Virtualization, Cloud, Infrastructure and all that stuff in-between
My ramblings on the stuff that holds it all together
Category Archives: QA-IQ
Certified..
Posted by on July 1, 2008
I had my 2nd attempt at the VMWare FastTrack course last week (the 1st attempt was cut short due to power problems, and I’ve only just managed to find the time to reschedule).
The course went ok, the 1st 2 days were a bit dull as I’d already sat through them once; the course has been restructured since and is now contiguous through the 2 books, in the 1st attempt we were jumping back and forth as the Fast Track course is the Install & Configure and DSA course mashed together.
I found the pace ok, infact I could probably have been pushed a lot harder, as such I didn’t find it as “intensive or extended hours” – we finished by at least 5.30 most days and earlier some other days – the last day did feel a bit like treading water as it was quite spread out.
Wasn’t overly impressed by the facilities at QA-IQ’s Roseberry Ave – could do with a lick of paint, some better lighting and A/C that works properly. In all fairness it did look like they were in the middle of refitting it. More importantly the instructor was good and the kit/resources worked as required – no free lunch though 😉
No VCP exam voucher is included with QA-IQ as you get at DNS arrow – considering the QA and DNS courses are virtually the same price I think that’s a bit cheap – so you may want to check with your vendor before booking.
There is a lot of team working in building up DRS clusters and doing HA etc. and you have to have sat the course in order to be officially certified as a VCP.
I sat my exam yesterday morning and passed – not by as much as I’d have liked, but I was a bit lazy and didn’t do much (any) specific exam prep – there were a whole load of questions on a particular subject that I had not revisited since the course* and I fell foul of the “mark for review” option where you can go back at the end and can review/change your answers before submitting the exam – several of them from correct to incorrect as I later worked out – d’oh I learnt (and subsequently) forgot that from my MCSE exam days – if you don’t know 100% your 1st instinct was probably right.
Ah well, another one down – must get round to updating my MCSE too.. I quite like the certification exams, it’s just finding the time to learn the MS/VMWare answers and I’m lucky that English is my 1st language as I think a lot of the cert questions (not just VMWare – MS, Cisco etc.) are more about English comprehension and understanding what they are actually asking in order to answer correctly.
*As usual I had to sign an NDA, so no I can’t say what they were – sorry
Misc bits of Useful, Recent VMWare News
Posted by on May 12, 2008
I’ve been really busy the last couple of weeks and I’ve had to trim down my incoming RSS feeds, as there was too much noise and I was missing important things like the following;
- Scott Lowe’s summary of sessions from VMWare’s partner Exchange, some useful information on Site Recovery Manger
- The new VMWare Certified Design Expert (VCDX) certification – next step up from VCP, will have to have a look into it now I’ve finally managed to re-schedule my cancelled QA course – official VM announcement here.
- Official Microsoft Clustering Support with ESX 3.5 Update 1 here
- Some workarounds for deploying Windows Server 2008 with virtual center here – would have been nice if support was in an official update from VMWare soon; it’s not like it’s been beta’ing for a while is it (errr!)
VMWare Fast Track VCP Course – Lights Out Edition
Posted by on April 9, 2008
I have been on a VMWare fast track course this week to complete my VCP cert; annoyingly the VCP is one of those vendor certifications where you need to prove you’ve sat the course as well as doing the exam to qualify as a “proper” VCP.
I’ve been doing it at QA-IQ in central London, and whilst I know most of the content its good for filling in the gaps and detail for the areas where my knowledge is high-level.
Unfortunately the building lost all power 1/2 way through yesterday and we had to finish the remaining theory for the day without PC’s or projectors etc. – full credit to the instructor who didn’t break a sweat doing so, I’d probably have sworn a lot more.
When I arrived this morning they still haven’t got power back on so the day has been cancelled, waiting for a call from our account manager to work out what to do next. it’s already a compressed version of 2 training courses and my schedule is pretty tight so wonder what’s going to happen.
EDF the electricity supplier are bringing in generators – so someone must have really broken it!
Virtualization, Cloud, Infrastructure and all that stuff in-between 