Recently I had to get recertified for VCP and even though I didn’t really want to …. I did so anyways as you can read in my previous blog post: VMware VCP5-DCV Delta Recertification Exam (VCP550D) available until March 10th + resources to prepare for it
Apparently there were some technical issues and VMware decided to extend the VCP recertification deadline until May 8, 2015. VMware understood this might frustrate people who worked hard to meet the original deadline on time (before March 10th 2015), so they decided to give those people 65% off the VCP6 migration exam.
Even though I still don’t really agree with the recertification, this is a step in the good direction VMware. Keep it up.
For more information, you can read the original blog post: Short Extension For VCP Recertification Deadline (and a Reward for Those Who Met the Original Deadline)
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Tags: certification, Recertification, VCP-DCV, VCP5-DCV, VCP5-DCV Delta Recertification Exam, VCP550D, VMware, vSphere
Again I want to stress that I don’t agree with the way VMware is enforcing the recertification in this case as I’ve described in more detail here. Nevertheless I had to take the exam to keep my certification status, contribute to my company’s partner status and to prevent having to take another expensive course in the future to get certified. I have to admit I did learn about a couple of new things though.
But enough about that. Until March 10th it is possible to take the VCP5-DCV Delta Recertification Exam (VCP550D) that is based on new material between the vSphere 5.0/5.1 and vSphere 5.5 exams. Another benefit is that it is cheaper (90 euros) and that it can be taken online from any location.
I took the exam and passed, so I’m good for the near future. I am thinking about postponing vSphere 6.0 certification due to this re-certification policy though.
Here are the resources I used to prepare for the exam:
I know Veeam also provides VCAP5-DCA and VCP5-DCV study guides, but I haven’t used these yet.
I hope it’s useful to you. If you have any other useful resources or feedback, please leave a comment
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Tags: certification, Recertification, VCP-DCV, VCP5-DCV, VCP5-DCV Delta Recertification Exam, VCP550D, VMware, vSphere
VMware version 6.0 products announced
Yesterday VMware announced version 6 of their products including vSphere 6, Virtual SAN 6, etc. I’ve read a bit on some of the products and to me it seems more of an evolution and less of a revolution. I’m also seeing similar concepts being introduced that Microsoft already implemented in Hyper-V. All in all I think the competition is good for the consumers. If you want to learn more about the VMware version 6.0 products, take a look at these sites:
Why I hate the recertification program
For some time now I knew that VMware would release version 6.0 of their products, but in the meanwhile I’m required to recertify before March 10th. I would’ve preferred to spend my time on version 6.0 of their products instead or on other technologies instead of being forced to focus it on version 5.5 to keep my certification status. Therefore my suggestion to VMware is to ensure that the recertification requirements take into account releases of new products. The ICT work field is already moving at an extremely fast rate and it is already hard enough to keep up without having to recertify (for multiple vendors and certifications).
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Tags: Cloud, vcloud, virtualization, VMware, VSAN, vSphere, vSphere 6, vSphere 6.0
Duncan Epping is offering his books vSphere Clustering Deepdive 4.0 and 5.0 for free, but only today and tomorrow.
For more info take a look at his great blog:
http://www.yellow-bricks.com/2013/05/28/free-kindle-copy-of-vsphere-5-0-clustering-deepdive/
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Tags: Book, Clustering, Duncan Epping, e-book, ebook, Free, ICT, virtualisation, virtualization, VMware, vSphere, vSphere Clustering Deepdive, vSphere Clustering Deepdive 4.0, vSphere Clustering Deepdive 5.0
In the beginning of June, the new Intel Haswell CPUs will be available. Besides the regular improvements like being faster, having better energy efficiency and having better graphics capabilities, these new CPUs will also include VMCS shadowing (Virtual Machine Control Structure Shadowing).
Basically it’s a feature that allows you to run a hypervisor (like VMware, Hyper-V, Xen Server) and create another hypervisor as a VM beneath it. This is also called nested virtualization.
Some of you might say, “Hey this is not new, I’ve already done this with VMware!”. The difference however is that the current method uses some sort of emulation that does not directly access the hardware. And even though it’s great for testing purposes, the performance is suboptimal.
With the embedded hardware supported VMCS shadowing in the new Intel Haswell CPU the nested hypervisor can directly access the hardware, which should improve performance. Also, it might even make it possible to use non-VMware hypervisors in a nested virtualization scenario.
Of course as always, we’ll just have to wait and see how the performance will be in real-life. It’s also not clear to me yet if hypervisors need to be updated to be able to leverage this option. Nonetheless, to me it sounds very promising and I look forward to playing around with it.
For more information read this great article by Gabe Knuth called “Could VMCS Shadowing (a.k.a. nested VMs) from Intel’s new Haswell processors be what Bromium needs to work in VMs?”. When you use the links in the article you will be able to get more information about the Intel Haswell CPUs including benchmarks and more detailed information about VMCS shadowing and use cases.
[EDIT 08-06-2013] Citrix is working hard on integrating VMCS Shadowing / Nested VMs in their products:
http://blogs.citrix.com/2013/06/03/intel-and-citrix-collaboration-to-bring-support-for-hardware-accelerated-nesting-of-hypervisors-into-market/#comments
If you’re planning to build / buy an Intel Haswell based computer or Home Lab, be sure to look into the confirmed USB3 bug in the chipset. Also unfortunately the DDR3 prices have increased substantially (almost 50%) over the last half year.
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Tags: Citrix, CPU, DDR3, DDR3 memory, Hyper-V, hypervisor, hypervizor, Intel, Intel Haswell, Intel Haswell bug, Intel Haswell USB3 bug, memory, Microsoft, nested virtualisation, nested virtualization, performance, processor, USB3 bug, virtualisation, virtualization, VMCS, VMCS shadowing, VMware, vSphere, Xen Server, XenServer
A friend of mine who is still a student has been building his own VMware lab environment for some time now. Yesterday he contacted me that he couldn’t get the “VMware VirtualCenter Server service” to start anymore.
The log showed: EventID 7021 “The VMware VirtualCenter Server service terminated with service-specific error 2 (0×2).”
A quick google search however showed that many things could be causing this error. Because it was a lab environment, I wanted to upgrade the virtual center to the latest version. Before doing so, I took a look at the VMware blog post covering the latest update 5.1.0B. In the readme it said:
“SSO service dependency on MS SQL
When SSO is installed with local Microsoft SQL Server, the services must start in a specific order.
SSO must start after SQL Server starts. If SSO starts before SQL Server starts, restart the SSO
server after SQL server starts.”
Doing so resolved the issue. To prevent the issue from re-occurring, I made the SSO service dependent on the SQL service.
I don’t understand why this is not part of the automated installation process though 😦
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Tags: dependency, ICT, Microsoft, MS SQL, MSSQL, service, SQL Server, SSO, The VMware VirtualCenter Server service terminated with service-specific error 2 (0×2), virtual center, virtualcenter, virtualization, VMware, VMware Virtual Center, VMware virtualcenter, VMware VirtualCenter Server service, VMware vSphere, vSphere, Windows
In a previous blog post I’ve already shown this script that use PowerCLI to get the percentage of physical and virtual servers from your VMware environment for each Virtual Center server. This script however only took into account ESX hosts and VM’s in each Virtual Center server separately.
This means that:
- The UCS blades weren’t taken into account as physical servers.
- No percentage was being calculated for each physical location.
This new script automates determining for each location the number of physical and virtual servers in VMware vSphere and Cisco UCS.
PS: You can get more detailed information from the script, but it has been disabled using comments by default.
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Tags: automation, Cisco, Cisco UCS, Cisco Unified Communication System, corporate social responsibility, CSR, Green IT, Microsoft, PowerCLI, Powershell, Script, Scripting, UCS, virtual center, virtual infrastructure, virtualcenter, virtualisation, virtualization, VMware, VMware vSphere, vSphere, Windows
With the current focus on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) including Green IT, it might be important to know what percentage of servers has been virtualized.
This script I made will use PowerCLI to get the percentage of physical and virtual servers from your VMware environment for each Virtual Center server. You can specify multiple Virtual Center servers if desired.
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Tags: automation, corporate social responsibility, CSR, Green IT, Microsoft, PowerCLI, Powershell, Script, Scripting, virtual center, virtual infrastructure, virtualcenter, virtualisation, virtualization, VMware, VMware vSphere, vSphere, Windows
In the last week, a couple of cool VMware related things have been made available for free:
- vCenter Operations Manager Foundation is the entry-level edition of the vCenter Operations
Management Suite that will help you manage the health and performance of your vSphere environment. It is now included for free with all vSphere editions. For more information about the complete suite, read the VMware vCenter Operations Management Suite Edition Comparison. Eric Sloof from NTPRO.NL also created a video showing of this tool.
- E-learning vSphere Data Protection and Recovery Fundamentals
- E-learning VMware vCloud Director Fundamentals
I didn’t have time yet to check these out myself. If you’re already using this tool or have already completed a course, please let me know if you liked it.
To keep track of free e-learning courses, bookmark mylearn.vmware.com.
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Tags: course, data protection, e-learning, Free, ICT, operations management, operations manager, recovery, vCenter Operations Manager, vCenter Operations Manager Foundation, vCenter Operations Manager Suite, vCloud Director, vCOPS, virtualization, VMware, VMware vCloud Director Fundamentals, vSphere, vSphere Data Protection and Recovery Fundamentals
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