One of my personal goals this year is to take the training; do the prep and take the new(ish) VCP-IaaS exam. In case you don’t know its a VCP-style exam which covers the vCloud Director and associated technologies. There are number of locations for resources to prepare for the exam. Not least the “Brownbag” series of webinars in part organized by Cody Bunch, but involving many others as well:
http://professionalvmware.com/brownbags/
I’ve known about the “Brownbags” for a while but haven’t bother attending in the past because they were covering certifications that I either I already possessed or wasn’t interesting in achieving. In my new role I want to maintain my technical edge (albeit I won’t be as down-in-the-weeds as I have been in the past). My thinking is if attend such events and training – I can build up my knowledge over the next couple of months to be ready for the exam.
That’s what drew me to brownbag sessions. I’m follow the APAC Brownbag because of my current TZ attending the US one would involve me staying up until early in the morning. It’s nice to attend in person because then you can ask questions. Of course, you don’t have to attend the brownbags to learn from them. There will be times I can’t attend because I’m away or speaking at an event…
So its handy that the session are available as podcasts on iTunes and Feedburner:
Tunes: http://t.co/07DGNQsT
Feedburner: http://t.co/2Fic71ZW
Of course there’s lots of training (some of it free on mylearn) these are the ones I’ve indentified – my plan is to focus on the online/self-paced content first, with a view to sitting the actually instructor-led class. It’s nice to be as informed as possible before attending an in-person course. You less likely to hold up the group with basic noob questions; ask important questions and soak-up useful hints/tips from the instructor:
- VMware vCloud Director Fundamentals (Self-paced) – AND FREE!
- VMware vCloud: Overview Cloud Admin (Live Online)
- VMware vCloud: Design Best Practices (Live Online)
- VMware vCloud: Architecting the VMware Cloud (Live Online)
- VMware vCloud: Deploy and Manage the VMware Cloud (ILT)
- VMware vCenter Chargeback Fundamentals (Self-Paced)
- VMware vCenter Chargeback Fundamentals (Self-Paced)
- VMware vShield Fundamentals (Self-Paced)
- VMware vShield App Fundamentals (Self-Paced)
- VMware vShield Endpoint Fundamentals (Self-Paced)
- VMware vShield Edge Fundamentals (Self-Paced)
Even from the 1st brownbag I’ve already picked up some important “real-world” tips and some resources to follow through on:
- VMware vCloud Architecture Toolkit or vCAT (careful when you say this abbreviation it sounds a lot like VCAP!) . Is a series of documents around designing a vCloud implementation – and contains a lot of best practises. Seems to form the bedrock of some (but not all) of the VCP-IaaS questions. Alongside the exam blue print this an important set of documents. There will be session of vCAT v3 at VMworld, and seems likely that this resource will need updating as the “Software Defined Datacenter” concept takes hold.
- The other thing the BrownBag guys flagged up was the Autolab project – http://www.labguides.com/autolab/. This lab builder kit is designed to produce a nested vSphere 5.0 or 4.1 lab environment with the minimum effort. Prebuilt Open Source VMs and the shell of other VMs are provided along with automation for the installation of operating systems and applications into these VMs. The lab build was originally created to aid study towards VCP5 certification however it has many other possible uses. It’s sponsored by Veeam, and could provide the platform for learning