Free online e-learning modules are available that take about 4-5 hours to complete and that are sufficient to pass the exam. The registration process is a bit cumbersome in my opinion, but this blog post contains some instructions to help you with that.
From what I can see, this offer is valid until the end of October, but I might be wrong so it’s best to take the exams as soon as possible. I also think you’ll also be able to use the same voucher code to re-take the exam should you fail, but again I’m not really sure. Once I have more information, I will update this blog post.
Future additions
In the future a new track VMware Certified Associate – Network Virtualization (VCA-NV) will become available. It is not clear when it will arrive and if you’ll be able to use the voucher on this exam as well, but using the link you can at least have VMware notify you when it becomes available.
Usefulness
I think these free e-learnings are a good way to become familiar on a high level with VMware products, terminology and use cases. The VCA certification is proof you have this knowledge and might give you an advantage.
Being able to certify for free now can come in handy for:
People that are still studying.
People that are in between jobs.
People that are working in other parts of the ICT that are interested in VMware, but cannot get their employer to pay for VMware training/certification.
People and companies that want to stimulate certification, but also have to save costs.
People that are interested in virtualization and are considering doing more with it, but don’t know yet if it’s something for them.
There are of course more possible situations, but I think these are very common.
Thanks
Thanks to VMware for making this possible and Rasmus Haslund (@Haslund) for sharing the information and the voucher on his website http://www.perfectcloud.org, If you decide to use this offer, please also leave a comment at his website.
Also, as always … sharing is caring, so share this with others.
At the beginning of September I had the opportunity to attend the first ever Cloud Credential Council (CCC) Professional Cloud Solutions Architect (PCSA) course from ITpreneurs. The trainer was Mark Skilton and I really loved the training. But before telling you more about my experience, I’ll first first explain both the certification and the course in a bit more detail.
What is the CCC Professional Cloud Solutions Architect (PCSA) certification and who is it for ?
The PCSA certification is a globally recognized certification for technology architects. Solution Architects need to understand the impact that cloud is having on business and information architecture, application design, data management and security architecture and be very familiar with the topology and ecosystems that are being created as a result of increasing adoption of cloud technologies and operating models The certification is designed for senior technology professionals who are architecting and designing the future generation of technology solutions. Being PCSA-certified showcases your cloud architecting experience, skills and knowledge, and demonstrates you are capable to manage the various stakeholders within the enterprise. For more information, please take a look at the website: http://www.cloudcredential.org/en/certifications/professional-level/cloud-solutions-architect
What is the ITpreneurs CCC Professional Cloud Solutions Architect (PCSA) course ?
The ITpreneurs CCC PCSA course is a 3-day instructor led course that provides attendees with the required knowledge and skills for the CCC Professional Cloud Solutions Architect (PCSA) certification. The course material was created by lead author Mark Skilton and peer reviewers Vladimir Baranek and RajaGopalan Varadan. For more information, contact ITpreneurs and/or take a look at the course description: http://www.itpreneurs.com/cloud/CCC-courses/cloud-solutions-architect-VCC1310-itpreneurs.pdf
My experiences with and opinion about the ITpreneurs CCC PCSA course
Like I said at the beginning, I really loved the CCC PCSA course because:
It covers an important current topic that I believe will become even more important in the future.
The course materials are very complete and of great quality.
There’s a good balance between theoretical and practical knowledge.
The cases are mini workshops that force you to apply your knowledge, which provides more insight. They are also consistent with cases from previous cloud courses from ITpreneurs.
There is a lot of interaction between the trainer and the students.
Mark Skilton presented the course with a lot of enthusiasm and modified the course content on the go to focus more on the interests of the audience.
One of the difficult parts of cloud computing is that it’s a very broad definition. As such, different interpretations and explanations are used for the same word/technology by different people and companies. So during the course there were some discussions. I thought this was good, because this will happen in real-life as well. It also stresses the importance of clear definitions and verifying correct understanding of all involved parties.
The special version of the course I attended was only two days, while the regular course will be three days. Since there was so much information to take in and because there were many discussions, the two days unfortunately weren’t enough to cover everything. ITpreneurs and Mark Skilton modified the course on the fly to cover the most important things, but I would have loved to go into more detail during the course if there had been time. Unfortunately this wasn’t the case, but since the course materials are of great quality I’ll be reading them at home instead.
As always there’s room for improvement. Our class provided a lot of feedback that Mark Skilton and ITpreneurs took to heart. They seemed to be really committed to improving the course so I expect the course to become even better since the course materials are currently being reassessed and restructured.
I hope you enjoyed reading about my course experience. For those interested in it, I added some more information about ITpreneurs and the Cloud Credential Council at the end of this blog post.
Thanks
I’d like to thank Corjan Bast and ITpreneurs for providing me with the opportunity to attend this course free of charge. I also want to thank Mark Skilton and all other great people involved in this course for their participation, valuable input and hard work.
As every TV season, some shows are coming to an end (I’ll miss you Breaking Bad and Dexter), while new ones are premiering in the next weeks/months.
For those interested in these new TV series I’ve tried to make it convenient to find more info about the shows by adding links to both IMDB and Youtube.
Last week Mark Minasi presented a webinar made possible by http://www.learnit.com called: “The Case for PowerShell: Why To Learn-PowerShell So You Needn’t Leave-Industry”. The recording can be found here.
In this webinar he explains why ICT administrators need to be(come) familiar with PowerShell. He also explains the basic principles of PowerShell to help lower the threshold for people that have been shying away from command line interfaces (CLI) and scripting in the past. He does this by explaining how PowerShell is different from by example the CLI and Visual Basic Scripting (VBS).
I share his opinion about the necessity to learn PowerShell and therefore I hope I can help spread the message.
Even though it seemed for a while that MSDN and Technet subscribers would not get early access to the latest Windows versions, Microsoft decided to listen to customer feedback and reconsidered.
As a result, they just made the RTM versions of Windows 8.1 and Windows Server 2012 R2 available for MSDN and Technet subscribers. General availability for both Windows 8.1 and Windows Server 2012 R2 is still October 18. For the official statement, read this blog post.
Personally I’m very stoked about Server 2012 R2 and I’m already running the preview version. I especially love the improvements on Hyper-V and de-duplication. For more information about new and improved functionality, take a look at the free e-book : Introducing Windows Server 2012 R2 Preview Release.
As some of you might know, I’m very interested in High Performance Organizations (HPO) and the characteristics of these companies. In my opinion it’s something every company should strife for.
As such, I’m happy to inform you that the HPO center has launched their new revamped website with multilinual support. The supported languages are:
Dutch (Nederlands)
English
French (Français)
German (Deutsch)
Spanish (Español)
So if you’re interested in the new design, or if you’re just curious about what HPO is about, please visit the website: http://www.hpocenter.com.
Notes:
It seems that even though multilingual support has been added to the website, not all content has been translated (yet).
If you have any feedback (both positive and negative) about the website, please let the HPO center know.
Also if you want to keep track of new developments regarding HPO, you can use the following resources:
Today I helped a colleague troubleshoot a couple of systems were unable to activate using Key Management Service (KMS). Basically for this situation it boiled down to this:
Determine for the KMS service
Which server is hosting the KMS service.If an SRV record has been added for KMS DNS auto discovery, run from CMD: nslookup -type=srv _vlmcs._tcp
If the server hosting the KMS is functioning correctly:
Check if the server is up and running.
Check if the “Software Protection” service (sppsvc) is running.
Verify if the KMS service is listening on port 1688: telnet localhost 1688
Verify the KMS status. Run from CMD: slmgr.vbs /dli
Verify if a KMS key is installed and activated.
Verify if the minimum threshold for activation is being met.
Verify if other clients are able to activate using KMS. Even though the output of “slmgr.vbs /dli” gives you an indication, you can use the “Volume Activation Management Tool” (VAMT) for more insight and functionality.
Verify that a VLK key is being used.
For clients that are not able to activate
Verify if the correct KMS server can be resolved correctly: nslookup -type=srv _vlmcs._tcp
Verify if the KMS can be contacted: telnet <KMS FQDN or IP> 1688
If this is not the case, perform a traceroute to determine potential causes. Reasons could include:
No default gateway configured on the client to reach the KMS.
No route configured on the client to reach the KMS.
Firewall on the client is blocking the traffic.
Firewall on the server is blocking the traffic.
If it is a VM, the virtual network might be misconfigured.
Routing on the network is not correct.
Firewall on the network is blocking traffic.
Clear any previous (mis)configuration: slmgr.vbs /ckms
Attempt activation: slmgr.vbs /ckms
NOTE: If you have lots of systems where you need to clear configuration and then attempt activation, you can also perform slmgr.vbs on remote computers using: slmgr.vbs TargetComputerName [username] [password] /parameter [options]
Additional information
If you haven’t been able to resolve the issue, you might want to take a look here:
A new Humble Bundle, the Humble Origin Bundle has been available for a while and will be over in 12 hours. don’t miss out on the great games.
This is a way to give to charity and get great games (or the other way around). Basically you can determine how much you give and you can even specify who should receive which amount of your donation. You can read more about the concept and other bundles in a previous blog post.
It’s also good to note that ALL proceedings will be going to charity. Even though Electronic Arts (EA) has been criticized a lot in the past, this is a great thing they’re doing.
The Humble Origin Bundle
The Humble Origin Bundle contains the following steam redeemable games:
Dead Space
Crysis 2 Maximum Edition
Burnout Paradise: The Ultimate Box
Medal of Honor
Mirror’s Edge
The Sims 3 (along with two expansion packs in The Sims 3 Starter Pack)
Battlefield 3
Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 – Uprising
Populous
To give you an idea what these games look like, take a look at this YouTube video:
Ever since Half-Life on the PC came out in 1998 I’ve been a big fan of the Valve franchises Half-Life, Counter-Strike, Left4Dead, Portal, Team Fortress and DOTA.
In my opinion, Valve is also the best game company in the world. I feel this way because:
They created a lot of great game franchises and keep actively supporting it for a long time.
They created the best PC gaming platform Steam and are continuously improving it.
They provide the community with free tools that can be used to easily create, share and find user generated content like maps, mods and other content. Because of this you can keep playing your already existing games with new content. There is also a lot of user generated content because these users get a large share of the money earned from it.
The Free-To-Play (F2P) games Team Fortress 2 and DOTA are done properly, they aren’t pay-to-win (P2W).
So when Valve released the level editor for Portal 2 about a year ago, I couldn’t wait to create my own level. Even though the level editor is really straightforward and simple, it took me quite a while to create the level (mainly to test and prevent players from taking unintended shortcuts).
To map I created is called “TAG recruits survival test” and is a tribute to my old Half-Life Deathmatch clan called The Assassins Guild (TAG). To give you an idea of the map I uploaded a quick tour video to YouTube:
The map can be downloaded from steam: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=72096196.If you’ve played my map, please leave a comment.
I really liked making the map, but because it takes a lot of time I don’t know if and when I’ll make a new map. Luckily many other people have been creating content and at the time of writing 263,886 maps have already been created. My friend Bart Fuchs also made a map you might want to check out called: cubed laser.
blog.bjornhouben.com 