Below all the VCP4 links I’m also listing some VCDX resources. Maybe these will motivate me to take some more exams

Now, I have a conundrum before I even register for the exam. There are 2 offers at the moment which I’m eligible for, which you might be interested in:

1. If you attended this year’s VMworld, then you can get a 30% discount on the cost of the exam if you go here (offer at the bottom of the page): http://www.vmware.com/vmwarestore/vmworld-exclusive-offers.html
2. If you are an existing VCP or have attended the Fast Track course, then you can apply for a special voucher which gives you a free resit if you fail at the first attempt. Here is the link to register: http://mylearn.vmware.com/mgrReg/courses.cfm?ui=www&a=one&id_subject=17662 and the instructions: http://www.pearsonvue.com/VMware/Upgrade

If you want to take advantage of either of these offers, make sure you register for them before you book the exam.

So here’s the conundrum. Do I feel confident enough to grab the 30% discount and wave the free re-sit? Answers below in the comments please =S

OK, so here’s the advice I’ll be following to revise for the VCP4:

1. Check for latest updates on VMware’s Education Services portal: http://mylearn.vmware.com/portals/certification/
2. Review the VCP Blueprint carefully, understand each point, both the theory behind it and how to do things in practice: http://mylearn.vmware.com/lcms/mL_faq/2726/VCPonvSphere4ExamBlueprint.pdf

Things to learn:

1. Official VMware documentation. There shouldn’t be anything on a VCP exam that isn’t in these. If you use the blueprints, you can tailor your reading to concentrate on the right areas: http://www.vmware.com/support/pubs/vs_pages/vsp_pubs_esx40_vc40.html
2. Pay particular attention to the latest Configuration Maximums document: http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vsphere4/r40/vsp_40_config_max.pdf
3. My documentation notes: http://www.vreference.com/vsphere4-notes/
4. My reference card: http://www.vreference.com/vsphere4-card/

Here are some ways to now test and practice what you’ve just learnt:

1. VMware mock exam: http://mylearn.vmware.com/quiz.cfm?item=15211
2. Simon Long’s practise exam: http://www.simonlong.co.uk/blog/vcp-vsphere-4-practice-exam/
3. Barry Coombs’ cue cards: http://virtualisedreality.files.wordpress.com/2009/09/vcp-in-vsphere-cue-cards3.pdf

Finally here are some final words of advice about the exam itself so you know what coming:

1. Scott Vessey’s training site: http://vmwaretraining.blogspot.com/2009/09/studying-for-vcp-on-vsphere-4.html
2. Eric Sloof’s post on VCP4 exam scoring: http://www.ntpro.nl/blog/archives/1255-VCP-on-vSphere-4-Exam-Scoring.html
3. Jason Boche’s VCP4 experiences: http://www.boche.net/blog/index.php/2009/09/05/vcp4-exam/

As I find more exam resources I’ll update this post. Keep checking back or subscribe to the RSS feed to make sure you don’t miss anything.

Here are some links for the VCDX certification that I’ve also collected along the way.

• VCDX Enterprise Exam (ESX 3.5) blueprint: http://mylearn1.vmware.com/lcms/mL_faq/2206/EnterpriseBlueprint3.52.pdf
• Enterprise exam mock exam: http://mylearn.vmware.com/quiz.cfm?item=11292
• David O’Connor’s (w1nter) study guides: http://communities.vmware.com/people/w1nter?view=documents
• Scott Vessey Enerprise exam advice: http://vmwaretraining.blogspot.com/2009/04/vi3-enterprise-administration-exam.html
• Peter van den Bosch study guide for the VCDX Enterprise Exam 3.5: http://communities.vmware.com/servlet/JiveServlet/download/1118727-16763/VMware%20Enterprise%20Administration%20Exam%20study%20guide%203.pdf
• Jason Boche’s Enterprise Exam experiences: http://www.boche.net/blog/index.php/2009/08/05/vcdx-enterprise-administration-exam/
• Duncan Epping’s Enterprise exam study resources: http://www.yellow-bricks.com/2009/07/29/vcdx-enterprise-exam-prep-material/
• Virtual Insantity’s study notes:
  http://www.virtualinsanity.com/index.php/2009/04/27/vcdx-admin-exam-notes-section-11/
  http://www.virtualinsanity.com/index.php/2009/05/11/vcdx-admin-exam-notes-section-12/
  http://www.virtualinsanity.com/index.php/2009/05/18/vcdx-admin-exam-notes-section-13/
  http://www.virtualinsanity.com/index.php/2009/05/19/vcdx-admin-exam-notes-section-14/
• Duncan Epping’s Design exam study resources: http://www.yellow-bricks.com/2009/03/07/vcdx-design-exam-how-to-prepare/
• Duncan Epping’s Design exam experiences: http://www.yellow-bricks.com/2009/04/29/vcdx-design-exam-been-there-done-that/
• Jason Boche’s Design Exam experiences: http://www.boche.net/blog/index.php/2009/10/01/vcdx-design-exam-been-there-done-that/
• Scott Lowe’s Design exam experiences: http://blog.scottlowe.org/2009/11/05/vcdx-design-exam-post-mortem/
• John Arrasjid (VCDX #1) tips for the Design defense: http://www.yellow-bricks.com/2009/10/01/vcdx-tips-from-vcdx-001-john-arrasjid/

===== VMware exam resources originally posted by Forbes Guthrie on vReference. Subscribe to my RSS feed for all the latest updates.

Go and grab it here: vSphere4 card – poster size

Also, just so you don’t think I’ve been resting on my laurels and letting everyone else do the work, here’s a little preview of what I’ve been working on.

===== vSphere 4 reference card – poster sized originally posted by Forbes Guthrie on vReference. Subscribe to my RSS feed for all the latest updates.

In his own words:

VMware ESX and VMware VCP Made Easy, addresses all areas of technology that are important in VMware ESX and the VCP certification. It is a very thorough review of the fundamentals of virtualization and VMware ESX, very useful for those starting in the area of virtualization and the VMware VCP certification, or for those who already are experts in VMware ESX and want to pass the certification VMware VCP with all guarantees.

I tried to gather and synthesize everything you need to improve and increase your knowledge on VMware ESX, emphasizing on the VMware VCP certification and providing much advice illustrated with hundreds of examples.

VMware ESX y VMware VCP Hecho Fácil (Spanish Edition) (Paperback)

VMware ESX and VMware VCP Made Easy, is now available online at these links:

http://www.lulu.com/content/7549779

http://www.amazon.com/VMware-ESX-Hecho-F%C3%A1cil-Spanish/dp/1409293971/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1255201098&sr=8-1

===== Spanish VCP guide book originally posted by Forbes Guthrie on vReference. Subscribe to my RSS feed for all the latest updates.

I’ve made lots corrections and updates, many of which came from VMware publishing a new version of their Configuration Maximums document last month.  I’d also like to make a special mention to the follow people who took the time to get in touch with updates – thanks guys I really appreciate it.

• Christian Lacroix, Pascal de Wild & Michael — Storage: NFS datastores = 8 (64 with adv. setting) not 32
• Darren McRae — ESX hosts: dumpart > dumppart
• Pascal de Wild & Kurt DeWitt — Storage: FC – Path to each LUN: max 32
• Wade Holmes —  ESX install: IP6 not supported – make more obvious that this is for the install
• Simon Price & Alexey Bogdanov — vCenter: essential license should be 256 on 56
• Simon Price — ESX hosts:  added the “P” option to the vdf command
• Ed Symanzik — ESH hosts: vmware -v for build (vmware -l for base version)
• Alexey Bogdanov — ESX Install: “/” to “/ (root)”
• Eric Wright & Alexey Bogdanov — ESX Install:  default swap to 600MB

Grab yourself a copy now!
I have been reading through all the encouraging comments and watching votes from my post regarding the future of the card.  It seems that almost everyone is happy with me adding a second page.  Hopefully I’ll be able to make a start on that soon.  It will take several months to gather and prune the right information, however I appreciate the mantra of release early, release often so I’ll try to get previews out as each section comes together.  Let me know in the comments below if there are any particular areas or products you would like to see.  For example now SRM 4.0 is out, it’s probably a good candidate.  As are any official vSphere plugins.

===== vReference vSphere 4.0 card updated originally posted by Forbes Guthrie on vReference. Subscribe to my RSS feed for all the latest updates.

http://www.enterprisestorageforum.com/sans/features/article.php/3844426

It discusses the merits of defragmenting SAN based disks.  With the heavy usage of SANs within the VM sphere, it makes it particularly relevant.

OK, done reading?  I’ll continue…

After deploying a new VM yesterday, from one of our Windows 2008 R2 64bit templates, I noticed the new Task Scheduler.  I was having a bit of a poke around and noticed that by default there was a scheduled task to defrag all its “local” disks at 1am Wednesday every week.  Now this task is disabled, but be careful about enabling this in your gold template.

Besides your personally thoughts on the need to defrag SAN disks, imagine all your VMs running on a SAN decide to defrag all their disks at the same time.  Yikes!  Hopefully Microsoft put in randomization on the day and time during the night these things are set, when the OS first installs or during sysprep.  However it doesn’t appear so.

===== Win 2008 defragmentation schedule originally posted by Forbes Guthrie on vReference. Subscribe to my RSS feed for all the latest updates.

As I try to grow and improve the reference card I’m hitting several physical limits.  It is becoming more difficult to squeeze more content in, and I can only reduce the size of the font so much before it become illegible.  There are some other tricks which I still have up my sleeve, e.g. line spacing, but there is only so many letters that can be displayed without them bleeding into each other when you print.

There are other sections which I just can’t cover at the moment, e.g. vMA, more command line options, converter, orchestrator, patch management, backup, etc.  This is just the core stuff as well.  There are plenty of new VMware related products which would also be interesting additions – think SRM or View.

So, I’d like to get your opinion on what I should do next.  I’ve created a little poll on the right hand sidebar, which will help me get an indication of the direction you guys would like me to go.  As I’ve said many time before, this card is for everyone and I’d like your feedback on how I can make things even better.  If you have any other suggestions not included in the poll, then please leave a comment below.  I’d love to hear it.

Poll options:

• Reduce font, 4 columns

Currently the card is a 6pt font, but I could reduce this further (to say 4.5pt) and make the card fold into 4 instead of the traditional tri-fold layout.

• Reduce the current detail

I could cull some of the current content (e.g. the command line stuff), and try to concentrate on higher level stuff.

• Second page

With a second page we could slip some content over, increasing the margins slightly and provide more room for additional content.

• Two separate cards

I could try to split the card into 2 cards.  The split could either be on products or technical level.  So we could keep the basic card for just VCP level stuff, with another for Advanced or Design type work.  Or we could have one card on the core stuff (hosts, VC, networking, storage), and then a second card on things like MSCS, FT, HA, resource management, backups, converter, etc.

None of these are ideal, as I personally like everything on one card (that’s really the point isn’t it), but how small can we make the font?

In addition to the problem of how to fit more in, I’m also interested in how I can make card universally printable.  The card has always been designed to be printed (as opposed to an online guide or referenced within a PDF reader).  Especially when the font is so small, it is important that everyone’s printer can cope with the format I provide.  The page has to be able to print on both A4 and letter (or legal?) paper, and should be accepted at a default size by all print drivers. Otherwise the PDF software or your print driver has to re-size things which can make the card “fuzzy” looking.

When I created the first reference card a couple of years ago, I was living in Australia and so it was designed as an A4 sized piece of paper.  These days I live in Canada, so everything I print is letter.  Now I don’t want to start a turf war on the benefits of an international paper size (and North America’s inability to follow any sort of standards ).

I realize that as I have grown the section sizes towards the margins, they are probably less printable.  However I have no idea how much of an impact these changes make on everyone else.  I’d be really interested if you could tell me if the current size can print OK, or if it cuts bits off or re-sizes strangely.  I’ve had a couple of people write to me with advice on how to make things more universal, but I’d love to hear from you if you’ve got experience in making things fit for both A4 and letter.

===== Reference card formatting originally posted by Forbes Guthrie on vReference. Subscribe to my RSS feed for all the latest updates.

Don’t see the photos, click here.

===== Today’s top tip originally posted by Forbes Guthrie on vReference. Subscribe to my RSS feed for all the latest updates.

Here’s an interesting Linux tidbit that not many ESX admins realize.

reboot is not the same as init 6

In Linux, the init 6 command gracefully reboots the system running all the K* shutdown scripts first, before rebooting.  The reboot command does a very quick reboot.  It doesn’t execute any kill scripts, but just unmounts filesystems and restarts the system.  The reboot command is more forceful.

So, should I use reboot or init 6?  – neither!  My advice is to use the shutdown command.  shutdown will do a similar job to init 6, but it has more options and a better default action.  Along with kicking off an init 6, the shutdown command will also notify all logged in users (logged in at a tty), notify all processes the system is going down and by default will pause  for a set time before rebooting (giving you the chance to cancel the reboot if you realize that you made a mistake).  Jolly civil.

-

How does this advice apply to VMware ESX servers you ask?  Well I’m not a VMware kernel developer so to be honest I’m not the best person to ask (if you do know murky details, then please let us know in the comments).  However I will say this; I will always use shutdown -r first and foremost.  It’s just a better habit to get into.

Is there a difference on an ESX server? Yes, but as I said I’m entirely sure how it affects the VMkernel processes.  The reason I definitely know – a couple of times I’ve had to use the reboot command to force an unresponsive ESX shutdown -r.

P.S. This also applies to init 0 / halt (i.e. use shutdown -h instead).

***************

Update: Following Andrew’s comments below I’ve done a bit more digging.  He’s correct that the default action of the reboot command has now changed to call the shutdown command.  This upstream change (presumably because its a safer default action as I explained above) is now reflected in a lot of the current distributions, including the Service Console that comes with ESX 4.0.  So if you want to force a reboot you have run reboot -f.

Here’s the section on ESX4 man page explaining the change:

NOTES
Under older sysvinit releases , reboot and halt should never be called directly. From release 2.74 on  halt and reboot invoke shutdown(8) if the system is not in runlevel 0 or 6. This means that  if  halt  or  reboot cannot find out the current runlevel (for example, when /var/run/utmp hasn’t been initial ized correctly) shutdown will be called, which might not be what you want.  Use the -f  flag  if  you want to do a hard halt or reboot.

Does it change my advice?  No.
Firstly, ESX 3.x still uses the old style reboot command and doesn’t link to shutdown (as Greg points out the comments, this change was actually made much earlier on) .  Secondly, if your anything like me you are logging into a mix of unix/linux style command lines on servers, SANs, etc; you don’t want to guess what their version of reboot does. Thirdly, I’d still argue that

shutdown -r +1 “*** reboot for RAM upgrade by Forbes ***”

is still a better habit to get into.

• It allows other users to finish what they are doing or ask you to postpone things.
• It let’s you cancel the shutdown if you’ve made a boob (remember that sinking feeling in your stomach the last time you realized you’d just shutdown the wrong server).
• It writes a message explaining why, so you can track the reboots.

Lastly, if you’ve read this far and survived or re-visited for the update, here is an extra tip for you.  Try this at the command line:

last -x|grep -e shutdown -e reboot

===== reboot is not the same as init 6 (updated) originally posted by Forbes Guthrie on vReference. Subscribe to my RSS feed for all the latest updates.

http://blogs.vmware.com/guestosguide/2009/09/vmi-retirement.html

Their thinking behind this is that CPU virtualization technologies are overtaking any potential performance benefits from paravirtualised guests.  (This announcement doesn’t refer to the paravirtualised drivers they have been introducing.)

VMI will be phased out of Workstation first; beginning in 2010; followed by vSphere in 2011.

Obviously they feel the effort in maintaining this capability isn’t worth it.  I get the impression that VMware introduced VMI primarily to compete with Xen.  I don’t think that VMware was ever that convinced that it was a good way to virtualize VMs.

===== VMware retiring VMI originally posted by Forbes Guthrie on vReference. Subscribe to my RSS feed for all the latest updates.

Here’s what’s new since the last download:

What’s new in v3:
Now synchronized with “VMware Network Ports Compendium v3″

What’s new in v213:
Change port range in VUM to 9000-9100 (and not 9000-9010)

What’s new in v212:
Added SRM Port 9007 for WSDL, SOAL
Changed SRM Port 443 to Port 80 for Communication with remote vCenter Server

He’s also given me access to his “source” document.  It’s a spreadsheet which makes looking for a specific port when troubleshooting much easier.  You can grab yourself a copy here:

Dudley maintains on online version here: http://webbrain.com/brainpage/brain/89EFA582-2C35-F6A2-9ED1-7AD4810266C2/

===== Firewall diagram – updated to version 3 originally posted by Forbes Guthrie on vReference. Subscribe to my RSS feed for all the latest updates.