Veeam Community Podcast

The Veeam Community Podcast is focused on giving the global virtualization community a new resource for connecting with industry experts, bloggers and peers, as well as for staying up to date on the latest industry news, developments and trends. Each 30-minute weekly episode of the Veeam Community Podcast will be available through RSS subscription and the Apple iTunes store. The podcast is hosted by Rick Vanover, a writer, blogger, VMware vExpert, VMware Certified Professional, Microsoft Certified Professional, Microsoft Certified IT Professional and a Microsoft Certified Systems Administrator. He currently works as Software Strategy Specialist at Veeam.

In this episode, Rick Vanover (Twitter @RickVanover) host with David Davis (Twitter @DavidMDavis) to talk about a number of VMware events and certification opportunities. David writes the VMwareVideos.com blog and also works for TrainSignal. TrainSignal is a provider of computer-based "Total Experience" training that gives individuals the tools and confidence to tackle real-world challenges, pass their certification exam and succeed in today’s competitive global IT market.

Rick: Hello and welcome to the Veeam Community Podcast. I am your host Rick Vanover. This is Episode 4, "Events and Certifications for VMware Admins." Here we go. Today our guest is David Davis. David, how are you doing?

David: Hey, Rick. I'm doing great.

Rick: Hey man, thanks for being on the show. We're going to talk about VMware stuff - certification and events. Those are two critical things that go really hand-in-hand for the VMware administrator, decision maker, that type of thing, to really know what to buy and then how to use it and what technologies are coming. You and I have both bumped into each other in the VMware events circle, and you're definitely one of the flag leaders for certification. I've been working on that as well. You and I both agree it's important stuff.

David: Absolutely, yeah. One of my favorite topics.

Rick: I think the biggest challenge I've got is sometimes finding the time to go to an event or finding the time to get the right training that we need to use a new product or that type of thing. Good thing is VMware makes it pretty easy. There's the Hyper-V camp out there, but you really can't go wrong with VMware.

David: Yeah, absolutely. I think VMware's done a great job. I have to hand it to them when it comes to certifications and education and their VMware community and just all the things they do. Their blogs, just so many things that they provide to support people who want to learn about their product. I think that's one of the things that make their product so successful as compared to some of the other virtualization products.

Rick: There's a lot of work that went into defining the virtualization community. It's almost scary how much work they've put into it yet how successful it is, because I can't think of any other segment of technology that is as developed in the community sense as virtualization.

David: Me too. When I talk to other people who do training and blogging on Microsoft and Cisco, I talk about the things that we do in our community. Like, "Aren't you guys really big on Twitter, and aren't you guys speaking at events?" Many times they say, "Well, our community just isn't that strong. There aren't that many bloggers out there talking about this kind of stuff. There just isn't that much interest." I feel really fortunate to be part of the virtualization community because it is so strong and so active like that.

Rick: You're right. I was a holdout for Twitter, but once I got on Twitter sometime in 2009, wow. You really got a sense for the community. It's not just one-way traffic. It's not the bloggers just saying this is how it is, or the VMware Twitter account saying this is how it is. It's truly a bi-directional exchange of feedback, ideas, and opinions honestly. It's entertaining at times, and it's not as mud-slinging and spiteful as something like the storage community. You know what I mean?

David: Yeah, that's true. I try to be unbiased and I really do want to learn as much about XenServer and Hyper-V and stuff like that as I can, but many times I just don't see very many resources to learn about those technologies. There are so many people directly who work at VMware. On Twitter, I can just ask them questions and they just respond. I try to follow people who work at Microsoft and track them down, and I just don't get that level of participation from them that I see from the VMware community.

Rick: You're right. That stems from everything, from a VMware employee telling you how to set up a virtual lab within VMware workstation. The Eric Gray ESX virtualized self post, which is probably the most visited post I've ever been to, but there's nothing from Microsoft on how to do anything like that, much less the technology can't do it. It's like if we're given the opportunity, the community will use it and the community will deliver and the community will develop their skills. It all works together in my opinion.

David: Absolutely.

Rick: When it comes to certifications, the community is one thing, but then VMware certifications especially, everybody's heard about the VMware VCP certification. It's been out for a while. But the VCAP-DCA VMware Certified Advanced Professional Data Center Administration Certification is out there. It is the longest acronym certification that I know of.

David: I think you're right.

Rick: So that must mean it's really good, right?

David: Absolutely.

Rick: What do you know about it thus far? I know you had a recent blog post about it.

David: That's funny. You mentioned the VCAP. Now I have this image stuck in my head. Yesterday, we did a V-chat podcast where we interviewed Frank Denneman and Duncan Epping, and Duncan at the start was wearing this baseball hat that on the top of it said "VCAP." But it was really the cap that he received from VMware. When he achieved his VCAP, they mailed him a VCap, the baseball hat that says VCAP on it. Now when I think about VCAP, I think about the VCap. Hopefully I'll get a VCap here soon in the mail.

Rick: Hold on. I need to interrupt you because I've got a cheap plug for Veeam. I have right here next to me 25 copies of Duncan and Frank's new book. So if you attend Veeam webinars, one of the things we do is we hand out free copies of that. So always check for Veeam webinars and you could score one of these books. End of cheap plug. Carry on.

David: It's a great book. I've got a copy right here in fact. Anyway, back to VCAP and certification. The VCP certification is pretty unique in the sense that it requires you to take a VMware education course. I wish that VMware would authorize other types of curriculum to learn and qualify yourself to take that course, such as my VMware video training. Or books or other types of courses; just make it a little bit easier. But I do also understand that they want to keep that level of knowledge and that requirement high to make the certification a little bit more exclusive. I applaud them for trying to do that.

Then from the VCP you've got these two new certifications – the VCAP DCA and the DCD. The DCA is the Data Center Administration Exam, and the DCD is the Data Center Design. I did a blog post on those recently with a list of resources that you might be able to use to help you prepare for those tests. They're also pretty unique in the sense that the VCAP-DCA, which I took back in December, is about three and a half hours long and it's 100% real world. You're working on real servers, configuring real things. It's the only test like that I've ever taken at least in the sense that I didn't really feel like it tried to trick me. It was pretty much, "Here are all these things you need to configure. Now go do it." Almost like you're interviewing a new VMware admin and you want to give them a test to see if they're qualified and what they can really configure. They even give you the documentation. I felt like it was pretty realistic.

Rick: Sure. Don't share specific details, but suppose you needed to set up a cluster, install EXSI, configure HA & DRS on the cluster, if it was those objectives, did it say things like it had to be through automation, like you had to do it through power shell or you could do it through the UI or does it really matter how you do it?

David: It did give you some specific things you had to do to ensure that they would be able to grade it, I guess. I don't know about the different methods that you could do it from. PowerCLI is on the exam requirement. It is in the blueprint that you know how to use PowerCLI, that you know how to troubleshoot VMware performance and also configure VMware security and stuff like that. It's a huge breadth of information you need to be prepared to be an expert on, and VMware recommends four different classes that you should take to prepare. I recently came out with my VMware troubleshooting video training, which really helped me honestly to prepare for the exam because that was a lot of what the exam, I don't think I'm sharing any specifics here because that's on a blueprint. Most of the blueprint is troubleshooting vSphere. I thought it was a great test. Really.

Rick: I heard that they threw you some curveballs, like they give you a keyboard without the letter V and you have to make everything work. No, I'm just teasing. That would be tough. I guess I'd much rather give up an L or something.

David: The testing center did throw me some curveballs. You can only take it at a Prometric Testing Center, and those to me are much more strict than other testing centers. They roll up your sleeves and your pant legs. They check behind your ears. They wouldn't let me take any cough drops in or any kind of drink for a four hour exam. I know Jason Bockey was complaining. It was 8:00 a.m. and they wouldn't let him bring a cup of coffee in for his hour for his four hour test. They were really strict.

Rick: That would be a problem. If I don't maintain my caffeine injections through diet soda, oh man, that could be a problem. I'm actually going to roll the VCAP into my certification, my personal development plan. I haven't done it yet. I kind of go on this every two or three year spurt when the new technologies go out. I kind of bolstered up on VMware and Microsoft in 2008 and 2009, so it's probably time to circle back into that. You bring up a good point that the troubleshooting is a big aspect of the VCAP because that's where you earn your money if you can troubleshoot your entire infrastructure if it's VMware. On the other hand, I've even said before, "Do you spend your day looking at ESXtop all day?" I don't usually do that. But if there's a problem, we definitely need to know how to get in there, get results, know what the problem is, and then start the remediation process. There's definitely value in going to that level. I think that the VCAP will definitely be a higher notch for the VMware admin.

David: Right. You have to have your VCP in order to take the VCAP, and then the VCAP, I believe you have to take both the DCA and the DCD to qualify for the VCDX Four. It might just be one test. I can't remember right now, but it is a qualification for the VCDX.

Rick: The VCDX is an even more granular certification. I wonder how many there actually are now. I know they hit that 50 or 75 mark, but I don't know how many are actually out there right now, do you offhand?

David: I don't know the exact number. I did ask Duncan yesterday, and he wasn't quite sure, but he said it's somewhere between 50 and 60.

Rick: Oh, wow. So he's happy with what, four?

David: He's 007.

Rick: 007. Way cooler than four. I'll say that that VCP is like that general purpose virtualization certification for VMware that shows that you've taken the class, the test, and hopefully the everyday person has some experience with it as well. Then the VCAP builds on that and has a very practical element to it as well as the troubleshooting element. Those are all really important. I think the Microsoft one is a specialization for the MCITP course. Is that correct?

David: Right. Yeah, that's correct.

Rick: The other half of what a typical VMware person could do to develop their career is attend some of the different events. There's VMWorld, there's Partner Exchange, there's Tech Mentor, there's VMUGs throughout the country. Let's talk a little bit about those. VMworld is the big one that everyone kind of thinks of. So many times, I don't know if you're the same way David, I find myself explaining to somebody that VMworld is not a week long training on Product A. That's not what it is. Would you agree?

David: I agree. That's, I think, in contrast to something like Tech Mentor, although I've never been to Tech Mentor. Just from looking at the topics, it seems like really in-depth training on Microsoft Windows server and stuff like that versus VMworld there are third party products sessions, individual companies that have done case studies, and they go up there and they talk about it. There are VMware engineers that go into product details and specifics. It's a different conglomeration of things at VMworld.

Rick: I think of VMworld as a tapas bar because you get all these different appetizers and they might have really good nuggets of information on them. You're sampling so many different things, and it's overwhelming really. You'll find some deep dives and there are some labs, but you come out of there with a very mile wide, two feet deep approach, and then occasionally you can dip into some really deep topics. I think the best benefit is when you step aside and talk to somebody directly, because chances are somebody has gone through this before you or before me. The community aspect comes in and I think brings a lot of value to the attendees of something like VMworld.

David: Yeah, absolutely. To me, VMworld is the one opportunity I have a year to see so many of the people in the community that I talk to on a daily basis almost. Really that's what I spend the whole week doing is mainly just networking with different people. That's so invaluable. You just can't replace that. All the sessions are recorded and you can watch those later, but the networking you can't replace.

Rick: It's almost overwhelming. You can never just sit around and say you're bored at VMworld. David, I've got a trick. Every podcast has its gimmick. and my gimmick is three views from you. I'm going to ask you three questions that I'd like you to answer. The first one will be looking only in your past and the other one is going to be looking right now and the last one will be looking into the future. So David, as a technologist, what's the most interesting technical role, story, or professional work experience type of situation that you've had thus far in your career that you could share with us?

David: I'll give you two quick ones. One is back when I worked as an IT manager and a server admin. One of my favorite things to see was racks of equipment rolling in. A big truck comes and you get to watch them unload this gigantic crate and figure out how to get it up in the elevator to the second floor data center and unpack this big crate with a crowbar and everything. It was better than Christmas. To me, that's one of the most exciting things. Then a little bit more recently, when I've gotten to do some speaking and stuff, I did a three city tour in Canada going to some different conferences and speaking about virtualization. That was just really overwhelming, so many different views and different people that I met and different things I was exposed to. For the past, I'd say that's about the top two.

Rick: That's cool. The crates of stuff coming in, it's kind of funny because now going virtual I like to see stuff going out. It's the same mentality. Just a shout-out to all the listeners, if you have old equipment, definitely consider wiping the hard drives and selling it to the aftermarket. I'll just drop a little seed that there's actually a pretty defined value out there for SCSI hard drives if they're wiped and if they're operational because you can't buy those anymore. Think about selling those in the aftermarket. So David, today what's going on technology wise that gets you most interested or you have the most passion for in stuff you work with right now?

David: Today, I would say vSphere for what it offers today. There were a ton of new features released in Version 4.1, and then I know there are a ton of new features in the pipeline that are coming soon. So I'm just super excited about everything that VMware's doing. They've got the new vCenter iPad app that they keep saying is going to come out. I haven't seen it yet, but I'm still excited about that. VMware continues to amaze me with all the different features they come up with that I didn't even dream of. Then, of course, the cloud computing thing with vCloud Director's Version 1.0, I think that's really yet to be seen, the power and the flexibility and everything that this is going to provide all of us.

Rick: I couldn't agree more. Right now, it's definitely the hot thing out there. I'm always on the edge of my seat to see what's coming in the new versions of stuff. Finally, David, looking into the future, what are you most excited for down the pike, in the next 5, 10, 20 years in technology?

David: Wow, 5, 10 or 20 years . . .

Rick: How about the next five weeks? I don't know.

David: I think with more and more easily accessible bandwidth I think is one of the big limitations right now, but as more and more people get bandwidth and less latency bandwidth, I think you'll just be able to do so many more things. Right now we're just in the infancy of streaming movies over the Internet. We saw what that did to the local video store, and that's just one small example. In the future, we talked about cloud computing and we've seen all those Microsoft commercials, "Take everything to the cloud." I'm not sure exactly what that means yet. It sounds kind of cool in the commercial at least. I'm excited to see what that brings. I think that's in the next few years that we'll see all these things.

Rick: You bring up a good point about bandwidth, because right now it's almost like these cloud technologies are so developed but our connection isn't, and the bandwidth is expensive. The home small business, pro-sumer small business, medium business can get decent bandwidth, but when you're talking gigabit of bandwidth up to the Internet or 100 meg or whatever is really fast or whatever you need, it can get really expensive and really almost take away an option if you really want to go all in. That I think is going to be area that I think it's only going to get better. Prices are going to go down, and performance is going to go up. So that's the best thing going for us really.

David: Absolutely. If we look at the voice over IP market and consumers changing over to VOIP and dumping their landline, just one example of technology that's been limited by bandwidth. I think cloud computing is going unfortunately suffer some of the same limitations.

Rick: That's awesome. Hey, David, let's wrap it up here real quick. For everybody out there, you can follow David on Twitter at DavidMDavis. He has his own blog at VMwareVideos.com. He also contributes a lot for TrainSignal.com. David, why don't you tell us a little about TrainSignal?

David: Sure. TrainSignal is the global leader in computer video training with Microsoft, Cisco, VMware, and all sorts of other computer video training courses. I create the VMware courses, so that's kind of my prime interest there. We also have a lot of great free videos on my blog and also on the TrainSignal training blog.

Rick: Cool. I'm Rick Vanover on Twitter @RickVanover, and I also contribute to the Twitter Veeam account @Veeam. David, thanks for being on the show.

David: Thanks for having me Rick, it's been great.

Rick: Cheers.