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Alex Galbraith | 2nd February 2012
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VMware VCAP-DCD 4 Exam Prep Guide

vSphere 5

So I completed my VMware vSphere: Design Workshop [V4.x] last August, but just a week after that my youngest daughter was born. 6 months (and many dirty nappies) later, I have finally gotten around to looking at taking the exam! I did consider simply waiting for the vSphere 5 DCD exams to be released, but considering how long the v4 exams took to be released, I don’t think it’s worth the wait just now.

I plan to take the exam in mid March, giving me 6 weeks to prepare, so much like I did with my VCP5 Exam Prep Guide, I plan to post an expanding list of my prep materials below, in the hopes that it may be of some help to others.

Prep Courses / Materials

  • VMware vSphere: Design Workshop [V4.x]
    Well worth the time (and money – paid for by my employer, advantages of being a permie!) in my opinion. It is basically an opportunity to sit down for three days and go through a fictional design, end to end, using all the VMware best practices and guides, whilst shooting the breeze with like minded individuals.
  • DRBC Design – Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity Fundamentals
    Online “virtual” training course from VMware. Pretty steep price for only 4 hours training IMHO, especially when they only give you 3 months access… For $240 (£152) I would expect permanent access to it! Fortunately, again I didn’t actually have to pay for this myself. Were I contracting, I would seriously think twice about skipping this!
  • VMware vSphere 4.1 HA and DRS Technical Deepdive by Duncan Epping and Frank Denneman
    A superb and easy read. This is a short book concentrating on the nitty gritty of vSphere clustering. You will need to know this if you want to pass the exam! Again, spread out your reading, and dont try to take it all in in one go!
  • Official Exam Blueprint
    The official exam blueprint/guide. As much of a pain in the ar*e as it is, I suggest reading every document referenced in this guide. If you know it all (and have practiced it lots) then you *should* be ok in the exam! I will try to create a summary list of these items in one place for easy download later.
  • VCAP4-DCD Exam UI Demo
    An invaluable resource as this gives first-timers a chance to get used to the exam interface and get an idea of the types of activities required in the exam.
  • VCAP-DCD Community Forums
    I read through virtually every post on here (there aren’t that many).
  • The Saffa Geek VCAP-DCA-DCD Guide
    Gregg has a raft of links to prep materials, of which I plan to go through as many as possible.
  • VMworld Community Sessions (2010)
    Now free to watch if you sign up for an account. Will post more on this once I have time to watch a few!
  • VMware Partner University Courses
    Useful courses, if you have both access, and time:

    • Infrastructure Virtualization Technical Post-Sales Accreditation: Assessment Fundamentals
      Not much new here but just a few good reminders on how to size up your source capacity / requirements and only takes 1-2 hrs to complete. Also counts towards the Infrastructure Virtualization competency.
  •  More links to come…

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Alex Galbraith | 1st February 2012
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VMware VCP-510 Exam Review

VMware VCP-510 Exam

So I took my exam today and passed with a reasonably respectable score of 428 (pass mark for VCP-510 is 300/500). So how was it?

The exam itself was reasonable, and not massively dissimilar to the VCP 4 in terms of difficulty and question style. The content was all pulled pretty much directly from the exam blueprint, so if you are confident you know the blueprint, then you should be ok with the exam. I would also STRONGLY suggest you take the official mock VCP-510 exam once you feel you are prepared enough, as it will give you a really good feel for the exam and if you pass it comfortably, you will almost certainly do fine in the real one.

The exam has a total of 85 questions to complete in 90 minutes, which sounds tight, but when some of the simpler questions have very short (e.g. 1 word) answers, you can get through those in just seconds, giving you more time to complete the more tricky ones. Just don’t panic about time, or even bother looking at the clock until you’re at least 60 questions into it. I completed mine in about an hour.

I used Scott Lowe’s Mastering VMware vSphere 5 as my main study aid, followed by building several test environments (thanks to the vSphere 60 day evaluation) and doing loads of practice questions etc. I would highlight the fact that his book does not cover much about the extras which are likely to come up, such as the VSA, vDR and even a basic knowledge of other VMware products (Workstation, Server, View etc). I would suggest a little time is dedicated to understanding the basic capabilities of these products too (perhaps a little unfair as the exam is on vSphere but hey?!).

For more info on the exam prep materials I used please see my previous blog post:
VCP5 Exam Prep Guide

Next task: VCAP-DCD 4 (backwards I know)!

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Alex Galbraith | 23rd January 2012
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Safely Shrinking VMware Server / Workstation .vmdk Files

VMDK_File_Format_icon

If like me, you originally implemented some of your VMs in VMware Server (or Workstation) as thick provisioned, and have subsequently changed your mind, the process for converting them back to thin is very simple. In my case, the driver was the purchase of a couple of new SSDs, which obviously have a lot less space than my old 7200RPM SATA disks, but the performance is  significantly better.

Before shrinking your VM, be sure to zero out all of the unused space (left over from file deletes). This is especially important if you have been using the VM for some time, as deleted files do not actually zero the space (just remove the pointers). I recommend using SDelete from SysInternals. Simply run “sdelete -c” to zero out all the deleted file space.

Once you have cleaned up (and ideally backed up) your VM, The process of migrating to a new datastore and safely shrinking / converting the VMDK files to thin provisioned, is as follows:

  1. Create your new datastore directory on the new drive and specify the location in VMware Server (if required), e.g.
    D:\VMs
  2. Create a new directory for the VM to be migrated, e.g.
    D:\VMs\TestVM
  3. Run the following command:
    “<path-to-vmware-install>\vmware-vdiskmanager.exe” -r “<old-ds-path>\<VM-Name>.vmdk” -t 0 “<new-ds-path>\<VM-Name>.vmdk”
    e.g.
    “C:\Program Files (x86)\VMware\VMware Server\vmware-vdiskmanager.exe” -r “C:\VMs\TestVM\TestVM.vmdk” -t 0 “D:\VMs\TestVM\TestVM.vmdk”
  4. The VM will be converted and copied to the new location with no risk to the original file.
  5. Copy the remaining files from the original datastore location (minus the VMDK / vmdk-flat of course).
  6. Remove the old VM from your VMware Server/Workstation inventory (don’t delete the originals until you have tested the new VM!).
  7. Add the VM back into VMware Server / Workstation using the new datastore location, and start it up, specifying “I moved it” when prompted.
  8. Sit back and enjoy the extra space! :)

Note the same process will work for converting VMDK files between all file types, by simply replacing -t 0 with your preferred option from the list below:

0                   : single growable virtual disk
1                   : growable virtual disk split in 2GB files
2                   : preallocated virtual disk
3                   : preallocated virtual disk split in 2GB files
4                   : preallocated ESX-type virtual disk
5                   : compressed disk optimized for streaming

NOTE: You can also run “<path-to-vmware-install>\vmware-vdiskmanager.exe” -k “<ds-path>\<VM-Name>.vmdk” to shrink your vmdk in place, but you will need enough spare space on the same drive to do this (as much as the current vmdk file size if you don’t gain much), you lose the ability to roll back to your original file, and this wont work on thick provisioned disks.

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Alex Galbraith | 22nd January 2012
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VMware VCP5 Exam Prep Guide

vSphere-5-Box

So its that time of year again, when we VCPs have to bone up on the latest developments in the VCP world and get our exam done in time before we have to go cap in hand to our line management asking for them to pay for a course we never needed in the first place. In order to avoid this embarrassment, VMware kindly give us the opportunity (as existing VCPs) to pass the VCP-510 exam by 29th Feb 2012, bypassing the course attendance requirement (fair enough!).

As per usual, I have left this pretty much until as late as I feasibly can while still giving time for the (hopefully never required as yet) resit, meaning I am booked in to sit my exam on 1st Feb.

For the sake of others who are also planning to take this exam, I plan to post the links to all of my study aids below, along with any other hints/tips I come across for studying towards the VCP5 exam. If it only helps out one or two people it’ll be worth the effort.

One point worth highlighting is that reading books is all very well and good, but there’s no substitute for actually “doing it”. The best thing I would suggest is to create a home lab and use the vSphere 60 day evaluation to have a play with all the latest features. I have accomplished this in a couple of ways, but I found the most flexible to be running 2 x ESXi hosts and a copy of FreeNAS 7 inside VMware Workstation 8 (using NFS or iSCSI). I’ll try to create a post on this when I have time, but do a quick search on google for lots of other people with similar setups.

This should be considered a “living list” for now, and I will endeavour to update it as I find/use further resources.

  • Mastering VMware vSphere 5 by Scott Lowe (Kindle Edition)
    A superb resource. Even though I am already VCP3 and 4 certified, it is still worth a full read, in part as a refresher, and in part because it does highlight many of the updates with vSphere. Kindle edition is also cheaper, and lets be honest, as vSphere 5 will be out of date in another couple of years, do you really need 2 kgs of dead tree choking up your bookshelf, when you could just have an electronic copy, which you can share across all your devices?
    I have spent an hour or two a night reading and taking notes from this for a couple of weeks, which is a lot less painful than trying to get through it in one go, and hopefully should ensure slightly better retention!
  • VMware vSphere 5 Clustering Technical Deepdive by Duncan Epping and Frank Denneman (Kindle Edition)
    Having read the vSphere 4 version of this (first Kindle book I ever bought) in prep for my VCAP-DCD 4 (still to sit), I can confirm Duncan and Frank are very capable teachers! An excellent resource which goes above and beyond the VCP requirements, but will give you a much more in depth understanding of HA, DRS, DPM, SDRS, etc. This will be invaluable when the VCAP exams are out for vSphere 5!
  • VCP 5 Exam Blueprint
    If you know all this, then you cant fail!
  • What’s New in vSphere 5.0 Overview
    A quick reminder / highlight list of all the new features in vSphere 5
  • What’s New in vSphere 5.0 – Technical Whitepapers
    Platform
    Storage
    Networking
    Performance
    Availability
    Licensing, Pricing and Packaging
    Particularly useful for a quick reminder skim for all the new features, prior to the exam.
  • vSphere Private Cloud Service Definition
    Whitepaper covering key terms.
  • vSphere Storage Appliance
    Official VMware blog post with documentation links for VSA stuff. Not covered in Scott Lowe’s Mastering Vsphere 5, but you will almost certainly be asked some questions on VSA in the exam.
  • Official VMware Mock VCP510 Exam
    An excellent resource, especially if you have never taken a VCP exam before. HINT: If you can pass this, you’re probably good to go for the real exam.
  • VCP5 Practice Questions by Paul McSharry
    A great set of practice questions being regularly updated with extra questions… I actually met Paul when he taught my VMware vSphere Design [4.x] workshop. A very knowledgeable guy, and his website (www.elasticsky.co.uk) is well worth checking out and subscribing.
  • VCP Practice Exams by Simon Long
    A boat-load of questions here coving general knowledge and config maximums per feature.

Please feel free to send me any links to practice questions and I’ll vet them and add them to the above list.

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