Tag: ITQ

The VMware vSAN 2017 Specialist Exam

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VMware vSAN 2017 Specialist - Badge
VMware vSAN 2017 Specialist – Badge

This afternoon I took the VMware vSAN 2017 Specialist and I passed with a score of 456 points. The exam is about… guess what Virtual SAN (vSAN)! To be more precise the latest version of vSAN version 6.6. The exam is a mix of deployment & design questions. In my opinion it is a smaller version of the separated Deploy & Design exams as in the major exam tracks (DCV, NV, CMA, DTM). The questions were really good and realistic, some examples: like about space efficiency, cluster sizing and some customer use cases. The exam contains 60 questions and you have 105 minutes to complete the exam.

Over the years I have done a lot of vSAN deployments, starting in the vSAN 5.5 days. So personally it was not the most difficult exam to pass but a good one to add to my résumé.

Exam description

The official exam description from VMware: “The VMware vSAN 2017 Specialist badge holder is a technical professional who understands the vSAN 6.6 architecture and its complete feature set, knows how to conduct a vSAN design and deployment exercise, can implement a live vSAN hyper-converged infrastructure environment based on certified hardware/software components and best practices, and can administer/operate a vSAN cluster properly.”

The Specialist Exams

At VMworld 2017 three new specialist exams were announced by VMware Education:

  • VMware vRealize Operations 2017 Specialist
  • VMware vSAN 2017 Specialist Exam
  • VMware Validated Designs for Software-Defined Data Center 2017

Currently the remaining two are on my “To Do” list because they all cover my area of expertise. The vSAN Specialist exam is the only one of the three that is done at a test center, the other two are online exams.

Study Material:

There is a lot of free vSAN 6.6 content available, especially the VMworld 2017 sessions are full of useful information. Take a look Duncan Epping his YouTube Channel (the URL listed below).

PowerCLI 10.0.0 – Error Invalid Server Certificate

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Overview

On the 28 of February VMware PowerCLI 10.0.0 was released. The biggest change in this release is the multi-platform support which includes the support for Mac OS and Linux. Oh and they kind of increased the version number a bit… from 6.5.X to 10.0.0 ;).

So I decided to upgrade PowerCLI in my Lab environment. In my Lab environment, I have a Windows 10 virtual machine that runs as an Administrator Workstation. The upgrade was very smooth and it took about one minute but after the upgrade, no connections were possible with my vCenter server.

The following error was displayed in the PowerShell prompt, screenshots are displayed below:
Error: Invalid server certificate. Use Set-PowerCLIConfiguration to set the value for the InvalidCertificateAction option to Prompt exception for this server.

It appears that they have changed the default PowerCLI behaviour regarding certificates.

Solution

Note: The solution I offer below is going ignore the SSL certificate checking, make sure this is something you want. A better way to validate this is to sign the certification of the vCenter Server with for example an Enterprise Certificate Authority. A write-up can be found here.

Procedure:

  1. After the PowerCLI 10.0.0 upgrade on your system, you try to connect to your vCenter Server, but you receive the following error (image 01).
  2. The error is pointing us to the following PowerCLI command-let “Get-PowerCLIConfiguration” (image 02). It appears that based on the output of the command the “InvalidCertificateAction” is configured as “Unset“.
  3. Let’s look at the possible settings available for “InvalidCertificateAction” (image 03). In my case “Ignore” is the best option because I’m running a test environment.
  4. Let’s change the setting to “Ignore” to disable the certificate check (Image 04).
  5. Now it’s time to connect with your vCenter Server again (Image 05).
  6. Everything should be working again without certificate warning messages.

Image(s)

PowerCLI 10.0.0 – 01 – Certificate Error
PowerCLI 10.0.0 – 02 – Show current SSL settings
PowerCLI 10.0.0 – 03 – List options
PowerCLI 10.0.0 – 04 – Configure settings for users
PowerCLI 10.0.0 – 05 – Connections are possible again

NLVMUG 2018 Event

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This week I attended the NLVMUG 2018 on the 20th of march. The NLVMUG is the largest VMUG (VMware User Group) in the world and is held in the Netherlands. More than a thousand people attend the NLVMUG. The keynote was given than by no other than Pat Gelsinger the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of VMware. The afternoon keynote was given by Joshua McKenty the Vice President from Pivatal.

The NLVMUG 2018 is a wrap but a great success!! Thanks to the VMUG leaders: Joep Piscaer en Dennis Hoegen Dijkhof.

NLVMUG 2018 – Overview

VMware Certified Implementation Expert – Network Virtualization (VCIX-NV)

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I’m very happy to announce that I passed the VCAP6-NV Deploy exam and unlocked the VCIX-NV accreditation!

About the VMware VCIX-NV:VMware VCIX-NV

The VCIX-NV exam consists of approximately 23 live lab activities and the passing score for this exam is 300 (scale is from 100 to 500). The total time for this exam is 210 minutes, but candidates who take the VCIX-NV Exam and have a home address in a country where English is not a primary language will have an additional 30 minutes added to the exam time.

VMware - Network Virtualization Roadmap
VMware – Network Virtualization (NV) Roadmap

 

Study material:

For my study I used the following list of website’s, HOL Labs and Blogs. This helped me to pass the exam:

VMware Hands-on Labs:

VMware Sources:

Blogs:

My best advice is: Build a Home Lab and deploy VMware NSX-V. After the deployment you start using all the features that NSX-V has to offer (yeah, I know that is a lot). Get familiar and deploy and design like you would in a production environment. This will help you to get the best understanding possible for the exam.

Selected as a VMware vExpert 2018

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Announcements

VMware vExpert 2018 - Notification

Last Friday VMware announced the vExperts for 2018. I’m pleased to announce that I have been rewarded with a vExpert 2018 award. This means I have been selected for a double in a row! I would like to congratulate everyone that has been awarded by VMware and VMware for supporting the community.

I’m also pleased to tell that my employer ITQ has fifteen vExperts for 2018. Congrats guys! For those interested ITQ is a VMware Premier Partner (the highest level in the VMware Partner Professional Services Program) and we are an independent VMware knowledge partner.

The VMware vExpert award?

The VMware vExpert program is VMware’s global evangelism and advocacy program. The program is designed to put VMware’s marketing resources towards your advocacy efforts. Promotion of your articles, exposure at our global events, co-op advertising, traffic analysis, and early access to beta programs and VMware’s roadmap.

Each year, we bring together in the vExpert Program the people who have made some of the most important contributions to the VMware community. These are the bloggers, book authors, VMUG leaders, speakers, tool builders, community leaders and general enthusiasts. They work as IT admins and architects for VMware customers, they act as trusted advisors and implementors for VMware partners or as independent consultants, and some work for VMware itself. All of them have the passion and enthusiasm for technology and applying technology to solve problems. They have contributed to the success of us all by sharing their knowledge and expertise over their days, nights, and weekends.

Website(s)

Lab Environment – New HP ProLiant DL360e G8

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Today a blog about my Home Lab. At the end of 2017, it was time to replace the old Dell PowerEdge R710 servers with something new. Currently, I was running two R710 servers for my lab environment.
These servers are ‘powered-on for a couple of hours a week to test new products and learn for certifications. My other environment described on this page is running 24/7 is providing a full set of infrastructure services.

Because of the price and I’m very familiar with the DL360 G8 it was a no brainer. Over the last couple of years, all my virtualization projects were based for 75% on the DL360 Gen8… so we have a lot of history together ;).

Technical specifications – HP DL360e Gen8:

  • Chassis: Small Form Factor (8-bays)
  • CPU1: Intel® Xeon® Processor E5-2430 v2
  • CPU2: Intel® Xeon® Processor E5-2430 v2
  • Memory: 128 GB (8x 16GB DDR3 1600 MHz)
  • Disks HDD: 2x Seagate Constellation SAS 1TB
  • Disks SSD: 4x Samsung EVO 850 250 GB
  • Storage controller: HP SmartArray P420 with 1 GB FBWC
  • NIC: 4 port 1 Gbit
  • Rack mounting kit, cable arm, and security front bezel

The spinning drives provide “safe” storage because they are configured as a mirrored volume. The SSD drives are configured as JBOD drives for performance without data protection (if I want protection I just create a virtual machine back-up to one of my storage arrays).

HPE ProLiant DL360e G8 - SFF
HPE ProLiant DL360e G8 – SFF
HPE ProLiant DL360e G8 - SFF with Bezel
HPE ProLiant DL360e G8 – SFF with Bezel

Update 2018:

In 2018, I did a full write-up of this server on this page: link

The VM Remote Console changed to VMware Workstation instead of VMRC

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Lately, I discovered an annoying feature in combination with VMware vCenter and VMware Workstation. When installing VMware Workstation on your management computer it becomes the default Remote Console viewer. To be honest, I like the VMware Remote Console (VMRC) very much. The application has all the features and is quick and light. This is compared to starting VMware Workstation to open a Remote Console.

What is VMware Remote Console: “The VMware Remote Console (VMRC) is a standalone console application for Windows. VMware Remote Console provides console access and client device connection to VMs on a remote host. You will need to download this installer before you can launch the external VMRC application directly from a VMware vSphere or vRealize Automation web client.”

In October 2017, I already fixed my problem on my management computer… but after a recent VMware Workstation update, it changed the Remote Console back to VMware Workstation. Currently, there is no option in the GUI to change the default Remote Console. Ok, but how do we get VMRC back?

When I was comparing the Windows Registry, I discovered that the following registry keys were different between machines. To speed up to process I created some PowerShell one-liners to fix the problem.

### View settings in registry
Get-Item "HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Classes\vmrc\DefaultIcon"
Get-Item "HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Classes\vmrc\shell\open\command"

### Change settings to VMRC
Set-Item HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Classes\vmrc\DefaultIcon -Value '"C:\Program Files (x86)\VMware\VMware Remote Console\vmrc.exe",0'
Set-Item HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Classes\vmrc\shell\open\command -Value '"C:\Program Files (x86)\VMware\VMware Remote Console\vmrc.exe" "%1"'

When you change the registry keys, the settings are direct in effect. No Operating System reboot or browser restart is required. The change is instant. I hope the blog post helps some vSphere Administrators that also prefer VMRC above VMware Workstation for viewing Remote Consoles.

@VMware: I would like to have an option to control the behavior without changing registry keys by hand… 🙂 Thanks!

Environment

The issues occurred with the following combination of software:

  • VMware vCenter Server 6.5 (Update 1e)
  • VMware VMRC (10.0.2-7096020)
  • VMware Workstation (12.5.9 build-7535481)
  • Management Workstation: Windows 10 X64

VMRC Screenshots

Here are some screenshots that display the changes when opening the Remote Console of a Virtual Machine in VMware vCenter.

Article updates:

  • 2019-11-25: Image updates to support new layout changes.
  • 2020-10-30: Fixed code block after WP updates
  • 2022-08-15: Fixed layout issue after WP updates

The VMware VCP7-CMA Exam

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VMware VCP7-CMA Badge
VMware VCP7-CMA Badge

Today I passed the VMware Certified Professional 7 Cloud Management and Automation Exam in short VCP7-CMA. The required score was 300 points and I scored 418 points! The exam is about automation of your cloud management platform with VMware Products: vRealize Automation (vRA), VMware vRealize Business (vRB) and vRealize Orchestrator (vRO) but there are also many questions about integrations with other VMware products like VMware NSX-V, VMware vCloud Air and of course VMware vSphere.

To be honest this was not my first attempt at the VCP7-CMA exam. In VMworld 2017 Barcelona, I already did the exam but I failed with just under 300 points, that was quite frustrating.

 

VCP7-CMA Exam:

The VMware VCP7-CMA exam consists out of 85 multiple-choice questions and you need to score at least 300 points. The maximum score is 500 points and you have 110 minutes to complete the exam. In the VMware VCP7-CMA exam guide are all the exam subjects listed so make sure you understand all of them. The main focus is on the vRealize Automation product. Make sure you study the right version because the exam is based on vRealize Automation 7.X and at this time the newest version is vRealize Automation 7.3. A big surprise to me was the questions about vCloud Air… because at the time I took the exam vCloud Air was not a part anymore of VMware (it was sold of to OVH) and all the documentation related to vCloud Air was removed… mmm nice.

VCP7-CMA Study Tips:

For passing the exam, I have used the following websites:

Make sure you understand all the subjects in the Exam Guide. For almost all subjects there is a VMware Hands-on lab environment for available.

If you ask me, this is the most difficult VCP exam that I have completed until now.

VMware VCSA 6.5 Content Library Issue

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Today I was facing a VMware Content Library issue. I was removing a newly created Content Library in the vSphere Web Client but that resulted in a Java Runtime error.
The conclusion was that there was no way to remove the Content Library item.

The environment that I was troubleshooting has an external PSC and a vCenter server. The PSC and VC were running on the VMware VCSA 6.5 U1b release.
After some searching in the logs and googling, I came across the two following articles:
– Link: Notes from MWhite – Can’t create a Content Library?
– Link: VMware KB – OVF deployment fails after upgrading to vCenter Server Appliance 6.5 U1 (2151085)

Based on both information sources a couple of commands would fix the problem but there was also a note about installing patch VCSA 6.5 U1d.

I can confirm after upgrading the VSCA (PSC and VC) to version 6.5 U1e the problem was resolved.

Content Library Screenshots

ITQ Transform 2017 Event

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Yesterday I attended “ITQ Transform” an event organized by my employer (ITQ). The event was all about IT Transformation and helping the customer. At the event there were about 150 people who were mostly customers of ITQ. The keynote speaker was Brian Gammage (Chief Marketing Technologist at VMware), who explained to everyone in the room how imported IT Transformation is.

The event was organized in Utrecht a city in The Netherlands. The location is centrally located in the country and the building is very suited for business events like transform.

At the event, there were twelve sessions of thirty minutes with presentations around the following subjects:

  • End User Computing
  • (Cloud Native) Development
  • Software Defined Data Center
  • Hybrid Cloud
  • IT Transformation Services

The sessions were given by ITQ Consultants and Partners VMware, IBM and Pivotal. At the end of the day, there was room for talking and socializing with customers and ITQ personal.

At the ITQ Transform 2017 area on the ITQ website, most of the content displayed on the event is available for download. Click on the following link for all ITQ Transform 2017 downloads.

ITQ Transform Highlights

Opening by Paul Geerlings CTO ITQ
Brian Gammage VMware about Transformation - ITQ Transform
Brian Gammage from VMware talking about IT Transformation
Bert Jonker IBM about IBM Cloud - ITQ Transform
Bert Jonker from IBM talking about the IBM Cloud (Bluemix)
Marco van Baggum talking about VMware NSX versions