended up busy as hell and then did VCP5 before the cut off

 

Good luck with it when you take it (not that you'll need it at all ), I saw you tweeting at PEX very jealous.

 

It was an epicly busy and productive week for me
I have always preferred TSX/PEX to VMworld anyway, far more focused and useful at my level, but VMworld still has a lot of worth, i'm hoping to go to both