links for 2010-11-27

• Understanding how storage design has a big impact on your VDI (updated December 2010) – Ruben Spruijt – BrianMadden.com
  A really technical deepdive into the storage side of a VDI deployment, a really comprehensive recap especially for storage novices.

VCDX #58

So I finally made it, on Friday night I received an email from Melissa of the VCDX certification team stating:

Congratulations!  You have achieved the VMware Certified Design Expert on VI3 (VCDX3) certification.

Your VCDX number is:  VCDX58

I exploded with a scream of joy, I felt a mix of relieve, excitement and proudness, I really couldn’t believe that I made it.

I already wrote about my Defense experience in a previous post, I have nothing to add to it so I will just thank everybody who supported me through this journey, especially my wife, @esignoretti, @Andrea_Mauro, @drakpz and all the other guys on twitter!

This is truly the most difficult and rewarding achievement in my whole professional life, I wish the best of luck to everyone who will defend at PEX 2011 which will also be the last chance to become a VCDX on VI3.

Technorati Tags: travel, VMware, vcdx, virtualization

links for 2010-11-11

• Evernote Workflow Part I: Notebooks | Miscellaneous Ramblings
  Evernote is a wonderful tool, this workflow is the one that I adopted for my daily routine and I'm pretty satisfied to date.

My own VCDX Defense experience

So today was my day, I spent the whole monday studying my materials like a recluse in my hotel room (my wife had an extra reserve of patience to burn , Today I woke up at 5:00am in order to prepare myself for the defense, I took a shower to clear my thoughts, had a quick breakfast and then drove from Burlington to Alewife to catch the T red line to Kendall, where the VMware offices are located.

I was a bit pessimistic about public transport (well, I’m used to those in Italy) so I ended up being very early (7.25am) to the appointment, I left my wife with a good book to read and I started rehearsing my initial presentation, at 8:05 they made me walk into the Panel room where I hooked up my Mac to the projector and the (in)famous iPad timer started running…

Everything is under NDA so I cannot disclose the questions, and I will not disclose who was on my Panel too (they can do that if they want) but it definitely was intense, unfortunately my spoken English is quite bad so I had to try to explain myself with simple articulations, I still don’t know if they were effective, definitely I was not satisfied with them.

The 75 minutes flew thru like they were 5, and if you normally don’t believe what you read on the internet about stuff, this is definitely not the case, BELIEVE everything they say about the VCDX defense.

After the defense I got 15 minutes to spare, I had some tea, visited the men’s room, checked out the stunning Boston panorama (the VMware offices are located on the 10th floor) and relaxed myself on the overly comfortable armchairs in the cafeteria, believe me, they were the most refreshing 15 minutes I ever had in my whole life.

After the break I walked into the room again for the Design and Troubleshooting part, obviously I can’t go into details here, I will just say that I was probably on the right track for the Design but I spent too much time on two things only, If I had to retry this I would have done things differently.

The troubleshooting scenario is the one that I was most confident with, I think I found the root cause and hope that my explanation of the problem was enough verbose and correct.

Now they’re going to let me know the outcome on Friday the 12th (or even Monday the 15th), I will eagerly wait for that email, in the meantime I still feel a sense of relief

For the VCDX candidates still having to defend here’s an advice that I quote from the great Jason Boche:

Tips for the Defense:

1) Know your design, I mean really know it.

2) Refer to tip #1

This is definitely the wisest advice.

Technorati Tags: travel, VCDX, VMware