Month: April 2016

VCAP6-DCV DESIGN – Beta exam

April 29, 2016 Kim Bottu 0

For weeks I had been looking forward to the release of the VCAP6-DCV Design Beta Exam. Joy filled me when I had an exam date confirmed. I have just walked out from the examination center. It’s done, the exam has been written. I had 30 minutes to spare. Not that that means that I feel confident that I have passed the exam.  I just don’t belief in changing answers, is all. 9 Design exercises and 22 drag and drops. So what are my impressions? If you feel that VCAP5-DCD was the hardest exam ever and you are hoping that the VCAP6-DCV Design exam will be any easier… I have some bad news for you. It’s harder, a lot harder but […]

The VCDX journey so far…

April 28, 2016 Graeme Vermeulen 0

Well, 2016 is just flying by. It’s scary to think that I’ll be 28 this year. Back in February 2014, I decided that I’d be pursuing the VCDX. I mumbled to my boss at the time “I want to get the VCDX after my VCP is done” – I paid for the course and the exam myself, not getting any training or exams paid for me. I signed up for the VMUG Advantage and got a discount, but it still put me out of pocket by a fair bit. Thinking back now, it was the best decision I ever made! Well, I made a commitment that day. A bit over a year later I had completed both my VCAPs, but […]

Using vRops to find in-guest memory usage

April 26, 2016 Kim Bottu 0

vROPS allows you to see the active Guest Memory. Keep in mind that vRops collects statistics each 5 minutes. From the “DIAGNOSE” tab , select a server Go to the “METRIC PICKER”, select the metrics you want to display and set the “RANGE” in hours/days as you please. Et voila!   Official VROPS page: Product Information Link Official VROPS Documentation: Documentation Link Official download page: Download here!

REVIEW: VMware NSX Fundamentals LiveLessons

April 24, 2016 Kim Bottu 0

Have you ever watched a video course, had your doubts about the instructors or felt a pang of regret that you didn’t have the test environment to test the new solution people were explaining in a video?  This course is different and in the next few lines I will tell you why! The instructors Andreas la Quiante, Ron Fuller, Anthony Burke are highly skilled VMware employees and have proven their value in their respective field. I really like the fact that the course builds up gradually, taking you on a small excursion about networking followed by showing how datacenter networking is being setup and what the future of datacenter networking is all about. From there it takes you on a trip and shows […]

My VCAP5-DCA Experience

April 24, 2016 Graeme Vermeulen 0

I hope this helps anyone preparing for their VCAP5-DCA or VCAP6-DCV Deploy exam. Preparation: I initially started by going through this guide written by Paul Grevink, working through examples in my lab environment. I’m lucky in that regard as we have a Demo Lab where we get customers in and demonstrate the technology. I look after the lab myself, so I took the opportunity to make sure there weren’t any demo’s coming up and started practicing.   I made sure I had the exam blueprint sitting next to me the whole time and made notes on it as I went along.   After around 3 weeks of solid studying (taking time out between consulting and installs) I found out you […]

Guest Post by Sam Burdett (friend and colleague of Graeme)

April 24, 2016 Graeme Vermeulen 0

I recently had some trouble upgrading the base esxi image on a vmware host running 6.0.0 so thought I would let you all know how I resolved it as I had the same trouble with other hosts running 5.5.0 Going through the usual process of uploading the iso to update manager and creating the baseline completed without any issues and so I migrated all live VM’s to the other host in the cluster, disabled HA on the host and popped it into maintenance mode. When it came to remediating the update I was however faced with the following problem: Now this is a bit of an ambiguous error, so we need to take a look at the logs to find […]

Adding new blades to a C7000 chassis

April 24, 2016 Graeme Vermeulen 0

I recently installed some HP ProLiant BL460c blades into a C7000 chassis. First task was to unbox the blades and install the mezzanine cards: The position of your card depends on which slots you’ve populated at the back. There are 8 slots at the back for your networking, whether you’re using ethernet or fibre cards. Make sure you install the mezzanine card into the corresponding slot, in my case it’s into slot 2. Note – because these are only half-height blades, they only have 2 mezzanine slots each. Full-height blades will have 3. Here’s a guide on port mapping: http://virtualkenneth.com/2012/11/26/understanding-hp-virtual-connect-flexfabric-mappings-with-vmware-vsphere/ Please note that your blades will get their iLO settings from the blade chassis Enclosure Bay IP Addressing configuration, which […]