Category: VMware

To kick things off with my series of study notes and progress, I thought I would write a quick post on the resources that I am using and a brief overview of the exams. Back in February 2015 I wrote a post on the changes that were made to the VCP certification track. This included details about the additional pre-requisite exam VCP-Foundations which covers the underlying technology that supports each track.
In the VCP Datacenter Virtualizaation track, the foundations are similar, as networking, storage and compute are presented in the same way. This makes it a little easier to learn as I can focus on similar resources for this. Once I have taken the online foundations exam, I will then be able to take the DCV test.
My first resource is a blog post I refer to often when studying by our local VCDX Travis Wood (@vTravWood) – 7 Tips to Prepare Pass VMware Exams – This has some fantastic suggestions, such as creating a scorecard to rank your knowledge. I was impressed with this blog that I printed it out and laminated it. I now try and stick to it as a guide.
The below resources are what I will be using throughout this process, I am definitely open for more suggestions. As I mentioned in my previous post, I want to go right back to basics and fully understand the finer details.
Mastering vSphere 6 (Purchase here)
This by far, is my favourite series and book. I have been reading them since Mastering vSphere 5 and use it as a resource for production. The amount of content and the presentation of the content is phenomenal. There have been a lot of stories I’ve heard where people have passed the VCP exam from labbing and using just this book. Nick Marshall (@nickmarshall9) has done a terrific job following on from Scott Lowe.
vSphere Official Documentation (Blueprint)
The official documentation lays out the bare metal details, there are documents that are 200 pages on a particular technology (vSwitches, Storage, etc). These are also linked in the Blueprint available on the VMware Certification page. I highly recommend this documentation, even just for further clarification on a particular topic.
VMware vSphere Design (Purchase Here)
For further detail, use case and design information, this book has been a great read, I have read it a couple of times already and enjoy the way it breaks down different scenarios for components. This is an older book that was written back in the 5.x days, however a lot is still relevant. Scott Lowe (@scott_lowe) and Forbes Guthrie (@forbesguthrie) have done a great job.
vBrownBag (@vBrownBag – Podcast VCP-DCV series)
This is a series of Podcasts by members of the vCommunity running through the VCP blueprint over a number of weeks. These are some great videos as they are all deep dives. I’ve found a lot of information and learnt a lot just from watching tutorials. I highly recommend checking out the series.
Pluralsight (vSphere 6 DCV – vSphere 6 Foundations)
There are a number of series on Pluralsight that are dedicated to both the Foundations exam and the DCV. both David Davis (@davidmdavis) and Greg Shields (@concentratdgreg) have put together some great course with excellent content that dives into the blueprint and real world use cases. I highly recommend Pluralsight videos for more than just vSphere certifications.
vSphere HA Deepdive (HA DeepDive – Gitbooks)
This is a dynamic online book hosted on Gitbooks written by Duncan Epping (@duncanyb). The level of detail that Duncan dives into and explores really gets the deep understanding of how HA in vSphere 6.x works.
This is just an outline of what I am and plan to use. At present I am watching vBrownBag videos and reading Mastering vSphere 6 on the bus to and from work, as well as on my lunch break. I am currently finishing off vSphere distributed Switches and will hopefully have my completed Section 2.0 review notes completed for posting within the week.
Please feel free to leave any comments below or suggestions.
Thank you.
Keiran.

vSphere 6.5 has now been released. This is a very exciting release for many as it brings a load of new features and some very long-awaited advances. There are many new features around DRS, HTML5 Client, VSAN 6.5 and even VCSA high availability. The biggest one that has got so many people excited is the long-awaited VCSA embedded vSphere Update Manager. With this brings the advantage of keeping vCenter and Update Manage all part of the one appliance.
there are many blog posts regarding the release and all the features that have come along with it.
You can check out What’s New in vSphere 6.5 and also check out the below blogs to help get started.
http://www.virtuallyghetto.com/2016/11/vsphere65.html
http://www.yellow-bricks.com/2016/10/26/vsphere-6-5-whats-new-storage-io-control/
http://atherbeg.com/2016/10/18/whats-new-in-vsphere-6-5-security/
http://atherbeg.com/2016/10/18/whats-new-in-vsphere-6-5-lifecycle-management/

Time to get back into blogging. it’s been a couple of months of quiet with a couple of large posts being constructed.
So VMware released vSphere 5.5u3 a few weeks back, which saw a lot of security updates and bug fixes. These updates are great and definitely see a lot of improvements that come along with them. Unfortunately, this time around a serious bug came out in the release. This bug cause VMs to crash during snapshot removal. I was quite excited about the update and getting prepared for testing, however as we are a cloud provider and rely on Veeam to backup some of our VMs, this was not a good thing.
Thankfully as of yesterday VMware released a patched version of 5.5u3 build: 3116895 which has fixed this bug.
 


 
So now you can safely update, but make sure you check the rest of the release notes to make sure your environment won’t be affected by known issues.
As a side note, keep an eye out for other Security Patches for your environment.
Thank you/

Recently I purchased a new lab computer to be able to shift my workloads out of VMware Workstation to a dedicated box. I didn’t have a large budget as I plan to purchase at least another one or two down the track. For this reason I opted for an AMD system, I was able to get 6 cores instead of 4 cores that comes with a similarly priced Intel CPU. All is well and good, the parts fit together and I am able to squeeze 32Gb of RAM on to the board easily.
Everything is going well until it came to installing ESXi 6.0. I start to go through the prompts to accept the EULA, scan for drives, select drives, etc. Until the final stage where it starts to install and there it is, “No Network Adapters”  – This was not what I was expecting to see.  Realtek!  After a little bit of googling ESXi and Realtek 8019 – I hadn’t come across it previous, but VMware has been removing Drivers that were valid in 5.0 and 5.1 – this isn’t a real issue.
I was able to find a .vib file for the driver I required. Oh boy, this is a good thing. So I went ahead and used ESXi Customizer to insert the .vib to the ISO. You beauty, this surely will get me out of the water – sadly, no.  I made it all the way to the same spot as previous, however, this time I was presented with a much larger error message “This driver *blah* is obsolete”  and some recommendations.
Once again, I started to google and came across some interesting articles. In vSphere 6.0, not only are older drivers removed from the ISO, but they are also blacklisted. I don’t understand why VMware wants to blacklisted, but I’m sure they would have a good reason to do it.
To overcome this, I found an excellent link to a repackaged driver .vib – you can get it here,
I once again created my custom ISO using ESXi Customizer and was able to fully install ESXi without a hitch and able to connect to it via C# client.
 
I highly recommend checking out Andreas Peetz blog here for more information on how to run his ESXi Customizer and also get around driver issues with vSphere 5.5 and 6.0
Thank you.

It’s been almost 2 months since I last did a blog post, and for that time I have been flat out reading and labbing getting ready for my VCP6 Foundation and Datacenter Virtualization exams. These we both the BETA Exams that ran from 1st April right through to today, 27th May. As I am currently not a VCP holder but I have sat the 5.x course with a registered organisation, I am eligible to sit both exams that a new future VCP would take and only need to sit the What’s New Exam.
I feel I should do a little review here as there was no opportunity to do a review of the exam (which is what I thought the whole point of the BETA’s were for – not just to see if they opened up and moved on to the next question).
The Foundation Exam.
it was a good morning, I followed Travis Wood’s advise and had a big breakfast as I had a 9am booking. The plan was to get it over an done with. Everything went smoothly registering myself at the test center and getting my photo taken, etc. I sat down at my test station ready and straight away I am presented with an NDA – At this point it all seems normal, and the next section I was expecting to see the quick survey that I have encounted on every other exam I have done, unfortunately, this was not the case and I was immediately in the exam, no way I had time to do my 10 second breathing.  The exam went quite smoothly and covered a lot of topics, this was good as they were simple enough to not scare you off, but they were tough enough that you were challenged and gave you an idea what you would need to brush up on before the DCV. There were quite a few grammatical errors, but these were looked past and I hope I answered them correctly. I suspect it is the same exam for which ever track you take that requires the Foundation exam. There were 100 questions in 120 minutes, much better than the 135 questions in 120 minutes that were in the 5.5 exams, you didn’t feel as rushed, but you still felt you needed to keep the pace at approximately 1 minutes per question.
The DataCenter Virtualization Exam.
This exam seems to be causing confusion for some people, and I believe it is due to adding the Foundation exam. I found that this exam I took today focused heavily on 3 topics, all of which were quite in-depth, but the topics were ones that I rarely touch, and I don’t think many administrators would touch on a day to day basis either. That aside, the level of questions were definitely raised up a level. I took a little longer on some questions to fully understand them, I was still keeping at approximately 1 question per minute, but some were quicker than others. I don’t feel too confident this time due to how heavily focused this exam was and not as broad as I thought it should be for a Datacenter exam. There was a lack of new things but some was covered – this gives me the thought that there are many more questions to come, but these are the ones so far.
After both exams, I felt like there should have been a little review quiz at the end to give feedback, but unfortunately there wasn’t.
At the end of the day, I put in a lot of study time, ran through practice quizes with Manny, Tom and Michael, all of whom I am grateful for their time. I read at night, and read on the train to and from work. I built my lab a few times and lab on items and even utilised the Hands-on-Labs.
Study Resources
Mastering VMware vSphere 6 – Nick Marshall
Official Blueprint Documentation
Blueprint
vBrownBags vSphere 6 Series
VMware Hands-On-Labs
Many vSphere 6 blogs
As I wait for my result (that can be anywhere up to 6 – 8 weeks) I will start on my VCIX path, although the blueprint has not been released yet, I will be reading through Scott Lowe/Forbes Guthrie vSphere Design guide and running through the VCAP-DCA/DCD blueprints to start getting up to speed.
Whether you pass or fail, the best outcome is that you move forward.
 
Thank you, if you have any questions please ask.
Keiran.

As always with a release of a new version of vSphere, there is always a new certification to be had. This time, VMware has released the VCP6 Cloud and Desktop exams early. When vSphere 5.5 was released, it was a number of months before we saw the exams and a lot of people were asking the question; Should they take the 5.1  or wait for the 5.5?
The 5.5 exam was a minor update packed with new technologies, it was easy to watch the “What’s New” and then sit the test providing you had studied the the 5.x material, regardless of which exam, you still walked away with a VCP5. This, vSphere 6 is a major release, and just catching up with “What’s New” and tinkering here and there with VSAN, etc. will more than likely not cut it.
The VCP-DCA has not been released as of yet, but I can’t see this being too far behind the Cloud and DT exams. I am really looking forward to the new exams amd cam’t wait to get into them!
You can check out more information in the MyLearn section on the VMware website.
VCP6-Cloud:
http://mylearn.vmware.com/mgrReg/plan.cfm?plan=54066&ui=www_cert
VCP6-DT:
http://mylearn.vmware.com/mgrReg/plan.cfm?plan=53471&ui=www_cert
 
Thank you.
Keiran.

2 days ago now, VMware announced in a live online event, vSphere 6.  This was one huge announcement, there are so many game changers that are part of the latest version that I am not going to go through them right now.  If you would like to see what is new in vSphere 6, you can check out the vExpert blogs here.
 
Certifications have become a large part of today’s education. A lot of companies are accepting certifications in specific area of technology as a way of showing your skills and experience, and also your drive to keep yourself up to date. As much as this is a good thing, sometimes vendors decide to change their certification path by adding/subtracting parts and this can then become confusing for HR officers and Execs who don’t know too much about those certifications as there are so many. (Now hold onto that last sentence, you’ll need it soon)
 
Let’s take a look at the new vSphere 6 certification Path.

 
There are 4 silo’s (paths) you can choose from. Each one covers a little of the other, but each have a significant difference – especially as your get further up the chain. There 4 silos are,

• DCV – Data Center Virtualization
• CMA – Cloud Management and Automation
• Network Virtualization
• Desktop & Mobility

VCA – VMware Certified Associate.
Just like the previous VCA exam that came out during last year, this is an online exam. This exam requires only 3 hours of material and is recommended for sales staff, Managers and those just starting out.
VCP – VMware Certified Professional
The VCP is the most common exam that is taken as it was originally the entry level exam, and some consider it to still be. The VCP is no walk in the park exam, it has required a lot of hands on experience for it’s style of questions. To take the VCP you are required to sit an authorized Install, Configure & Manage (ICM) course. This is all fairly much the same as previous versions of the exam, except you are now required to sit a Foundation Exam and a Solution Track exam. If you sit the VCP exam in multiple silos, you can then gain the status of “Elite.”
VCIX – VMware Certified Implementation Expert (Formally VCAP)
This is where the major changes happen.  The VCIX was formally the VCAP layer which incorporated 2 separate certifications with an exam each, VCAP-xxD (Design) and VCAP-xxA (Administrator). The VCIX now includes both exams which are still separate from each other, but are both required to gain the VCIX badge. The VCAP exams were previously 3 hours, however, this has now changed to only 2 hours for the design exam and 3-3.5 hours for the Administration exam. The VCIX badge isn’t necessarily new as it was used for the first set of VCAP equivalent for Network Virtualization.  Remember the sentence I told you to remember above, there is a positive and a  negative with the change of name, HR and Managers might not understand what the level of certification is and they could possibly over look you as they look for “VCAP”. On the plus side, the Expert may help.  As with the VCP, taking multiple of these exams can award you with the “Elite” status.
VCDX – VMware Certified Design Expert
This is the top of the pyramid, only a select few make it this far, but these are the ones who spent countless hours hidden under the stairs working on a design to defend in front of a panel of potential colleagues. The VCDX path requires the VCIX. This isn’t an exam like the others, this is a fully fledge written design document that you submit to a panel who will then decide if you meet the requirement to defend your design. I have heard of stories of short designs that are only 100 pages, but then there are some large designs that are over 1000 pages. On average, the candidate will spend up to 4 hours a day/7 days a week (Obviously more on the weekend) while working and in most cases, raising a family.
 
This is just a brief look at the certification paths that are now available with the vSphere 6 release. You can log on to the VMware Training Portal to find out more information.  For another quick overview, you can also check out here.
 
Thank you.
If you have any questions or suggestions for posts, please post them below.
 
Thank you.
Keiran.

What an incredible 3 months I have already had at my new employer, I have learnt so much already and I have a lot more to learn, but it has been giving me the challenges I have been wanting to face for a long time. Two massive projects that were essentially from the first week of two products I had very little to no experience with.
Its really been a great learning experience, and now I think it is time to start getting back into blogging.

Today I want to start with something easy, yet something that is used often, but not many necessarily know how to do.

Installing VIBs on to your hypervisor is very handy is something you may need to do from time to time. There are many reasons why you might do this. Dell’s openManage is required to be installed on the hypervisor for Support Assist to monitor the hypervisor’s health.

Today’s tutorial is going to be installing the VMware tools for Nested ESXi available from Flings.

Flings, if you haven’t heard of, is where engineers from VMware will work on side projects for users to test and explorer, with the possibility they might be incorporated into a commercial product by VMware.

Tools:

• vSphere Client 
• VIB file
• putty

Lets get Started:

1. First thing to do is to make sure that you have SSH turned on for your host.

To do this.

• Open vSphere Client and Log in.
• Select Host and Clusters
• Select Host
• Select Configuration Tab
• Click the Security Profile link
• Select SSH then options 
• Set Start and Stop with Host. 
• Click Start
• Select OK and OK.

2. Next we need to upload the VIB file to the Datastore so that it is easily accessible when we are SSH on to the host.

• Select Datastores and Datastore Clusters
• Right Click on the datastore you want to use and select Browse Datastore
• Select the Upload icon to upload to the root 
• Find VIB file and click upload.

3. After the VIB file has been uploaded, the host needs to be placed into Maintenance mode.

• Right Click Host
• Select Maintenance mode

• Open up Putty and select SSH 
• Type in the host IP and set the port to 22 {default}
• Click Open 
• Once the shell screen opens, enter the hosts root username and password (when prompted)

6. Once the host has rebooted and connected in vCenter, you can exit it out of Maintenance Mode

• Right Click host and select Exit Maintenance Mode

Thanks for reading all. It has been a little while since I have written a post, and I promise to get back in as quick as I can. 

If you have any suggestions for posts, or any other comments- please feel free to contact me.

Thank you. 

-Keiran.