Tag Archives: tips

The VCDX candidates advantage over the panellists.

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As the candidate, you submit a VCDX application based on a project you have worked on from start to finish and in most case, lead from a technical/architectural perspective.

You therefore should have:

  • Had Initial discussions with the customer about requirements.
  • Lead or been involved in Design workshops
  • Considered design decisions
  • Documented the detailed design along with implementation & test plans etc
  • Either overseen or been actively involved with implementation

As a result of the above, you have spent many hours, potentially hundreds or thousands of hours depending on the size of the project and you will have intimate knowledge of the design & solution.

On the other hand, VCDX panellists, while they are experts in the field, have been given your application, including the design and a very limited amount of time to review and prepare for the defence.

As a result, the VCDX candidate has a HUGE advantage over the panellists!

So in a defence, who is the expert in the room on the design? The Candidate!

As a result, the candidate should be an expert in the design being presented and answering questions from the panel about the design should not be intimidating.

To all VCDX candidates, understand that you have a major advantage and go defend your design with confidence!

My VCAP5-CIA Experience

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Yesterday (21st July 2014) I sat and passed the VMware Certified Advanced Professional Cloud Infrastructure Administration (VCAP5-CIA) exam at my local test centre here in Melbourne, Australia.

As with the VCAP-DCA which I did as a prerequisite for VCDX back in 2011, the CIA exam is a live lab exam where VMware get you to demonstrate your hands on expertise with their products.

I find the value of the VCDX, is in part due to the fact it is a requirement to have not only “Design” but hand-on implementation/administration/troubleshooting experience as it is my opinion a person should not be an architect unless that person has the hands on experience and ability to implement and support the solution as designed.

So, enough rambling, what did I think of the VCAP-CIA?

As with all VMware certifications, the exams are generally well written and closely aligned to the blueprints which VMware provide. For VCAP-CIA the blueprint and exam registration can be found here.

The VCAP-CIA was no different, and aligned very well to the blueprint.

The exam is 210 minutes and has 32 questions some of which are simple 1 min tasks where others require a significant amount of work. One secret to all VCAP exams is you are challenged not only by the questions, but by the clock as time is the enemy. This makes time management essential. Do not get caught up of one question, if your unsure, do your best and move on.

Be ware some questions are dependant on successfully completion of earlier questions, but in saying that, a lot of questions are not, so don’t be afraid to skip questions if your struggling as you will still be able to complete many other questions.

The actual live lab in the exam consists of seven ESXi hosts, three vCenter Server virtual machine, four VMware vCloud™ Director (vCD) cells plus additional supporting resources. The lab has a number of pre-configured vApps and virtual machines will also be present for use with certain tasks. It is importaint to understand the lab environment is based on VMware vCloud Suite 5.1 and vCenter Chargeback Manager 2.5, not vCloud 5.5 so ensure you study and prepare using the correct versions of vCloud/vCB!

At this stage some of you may be thinking, I just breached the NDA telling the world about the exam? Well I haven’t and this is the beauty of how VMware does their exam blueprints, the above information is all available in the blueprint so there is not trickery or secrecy to the lab.

As for the questions in the VCAP-CIA, you will not get a brain dump out of me, but what I can tell you is the questions are in most cases very clear and what is asked of the candidates is vastly skills that anyone with any significant vCD experience would be familiar with. For example, the blueprint under Objection 1.2 – Configure vCloud Director for scalability, states under skills and abilities:

 Generate vCloud Director response files
 Add vCloud cells to an existing installation using response files
 Set up vCloud Director transfer storage space
 Configure vCloud Director load balancing

Its safe to say if you know the blueprint properly, you will be able to complete the tasks in the exam, and as a result, get a passing score.

Now the bad news!

Being based in Melbourne, Australia, and the live lab is being accessed by RDP to a location in Seattle, USA. So what does this mean, Latency!

I was only able to complete about 2/3rd’s of the questions in large part due to the delay in the screen refreshing after switching between for example the vCD web interface and production documentation, Putty etc.

On that point, all the PDF and HTML documentation is available in the exam, but I would highly recommend you don’t rely on it, because accessing the doco and searching/scrolling for things is very slow, at least it was for me.

I had numerous occasions where the screen would totally freeze which was a concern, but I soon accepted this was a latency issue, and the lab was fine, and waited out the freezes (which varied from a few seconds to around 20 seconds, which feels like hours when your against the clock!)

I have heard from numerous other VCAP-CIA who sat the exam in the Australia/NZ region that they experienced the same issues, so if you are A/NZ based, or any location a long way from the USA, be prepared for this.

Now being a live lab, the exam is not scored on the spot, and you have to wait for VMware to score the exam and then you will receive an electronic score report via email. The exam receipt says 15 business days, but I was very impressed that less than 24 hours after sitting the exam, I got my score report. Obviously VMware education have done a great job in automating the scoring process, which is a credit to them!

Overall, the experience of the VCAP-CIA was very good, the exam/questions are a solid test of vCloud related skills and experience, so great work VMware Education!

I am very pleased to have completed this exam and all prerequisites for VCDX-Cloud (VCP-Cloud, VCAP-CID and VCAP-CIA) and I will be submitting my application in the near future.

VCDX Defence Essentials – Part 3 – Preparing for the Troubleshooting Scenario

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Following on from Part 1 – Preparing for the Design Defence & Part 2 – Preparing for the Design Scenario, Part 3 covers my tips for the final stage of the VCDX defence, the Troubleshooting Scenario.

After completing the 75min Design defence and the 30min Design Scenario, if your still standing and haven’t retreated at full speed, your final challenge is the 15min Troubleshooting Scenario.

As mentioned in the previous Parts of this series, I am not a official panellist and I do not know how the scoring works. The below is my advice based on conducting mock panels, the success rate of candidates I have conducted mock panels with and my successfully achieving VCDX on the 1st attempt.

If you have read Part 2, then you should notice several similarities in both the common mistakes and tips below.

Common Mistakes

1. Trying to guess the solution to the issue

Taking pot shot guesses at what the problem/s might be does not prove your expertise. If you don’t methodically work through the issue and just keep making guesses, your not doing yourself or the people trying to assess your expertise any good.

2. Not documenting the troubleshooting steps you have completed

Assuming you have not made Mistake #1, and you are methodically working through the troubleshooting scenario, a common mistake I see is a candidate getting confused about what they have or have not investigated.

When candidates repeat the same troubleshooting steps because they have lost track, it does nothing but waste time and does not increase your chance of passing.

15 mins goes by in a flash, you cannot afford to waste time!

3. Going down a rabbit hole

Same as in the design scenario, I have observed many candidates who are clearly very knowledgeable, who have spent the majority of the time troubleshooting one specific area of the environment. eg: Just the vSphere layer

Doing this may demonstrate your expertise in one area really well, but this does not help getting as many potential issues eliminated in the scenario as possible within the time constraint.

4. Being Mute!

Again, same as in the design scenario, I have seen candidates who stand starring at the troubleshooting scenario and the whiteboard for mins at a time.

 

Tips for the Troubleshooting Scenario

1. Do not try to guess the solution to the issue

If you happen to guess the solution (assuming there is one.. hint hint) what expertise have you demonstrated to the panel for them to score you on? The answer is “bugger all” (This is Australian for “none”).

Talk the panel through your troubleshooting methodology, for example, you might choose to go through OSI models layers, or you may choose to start with, Networking, then move onto Storage, then application, then vSphere etc.

The goal of this section of the defence is to demonstrate your troubleshooting skills, so make sure you explain what your trying to eliminate. eg: If a VM has lost connectivity you may ask the panel to perform a vMotion of VM1 from host A to host B. You could explain to the panel that if the ping begins to work following the vMotion, you plan to investigate the networking of Host A. If the ping does not start working, you will continue to investigate for a larger networking issue, such as a VLAN specific problem.

2. Documenting your troubleshooting steps & findings

Ensure you methodically address each of the key areas of a vSphere solution by writing on the whiteboard headings like the following:

a) Storage/SAN/Protocol

b) Networking/Firewall

c) Compute HW

d) Application/Guest OS

e) vSphere

Ensure you eliminate several (i’d suggest >=3) potential issues in each section, so you are covering off the entire environment and record what you have done & the result of the troubleshooting step.

Keep in mind, you only have 15 mins, so 1 item per min is required if you are to cover all areas off thoroughly.

3. Don’t go down a rabbit hole!

Same as in the design scenario, I have observed many candidates who are clearly very knowledgeable, who have spent the majority of the time troubleshooting one specific area of a vSphere environment. eg: Storage

Doing this may demonstrate your expertise in one area really well, but this does not help getting as many potential issues eliminated in the scenario as possible within the time constraint.

Once you have looked into 3 potential issues in storage, move onto Networking, or vSphere etc.

Do not spend more than 60-90 seconds on any one troubleshooting step as this is preventing you demonstrating broad expertise which is the purpose of VCDX.

4. Think out Loud!

Again, same as in the design scenario, I have seen candidates who stand starring at the troubleshooting scenario and the whiteboard totally silent for mins at a time.

Talk the panel through your thought process and expected outcomes for troubleshooting actions.

I cannot give you advise, if I don’t know what your thinking! Same with the panellists, they can’t score you if you don’t verbalize your thought process.

No matter what, keep thinking out loud, if your working through options in your mind, that’s what the panel want’s to hear, so let them hear it!

Summary

I hope the above tips help you prepare for the VCDX design scenario and best of luck with your VCDX journey. For those who are interested, you can read about My VCDX Journey.

If you have any questions on the VCDX process or the advise given in this series please leave your comments and I will compile a list of questions and do a Q&A post.