Demitasse

Much excitement in the Demitasse household, well OK it’s just me excited as the rest of the family don’t get to come along.  I’ve been invited to join Stephen Foskett’s band of merry men at Tech Field Day 9 in Austin Texas next month. I’m expecting an experience similar to the HP Tech Day (no Field) I attended in Colorado last year, I even get to see John Obeto and Howard Marks that I met at that event again at this one.  The big difference ere is that there will be seven vendors over the three days, including one that is secret as they are still in stealth mode. I’m expecting a whirlwind of vendors and conversations with my fellow attendees.

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© 2013, Demitasse. All rights reserved. This post first appeared on the Demitasse blog www.demitasse.co.nz

This week I started a new phase.  In the past I’ve done a little consulting work under my own banner or as a sub contactor for small pieces of work.  This week I started a long term relationship with ViFX, a New Zealand based VMware partner specializing in VMware related design and implementation services. When I’m not teaching VMware courses I will be part of the ViFX team. 

I started on Monday & since there were no un-resourced design projects starting that day I have ended up doing a fair mount of implementation work. Rack and stack some servers, do some of the cabling and ESXi setup for them, work with the storage and network teams to make sure everything is working.  It’s been around seven years since I did this regularly so it’s fun to step back into it, driving around the city from offices to datacenters with a laptop and a screwdriver.

I will still be blogging here and on ProfessionalVMware, I suspect the ViFX work will be a fertile ground for blog post material. I will also keep up the AutoLab development and vBrownBag hosting along with writing for other sites.

The biggest change is that I will be based in Auckland for the working week, rather than at home or all over the place teaching.  I will end up spending more time away from home, getting back to the family at weekend. This is better for us than uprooting the family to live in Auckland where housing costs are huge and where my daughters don’t have friends. After six years of me being away a lot we’re pretty well adjusted for it but it still has it’s challenges. On the plus side having a permanent pad in Auckland will make it easy for the family to come up for the weekend or during holidays.

I’m excited about the new direction and getting more hands on with the technologies I teach about.  Maybe I’ll get that VCDX nailed too since I’ll have a few design and implementation projects.

© 2013, Demitasse. All rights reserved. This post first appeared on the Demitasse blog www.demitasse.co.nz

I did the VCAP5-DTD exam at Avonmore here in Tauranga today.  You can read about my experience of the exam in this post on ProfessionalVMware.com.

I really like that I can do VMware advanced exams in Tauranga, 25km from home, rather than having to go to Auckland which is 200km. The setup may not be as slick as Auldhouse or Pearson’s sites in Australia but it works and I haven’t had any problems with the test taking environment there. Since they are a lot less busy than the testing centres in the main cities it’s a lot easier to book the long time slot required for the VCAP exams.

One other nice thing was to find one of my past colleagues is now a trainer at Avonmore, one of the fun parts of living in a small city.

© 2013, Demitasse. All rights reserved. This post first appeared on the Demitasse blog www.demitasse.co.nz

Today’s workshop was for the Datacenter Administration exam, the toughest VMware exam I’ve sat. Below are the links I used.

First of all the certification page www.vmware.com/certification

The vBrownBag home page www.professionalvmware.com/brownbags/

vBrownBag VCAP5-DCA Playlist on YouTube

Greg Robertson’s VCAP resource page www.thesaffageek.co.uk/vsphere-5-study-resources/vcap5-dca-dcd/

Chris Wahl’s study sheet http://wahlnetwork.com/2012/07/02/the-vcap5-dca-study-sheet/

Finally my own AutoLab www.labguides.com

© 2013, Demitasse. All rights reserved. This post first appeared on the Demitasse blog www.demitasse.co.nz

One of the presentations I do a bit is about preparing for the VCAP certifications, I’ve done this at vForum Sydney and at the Sydney and Melbourne VMUGs and it always seems to be valuable to people. This week I’m doing the same material online for an international audience, which is interesting in itself. Below is a selection of links to VCAP5-DCD study resources that I used during the presentation.

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© 2013, Demitasse. All rights reserved. This post first appeared on the Demitasse blog www.demitasse.co.nz

I’m a fan of the web site www.lifehacker.com and particularly enjoy their “this is how I work” articles. I originally wrote this as an audition piece for LifeHaker but decided to stay with writing about Enterprise tech for now.

Location: Small town New Zealand

Current gig: Freelance trainer and writer. I travel to cities in New Zealand and Australia to teach about server and desktop virtualization, my students work in IT at corporates or solution providers. I also write and host podcasts about enterprise tech, especially virtualization.

One word that best describes how you work: Compulsively. When I have an interesting project on it will consume all of my free time until it’s done. Some projects are for customers but a lot of the projects I work on are contributed to the very active community around the technology I teach about.

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© 2013, Demitasse. All rights reserved. This post first appeared on the Demitasse blog www.demitasse.co.nz

In the AutoLab build we’re using a lot of PowerCLI, the whole DC and VC build is migrating into PowerShell and there are a few places where we use PowerCLI.

On big issue I have had with PowerCLI is the huge delay in loading the snap in, PowerShell itself loads in a few seconds but PowerCLI takes a couple of minutes to load.

A quick Google has brought relief in the form of a blog post from the every awesome Alan Renouf which helped me resolve the issue http://www.virtu-al.net/2010/07/05/speed-up-powercli/

If you aren’t familiar with Alan’s work spend a while looking around, I particularly recommend the vCheck script.

© 2013, Demitasse. All rights reserved. This post first appeared on the Demitasse blog www.demitasse.co.nz

You probably know that VMware has been rationalising it’s product lines into Datacentre Virtualization (DV), Cloud and End User Compute (DT in the certification names but EUC everywhere else).  The certifications have also been aligned to the products, with VCP, VCAP and VCDX level certifications released or planned for each of these streams.

At the moment only the DV and Cloud streams have VCAP exams available, and the Cloud stream only has the Design exam so far. The Desktop Design VCAP exam has been through beta and should be released quite soon and the beta of the Cloud Admin VCAP has just finished so that exam should be available in a couple of months time.

One piece of news that came out at Partner Exchange last week was that the VCAP certifications can be used to cross from one stream to another. If you hold any current VCP level certification you can then take the VCAP exam in another stream and if you pass get that stream’s VCP as well as the VCAP. One exam to get two certifications is a great deal, also the VCP level is the only one that (to date) has a mandatory education requirement so a potential cost saving if you’re paying for your own prep.

I know I’m a bit biased as I make my living teaching the courses, but if you get the chance do attend the advanced courses that are suggested preparation for the VCAP exams. Particularly attend at least one Design Workshop if you are doing the design exams, knowing how VMware thinks about design is important for the exams.

© 2013, Demitasse. All rights reserved. This post first appeared on the Demitasse blog www.demitasse.co.nz

The first Auckland vBeers for 2013 will be on March 20th at the Northern Steamship on Britomart from 5pm.

As always vBeers is a chance to talk with other virtualization professionals and enjoy a relaxing refreshment after a long days work.  All the details are on the vBeers site at the link below.

http://www.vbeers.org/2013/03/06/vbeers-auckland-new-zealand-wednesday-20th-march-2013/

© 2013, Demitasse. All rights reserved. This post first appeared on the Demitasse blog www.demitasse.co.nz

I just had my memory refreshed about the playlists that Nick Marshall generated for some of the vBrownBag content that we generated last year.  These are playlists for specific VMware certifications, covering VCP5, VCAP5-DCD and VCAP5-DCA certifications there is a huge amount of certification preparation material on our YouTube feed at http://www.youtube.com/user/vBrownBag/videos?view=1&flow=grid

© 2013, Demitasse. All rights reserved. This post first appeared on the Demitasse blog www.demitasse.co.nz