Quick Review: VCDX Boot Camp- Preparing for the VCDX Panel Defense

As a candidate preparing for the VCDX, I appreciate any material which makes the certification prep easier or saves time. I especially appreciate technical content and guidance from those in the know, i.e. current VCDX holders! As such, I jumped at the chance to pick up a copy of John, Ben, and Mostafa's VCDX Boot Camp book, just released via VMware Press.

This book is a must-read for anyone preparing for the VCDX and is the most convenient all-in-one guide to have with you when preparing for this certification. The amount of useful documentation, books, and other training material for the VCDX seems to have been increasing, of late. This is most likely due to the status of the certification in the industry as well as the demand for VCDX-certified professionals out in the workforce.

The book is described as follows:

Prepare to succeed at your VCDX panel defense and gain world-class knowledge for designing complex VMware environments

VMware Certified Design Expert (VCDX) is the highest level of VMware certification, achieved by dedicated professionals who have demonstrated exceptional skill in VMware enterprise deployments. To earn a VCDX, professionals must create a complete enterprise VMware design and undergo an arduous defense at the hands of some of the world’s most sophisticated VMware experts.

Now, for the first time, there’s a comprehensive guide to VCDX defense: VCDX Boot Camp. Based on the legendary standing-room-only boot camps led by VCDX co-creator John Arrasjid, this guide captures the unsurpassed personal experience of three pioneering VCDX certification holders, program developers, and defense panelists.

John Arrasjid, Ben Lin, and Mostafa Khalil cover everything you need to know to prepare for certification. They demystify the entire VCDX defense process, clearly explain its format and prerequisites, and offer indispensable tips for maximizing your likelihood of success. Detailed chapters on both design and troubleshooting offer four complete scenarios explaining exactly what VCDX panelists will expect from your defense.

Learn how to think like a VCDX, discovering powerful insights and best practices for designing your own world-class virtualized environment.

Coverage includes

• Authoritative preparation guidance (including expert insights into scheduling your preparation and defense)
• Tips for conducting mock defenses, boot camps, and study sessions with your colleagues
• How to select, create, and document a superior, defensible design
• How to make design choices and incorporate design patterns that support the VCDX blueprint
• How to confidently defend your skills in architecture, designing new solutions, and troubleshooting design or implementation flaws
• Proven tips for responding to tough questions from panelists
• Detailed example defenses of designs incorporating VCDX-DCV, VCDX-Cloud, and VCDX-DT

Review

The VCDX was a mystery for most of those interested in taking up the certification, until recently. It is great to see an official reference on the subject. This book serves as both a great reference and practical guidance for exam success.

All of the elements required for certification success are here, from preparation, to the design, and then the defense itself, including the scenarios you will face. I would have liked to see more examples as the book is a bit on the short side.

Pros:

• Great reference
• Finally some printed guidance from members of the VCDX panel team
• Can skip around if looking for extra help on a particular part of the exam

 Cons:

• A tad bit on the short side (in terms of length)
• Could go into a bit more detail, without giving away proprietary information
• More examples are needed to cover additional scenarios and to help increase the length

 Overall, I would recommend giving this book a try! 4/5

*Disclosure: I received an electronic copy of this book for evaluation purposes. This in no way affect this review or any review done on this site.

VMworld 2013 - Public Session Voting

The last few weeks have flown by for me. After returning from Japan to welcome warm weather here in North Carolina, now it would also seem the conference season is in full-swing! (creeps up on us every year).

A couple weeks ago, NetApp submitted abstracts for VMworld "Call for Papers". Now the abstracts have been released for public session voting. I have two sessions in the mix this year:

Session 5400 will be lead by Chris Gebhardt, my colleague on the VMware TME team. I will co-present with him on the Horizon Workspace integrations with NetApp. Here is the abstract:

Horizon View Virtual desktop deployments have traditionally been the most difficult workloads for storage. In this session attendees will learn how seemingly insignificant design decisions can have a great impact on end-user experience and solution scalability. Attendees will learn how VMware Horizon View & Workspace storage integrations can help customers reduce the size, cost, and complexity of VMware Horizon environments. We will demonstrate how desktop administrators can take advantage of these technology integrations without changing their existing desktop management workflows. We will also cover common storage pitfalls, and how to avoid them; proper solution analysis, architecture and sizing, and design decisions.

Session 5501 will be lead by Mac Binesh, Director of Horizon Performance at VMware, with me as co-presenter. The abstract for that session is as follows: 

This session will feature a technical deep dive into the architecture, deployment topologies and best practices for Horizon Workspace, from software to storage. Attendees will gain a better understanding of ways to deploy for best performance, data protection, efficiency and security. Attend this session to get a better understanding of the EUC solution and it's enterprise file sharing capabilities as the preferred solution in the industry.

Go out there and vote today... let your voice be heard. See you all at VMworld!

vBeers - Tokyo

I am in town for the first time in over a year. That makes it the
perfect excuse to do a vBeers! Please join me at a great place for
food and drink... Nakameguro Taproom. We'll get things started at 7PM
and go till the beer runs out (just kidding) ;) Hope to see you there
for good beer and even better virtualization, cloud computing and
storage conversation!

Location: Nakameguro Taproom
Address: Nakameguro GT Plaza C-Block 2F, 2-1-3 Kamimeguro, Meguro-ku, Tokyo
Date: 4/4/13
Time: 7-10PM

Tokyo Adventure

My family and I are headed to Tokyo tomorrow. It's our first visit as a family since moving to the Carolinas in 2011. While they will be enjoying family time, I will be working remotely. I plan to meet with my colleagues at NetApp Japan and with our partner VMware to see how we can collaborate more globally with each other. We have a lot of cool things in the works in the area of technical marketing that I hope we can translate to the global market.

In addition, I'll be meeting with customers regarding their plans around virtualization & cloud computing and NetApp. We hope to gain insight into what works and what needs improvement as we move forward in the cloud computing space. It will be interesting to get feedback from that region on our progress.

Finally, I'll be planning a vBeers in Tokyo for sometime in the next couple weeks. I'll post an invite on the vBeers.org website shortly. If you are in the area and new to virtualization or a veteran technologist, please come. It should be a great chance for networking and like-minded industry conversation.

Hope to see you there!

Top Virtualization Blogs - #33

I am very happy to announce that the vSamurai blog has improved from #38 to #39 on the list of top virtualization bloggers! I am grateful to all who voted and humbled by the response to my content here.

I would like to give a shout out to John Troyer, David Davis, Simon Seagrave and especially Eric Siebert for announcing the list via the latest vChat. Unfortunately, I didn't crack the top 25, as did my colleagues Vaughn Stewart and Nick Howell, but hopefully I'll continue to move up the list by delivering better and more valuable content.

I have been hosting an RSS feed of the top 50 bloggers on the right sidebar of my site for a while now. Continue to look for the latest posts from the top 50 bloggers there. It will be updated with the current list once Eric posts the update to his vLaunchpad page.

Thanks for reading!