The APAC series of BrownBags will return at the start of July. This series will focus on the What’s New of VCAP5-DCA as well as looking at a few other VMware products in real world use. The schedule ahead is maintained on my blog and you can signup for the new series here: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/885241632
Get Involved
BrownBags are presented by people like you, people who work with virtualization and want to know more about the subject. If you’d like to give something back to the community then presenting a BrownBag is a great way to get going. Drop me an email and we can talk about what and when, if you’d like to present one of the US sessions then get hold of Damian through his blog. All the new presenters say that presenting isn’t as hard as they thought and that preparing really helps you to know the subject area. Pick something you either know now or need to know a lot better.
VMware products In Real Life
The marketing material is all well and good, but nothing beats having used the product to solve real problems in real organizations. These sessions will be presented by technical people who have really used the products. Some of the possible subject areas include:
- View
- Site Recovery Manager
- vCenter Operations Suite
- vCloud Director
- Any of the other infrastructure related products.
VCAP5-DCA What’s New sections
For the VCAP5-DCA material I’m basing my target coverage on Ed Grigson’s blueprint analysis from his VCAP5-DCA What’s New page. Below are the areas he has identified as new, some sections have enough material for a full hour and some will need to be combined. Bear in mind that we’re preparing for an exam that is hands on, so these sessions will mostly contain demonstrations more than slides. The AutoLab is a great tool to setup for these demonstrations.
Section 1.1 – Implement and Manage complex storage
- Identify and tag SSD devices
- Administer hardware acceleration for VAAI
- Configure and administer profile-based storage
- Prepare storage for maintenance (mounting/un-mounting)
- Upgrade VMware storage infrastructure
Section 1.2 – Manage storage capacity in a vSphere environment
- Configure Datastore Clusters
Section 1.3 -Configure and manage complex multipathing and PSA plugins
- Configure Software iSCSI port binding (now via GUI)
2.1 – Implement and Manage Complex Networking
- Configure NetFlow
- Determine appropriate discovery protocol
- CDP
- LLDP
Section 2.4 – Administer vNetwork Distributed Switch settings
- Configure and administer vSphere Network I/O Control
Section 3.1 – Tune and Optimise vSphere performance
- Configure advanced cluster attributes
Section 3.2 – Optimize virtual machine resources
- Tune Virtual Machine memory configurations
- Tune Virtual Machine networking configurations
- Tune Virtual Machine CPU configurations
- Tune Virtual Machine storage configurations
- Configure alternate virtual machine swap locations
Section 3.3 – Implement and maintain complex DRS solutions
- Understand the DRS / storage DRS migration algorithms, the Load Imbalance Metrics, and their impact on migration recommendations
- Create and administer ESXi host and Datastore Clusters
- Administer DRS / Storage DRS
Section 4.1 – Implement and maintain complex VMware HA solutions
- Configure HA redundancy
- Datastore Heartbeat
- Network partitions
Section 5.1 -Manage host profiles
- Use Host Profiles to deploy vStorage policies
- Manage Answer Files
Section 5.2 -Deploy and Manage complex Update Manager environments
- Utilize Update Manager PowerCLI to export baselines for testing
- Utilize the Update Manager Utility to reconfigure vUM settings
Section 6.1 – Configure, manage and analyse vSphere log files
- Use esxcli system syslog to configure centralized logging on ESXi host
- Install and configure VMware syslog Collector and ESXi Dump Collector
Section 6.3 -Troubleshoot Network Performance and connectivity
- Utilize vSphere CLI commands to troubleshoot ESXi network configurations
- Troubleshoot vmkernel related network configuration issues
- Configure and administer Port Mirroring
- Utilize Direct Console User Interface (DCUI) and ESXi Shell to troubleshoot, configure, and monitor ESXi networking
Section 6.4 – Troubleshoot storage performance and connectivity
- Use esxcli to troubleshoot multipathing and PSA-related issues
- Use esxcli to troubleshoot VMkernel storage module configurations
- Use esxcli to troubleshoot iSCSI related issues
- Analyze log files to identify storage and multipathing problems
Section 6.5 – Troubleshoot vCenter Server and ESXi host management
- Troubleshoot the ESXi firewall
- Troubleshoot ESXi host management and connectivity issues
- Utilize Direct Console User Interface (DCUI) and ESXi Shell to troubleshoot, configure, and monitor an environment
Section 7.1 – Secure ESXi hosts
- Generate ESXi host certificates
- Configure vSphere Authentication Proxy
- Manage Active Directory integration
Section 7.2 – Configure and Maintain the ESXi firewall
- Enable/Disable pre-configured services
- Configure service behavior automation
- Open/Close ports in the firewall
- Create a custom service
- Set firewall security level
Section 9.1 – Install ESXi hosts with custom settings
- Create/Edit Image Profiles
- Install/uninstall custom drivers
- Configure advanced bootloader options
- Configure kernel options
- Given a scenario, determine when to customize a configuration
Section 9.2 – Install ESXi hosts using AutoDeploy
- Install the Auto Deploy Server
- Utilize Auto Deploy cmdlets to deploy ESXi hosts
- Configure Bulk Licensing
- Provision/Reprovision ESXi hosts using Auto Deploy
- Configure an Auto Deploy reference host