Request to extend a chance for VCDX5

Hi,

I am taking the Liberty here to request VMware Education to extend the chance for Appearing a VCDX 5 Defense after the schedule of Oct 2015.

Now for me, there are reasons behind it which includes personal and work related that I could not prepare on time for this and now dead line is just 10 days away.

I have put lot of time individually to attain the required certifications (VCAP5-DCA and VCAP5-DCD) with the support of my Family and this is over few years of time which covers the time of a new born and a Toddler in the house. With other factors (e.g. work changes and family - main two factors for anyone in any industry) its very difficult to manage the whole planning of preparing an Application and then Defend the same, and to prepare the application alone requires lot of dedication and time, as this is just do or die situation (being optimistic but one never knows) which I wants to attempt and experience this dangerously beautiful journey. Now I am not sure how much important it is, for you to bother about my reasons, I guess not much, but still look at this situation from the other side of the Fence and try to realize the situation from a stand point of a professional, a common man, a family member, a community contributor. and a Father.

So here is my profound Request, to all the decision makers to give the VMware Community one more chance to defend after Oct 2015, which may fall into next year, as I am sure there are others in the community who are under the same condition as me and can stand with me for the above request.

Now one thing I want to make it clear here that, this will be 1st request so far of such kind, and while thinking about it a lot, I decided to echo my thoughts through this post, and its not my intent to take this in any negative way.

With all respect, I will definitely honor the decision, taken by the program authorities and will hope other would do the same. One thing I have learned that, to achieve something you need to put the effort first, so I am considering this step as an effort rather than sitting idle.

This is no way to avoid any future plan on attaining the certifications to attain VCDX, but just a simple request to give one more chance to over all VMware community enthusiasts out there, who are dedicated, focused and being professional to attain this Elite certification which has a tremendous value.

I'm leaving this post here in your capable hands to decide about this Request and urge to give a second thought before making a decision, which infact, can change so many lives (including the person/s and their family).

Update:  (As of 13th May 2016)

VMware just announced today that the VCAP5 Exam Retirements are suspended and the Registration remains open for now. So now this will give chance to the candidates who wants to do the VCAP5/DCA-DCD based on vSphere 5.0/5.5 versions and also prepare for their VCDX.

Here are the exams still available to appear for.

VCAP5 Design Exams:

• VMware Certified Advanced Professional 5 — Data Center Design (VCAP5-DCD)
  Exam #VDCD550

VCAP Lab Exams:

• VMware Certified Advanced Professional 5 — Data Center Administration (VCAP5-DCA)
  Exam #VDCA550
• VMware Certified Implementation Expert — Network Virtualization (VCIX-NV)
  Exam #VCXN610

So wish you all the very best !

Crossing my fingers !

Please Share and Care !!

VCAP5-DCD cleared and now one step closer to VCDX !

Hi,

All the readers out there who has been through the journey of VCAP-DCD will know the feeling of pressing the button "End the Exam" and which gives you the one moment of shock, which runs through your whole body and every single tissue of the body is waiting for the next screen.

"Congratulations you have passed the VCAP-DCD Examination"

That screen gave me immense pleasure and for minutes,hours and now days its still giving me the same pleasure in installments :-).

Wow, what a journey. The DCD and DCA are one of the most difficult exams I have ever taken and everyone can vouch the same who has been through the journey as me.

Thank You Note

I really want to thank my friends and colleague who have helped me through this DCD Exam journey and contributed their knowledge and their invaluable time they have provided. We have formed virtual study group and exchanged ideas and prepared to tackle this challenge.


Bas Raayman - @BasRaayman

Gregg Robertson - @greggrobertson5

Marek Zdrojewski - @MarekDotZ

Bobby Stampfle - @BobbyFantast1c

Alex- Correa - @AlexCorrea305 and his friends.

Michael Webster - @vcdxnz001 is my mentor and guided me through this journey.

Exam experience:

I went to another Pearson Vue location for a change for this Exam which I gave based on version vSphere 5.1 and Bingo ! Found it lucky ! :-)

BTW this Exam is retiring today itself so no more vSphere 5.1 but going forward only 5.5 version is available at this time. So many people have asked about the same through Twitter so thought to clarify as everyone is interested in knowing the experience for 5.5 version. Hopefully someone who has passed the version 5.5 can put their experience for others.

It was a new center opened in West of Toronto and 30 mins drive was not far. and went through regular security check in process and get started. No hick ups in the Exam except on time the Adobe Flash decided to stop responding and I just waited for few seconds and it came back normally and yes this was during making a 3rd Design. I almost finished 100 questions leaving 1.25 mins to spare. So thought to take a scheduled break, 1st time I took this break as this was my 4th Attempt :-). Yes I never gave up. This is a Devil exam if you ask me. Especially the content is not what you do on daily basis so you WILL find it more challenging than others who are not in the same boat as you.

So I used that extra time and started reviewing the questions again from # 1. Made some changes in my selection of the answers too while thinking over the options I have selected in MC, and D&D type questions and actually one Design Question as well. But at the end, everything was worth to get a Pass.

"A Pass is a Pass" - as they say, but getting 317 is little more to satisfy myself as just not at the Edge.

Exam Preparation/Tips and Resources

Now for the preparation, I took long time as busy with Family, personal matters, other certification exams time to time with various tracks etc. but I gave myself a break of few months between the attempts and literally spent my own time in preparing for the same. I have seen that most people don't do that (spending vacation time) to prepare for an Exam so in that regard  I have to say a big "Thank You" to my wife and my family to support me through this journey and also in advance for the VCDX. With two little kids it IS difficult to study in breaks and give such tough exam, But my friends, hard work pays off. Period.

For the resources I have used all known resources which are available freely to everyone but will still list out here for the reference.

1) Official vsphere Design Workshop material - Student Guide and Lab Guide
[The courseware is more than enough for this Exam :-)]
2) Official blueprint to keep track of the subjects and reading
3) 2nd Edition vSphere Design book by Scott Lowe
4) Pluralsight videos by Scott Lowe on vSphere Design
5) Managing and Optimizing vSphere Deployments - by Harley Stagner and Sean Crookston
6) VMware vSphere Building a Virtual Datacenter - by Eric Maille and Rene-Francois Mennecier
7) VMware vSphere 5.x Datacenter Design Cookbook - by Hershey Cartwright
8) vSphere Design Best Practices - by Christopher Kusek and brian Bolander
9) Storage Implementation in vSphere 50 - by Mostafa Khalil
10) Gregg Robertson has listed most resources here for DCD so check them out.

10) There is a visio like tool used in the DCD Exam to draw the design and I found the link on Josh andrews' blog  which led me to http://virtualtiers.net/ developed by the community members. I used that to practise the Design questions listed on the site and also tried creating few fictitious designs on my own and use the tool to create a design. This way you can get familiarize with the tool and the time can be minimized for placements of objects in the Exam.

Though this tool is experimental as still undergoing some improvements but its not bad at all. I really recommend to the future candidates who are preparing for 5.5 version to practice the Design items.

11) Some ex-TSEs of VMware has developed a nice Study Guide for VCAP-DCD at http://virtuallyhyper.com so dont forget to check that out. It is very intensive and well written guide covering all the blueprint subjects. You will find some other study guides links as well there.

12) No doubt apart from the reading material you should have experience working in Virtualization architecting and developing solutions and also understanding the terms and technologies to be used.

As the exam is retiring today I wish the good luck to all who are on this path to VCDX for their DCD on 55 version. Once the version 6 will be out it may change as well but time will tell the availability for 5.5 version for now.

Please share and care !!

Wish me Luck for VCDX !

Visio Stencil Links for VCDX Defence with updated Links

I'm putting here all the links from where you can download the#VMware #Visio #Stencils if you are preparing for VCDX Defense or just doing any presentations / designs.

http://communities.vmware.com/docs/DOC-11498 

http://communities.vmware.com/thread/24068 

http://communities.vmware.com/docs/DOC-13703 

http://communities.vmware.com/docs/DOC-13702

http://communities.vmware.com/docs/DOC-14908

https://communities.vmware.com/docs/DOC-12204 

https://communities.vmware.com/thread/400678

Multi Vendor collection http://www.visiocafe.com/ 

Various Contributors

http://www.veeam.com/vmware-esx-stencils.html 

http://technodrone.blogspot.com/visio-stencils-happy-holiday-to-you-all.html 

http://graffletopia.com/stencils/475 

http://www.vi-tips.com/2009/05/visio-stencils-for-vmware-icons-and.html 

http://virtualisedreality.com/vmware-and-related-visio-stencils/

http://www.thevesi.org/downloads.jspa

http://xtravirt.com/presentation-pack

http://myitforum.com/cs2/blogs/phoward/

http://vmtoday.com/2012/09/new-vmware-icons-visio-stencil-download/

http://rodos.haywood.org/2009/02/vmware-diagrams-ppt-not-visio.html 

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/hw/prod_cat_visios.html

http://vsphere-land.com/generalvi3-links/stencil-graphic-links.html

http://www.techhead.co.uk/vmware-vsphere-powerpoint-graphics-visio-stencils

http://www.vmguru.com/index.php/articles-mainmenu-62/general-mainmenu-63/33-visio-stencils

Some View Visio Stencils by Ray Heffer

http://www.rayheffer.com/2684/visio-stencil-set-vmware-vsphere-horizon/

vCO specific Visio Stencils by Josh Townsend

http://vmtoday.com/2014/03/vcenter-orchestrator-visio-stencil/

http://communities.vmware.com/servlet/JiveServlet/download/11498-6-60388/VMware-Stencil2-vSphere.zip 

http://communities.vmware.com/servlet/JiveServlet/download/11498-6-60389/VMware-Stencil1-vSphere.zip 

http://viops.vmware.com/home/docs/DOC-1338 
http://viops.vmware.com/home/docs/DOC-1406 

Some Diagrams by @HanyMichael 

http://www.hypervizor.com/diagrams/ 

NSX Visio Diagrams on VMware Blogs by Nikhil Kelshikar

VCAC 6 icon Pack by Ryan kelly

Juniper Visio stencils

Good Luck !!

Share and care !

VMware Certifications List with recent name change

Recently VMwrae Education Services has renamed all the available Certifications including VCDX.

Here is the full List of all the certificates except the once highlighted in Red which are coming soon.


CLOUD (vCloud Director based)

VMware Certified Professional – Cloud (VCP-Cloud)
VMware Certified Advanced Professional – Cloud Infrastructure Administration (VCAP-CIA)
VMware Certified Advanced Professional – Cloud Infrastructure Design (VCAP-CID)
VMware Certified Advanced Professional – Cloud Governance (VCAP-CG)
VMware Certified Design Expert – Cloud (VCDX-Cloud)



DATA CENTER VIRTUALIZATION(vSphere 4.x and 5.x based)

VMware Certified Professional 4 – Data Center Virtualization (VCP4-DCV)
VMware Certified Professional 5 – Data Center Virtualization (VCP5-DCV)
VMware Certified Advanced Professional 4 – Data Center Administration (VCAP4-DCA)
VMware Certified Advanced Professional 5 – Data Center Administration (VCAP5-DCA)
VMware Certified Advanced Professional 4 – Data Center Design (VCAP4-DCD)
VMware Certified Advanced Professional 5 – Data Center Design (VCAP5-DCD)
VMware Certified Design Expert 4 – Data Center Virtualization (VCDX4-DCV)
VMware Certified Design gpExpert 5 – Data Center Virtualization (VCDX5-DCV)



END USER COMPUTING (VMware View based)

VMware Certified Associate 4 – Desktop (VCA4-DT)
VMware Certified Professional 4 – Desktop (VCP4-DT)
VMware Certified Professional 5 – Desktop (VCP5-DT)
VMware Certified Advanced Professional – Desktop Design (VCAP-DTD)
VMware Certified Advanced Professional – Desktop Administration (VCAP-DTA)
VMware Certified Design Expert – Desktop (VCDX-DT)


For more information on each one visit the site here. 

Care and share please.

Good Luck !!

Understanding and Clarification about VMware Certifications

I started seeing Tweets about the new Certification Roadmap released recently and tried understanding the requirements for each track.

Clearly by looking at it you can get an idea that it will be possible to attain all the VCAP level certifications and also the VCDX level Elite certifications but that will require your expertise in specific/all areas for related  products of VMware. Mainly we can categorize these in 3 different components.

1) VMware vSphere


2) VMware vCloud



3) VMware View/Desktop

Currently the requirements for any track of VCAP available the minimum certification level you need is VCP.

As by introducing VCP-DV (Datacenter Virtualization) people are getting confused when they decide to go for VCAP-Cloud or VCAP-Desktop certifications.

Technically as per @randybecraft this is ONE AND THE SAME CERTIFICATION as VCP.

So clear up the fog, VCP5 and VCP-DV is the same certification, which is the minimum requirement.

VCP-DT is the VCP level certification for the Desktop level examination based on VMware View and ThinApp. Once passing VCP-DT one can appear for the advanced level certifications VCAP-Desktop Administration and VCAP-Desktop Design.

For vSphere related certification VCP-DV is now considered which was VCP (X) before. Then one can go for VCAP-Data Center Administrator and  VCAP-Data Center Design.

For vCloud related certifications VCP-Cloud is the minimum to attain. Then once done they can go for VCAP-Cloud Infrastructure Administration and VCAP-Cloud Infrastructure Design

Now if you click this link, it will take you to the page where you can see the above diagram but then you can click on each certification and each icon/description will take you to the mylearn page of that certification.

Currently as the Legends says you can only click the Gray colored certifications and Yellow colored certifications. The Yellow ones which are noted as New Releases.going through verifications and will be published once everything finalized.

So I will put up the links for all the certifications with required courses and recommended courses (which ever are available to take) and keep updating as the courses are going public.

Keep revisiting this post if some of the information is not up to date.

Now coming to the Elite Certification track aka VCDX there are now 3 tracks available.

vSphere ( Requires VCP-DV, VCAP-DCA, VCAP-DCD)

View     ( Requires VCP-DT, VCAP-DTA, VCAP-DTD)

vCloud  ( Requires VCP-Cloud, VCAP-CIA, VCAP-CID)

And as per my understanding and assumption to have a competency one needs to clear all 9-10 certifications and then present 3 different designs for each product separately to become a VCDX but as there are no blue prints available for View and vCloud VCDX tracks you can keep checking the VCDX certification page and check any updates there. 

Hope this clears up the confusion and help you planning your Role Based Certification/s. You can also join the Linkedin Groups I have created where you can discuss about these certifications. These are version independent groups so you can discuss anything about any version of vSphere, vCloud and View. As the new version is released, you can start discussing about it without looking for any group for that version.

For vSphere VCAP-DCD

For vCloud VCP-VCAP-VCDX

For View VCP-DT-VCAP-VCDX

Good Luck and start preparing for VCDX.

Leave the feedback if you see any discrepancy and  I will update it.

@mandivs

My Take on VCAP-DCD with spare Time at the end.

Yesterday I took my VCAP5-DCD Exam at the Pearson Vue Center in Toronto.

I have been that place so many times now so familiar with all the process and all.

I have appeared for version 4 few times as well with no luck. So decided to drop the idea to keep reappearing for version 4 and focus on version 5 instead.

Seriously I have to think twice about the certification Tread Mill as Jason mentioned in his post as its becoming aggressive day by day. For this year, so far, I have given 4 exams. VCAP5-DCA BETA (which I passed recently), VCP5-DT (Passed - VMware View based), VCP5-IaaS Beta (bloogged about the experience and waiting for result) and now VCAP5-DCD. Finished the VTSP 5 as well which I don't consider as a certification but still mentioning here as spent time to do it.

I found that each VCAP exams are very time intensive. There is a rule board each candidate has to read before entering in to the exam hall "You are not allowed to take any scheduled break in between this Exam" and I am always thinking where is the time to take a break for 3 Hr .45 Mins Exam.

But recently I found a nice post on VCAP5-DCD Exam experience by @jasonboche

http://www.boche.net/blog/index.php/2012/07/19/the-newest-mayor-of-vcap5-dcd-vcdx5/

In his post he put up a strategy on how to save time or rather create a time by attending the questions in different order.

Everyone who has appeared for this Exam knows that there are 3 types of questions as per the blue print.

1) Multiple Choice
2) Drag and Drop
3) Visio like Tool Design

As per Jason he suggested to flag all the Design questions and just finish the multiple choice and drag and drop at once.

Doing so, at the mark of 2 Hr.15 minutes after starting the exam, I was at question 100. Which means that I have completed all the other questions with enough time given to each question with no rushing whatsoever.

This gave me approx. 1 Hour and 35 minutes to finish the 6 Visio Design questions. I have started working on them and finished all of them by having another 12 minutes to spare which I have used to review the questions from 1 again (skipping the design ones obviously).

While I was at question 82 the pop up came up, your Time is over.

Unfortunately after pressing OK I did not get the popup like Jason but got "You did not successfully Pass the Exam". Score report came right away at the reception counter which says I missed the passing score by 68.

Now the above format can't be followed any more as there is a little (but Critical) update was made to the new Blueprint since October 26th 2012 which is published for VCAP5-DCD.

Page 3 of  Exam Blueprint Version 1.6 states that 

"1.2 Number of Questions

The VDCD510 exam contains 100 questions. The items include a mixture of multiple-choice, drag-and-drop items and design items using an in-exam design tool. A short pre-exam survey is performed, consisting of 7 items.

During the exam you will be designing solutions based on customer scenarios using an in-exam design tool. These items take significantly longer to complete than the multiple choice or drag-and-drop items, and time should be budgeted accordingly during the exam.
Once you have provided a complete answer or design for a given exam item and advanced to the next item, you will NOT be allowed to return to that item and the item cannot be flagged for later review. Please ensure when taking the exam that you have completed each answer and/or design before continuing to the next item. Drag-and-drop items and Design items will prompt you for confirmation that the item is complete before advancing to the next item."

YOU WILL NOT BE ABLE TO FLAG THE "DRAG N DROP" AND DESIGN QUESTIONS FOR LATER REVIEW NOR YOU CAN LET THEM HALF DONE AND FINISH THEM LATER.

So now my suggestion would be to put full focus on what you are attempting and give your 100% or 200% what ever you think the best for each question and spend the time wisely on each question. You will be notified about the completion of the Design (Visio like) and Drag and Drop Questions until you finish them properly and then you can move forward to the next question. Now I am not sure if you can still flag the multiple choice questions as its not clear from the blueprint but I assume so.

Also thinking about a situation where the candidate not finishing the Design/Drag n Drop item correctly then how much time he think should be good enough to spend and finish it? If not then may be the only choice is to Skip it and go for the next one. But as the questions can't be skipped what other choice the candidate might have.

This change is very crucial to anyone who is going to attend this Exam as you need to restructure your strategy for your attempt and DO THE BEST on each item/question in one SHOT only. NO more Second chance.

DO OR DIE

Now the material I used /will be using again for preparing this Exam are as follows

1) Blue Print
2) Official Documentation
3) Design Book by Scott Lowe, Forbes Guthrie and Maish S K
4) vBrownBags on VCAP-DCD (both US and APAC versions)
5) Official Documentation
6) Customer case studies
7) vSphere  Design Train Signal Videos by Scott Lowe

I know the above should be enough to Pass but frankly speaking without the actual Design hands on experience or involvement in some kind of Designing for vSphere solutions, I find it difficult somewhere which I am missing for sure. The feedback on the report is not helping at all to find out the area I missed mostly. Which should be corrected based on the items missed by the candidate and just not suggest in general all the areas which needs focus again.

 vSphere Design Workshop is definitely a good option but not lucky enough to go for one yet.

Time to start preparing for the next attempt from today itself as took 3 days of vacation (to study) for this Exam and cant let my family suffer by taking their time. I think this is enough for this year.


I am ready to do any Design Grilling (as @vcdxnz001 offered) to get some more exposure on the Design side which is for me is the other side of the coin.

Wish me luck and Good Luck to all !!

VMware Visio Stencils for VCDX Design

Recently I was thinking to start drawing on the whiteboard for each design component in vSphere e.g. Virtual Machine Design, Cluster Design, Storage Design, Virtual Center Server etc. etc. but then I need few whiteboards as the design grows or a bigger Desk like @FrankDenneman

Thought about using the Bamboo Tablet also as inspired by @Scott_Lowe but that requires a bigger monitor to dedicate the space.

So looking at the cost involved I am staying with Visio and just split the designs in to various pages and can work across multiple monitors.

After doing some research found out that there are Visio Stencils available at various scattered places and one needs to visit various sites to see the content.

So for all the VCDX aspirants, I have gathered all the links from VMware community forums and also referred to the posts by some of our own community members such as @maishsk @rick_vmwaretips etc. etc.

There are two Zip files with which you can download them directly but you have to go to each link to download the files.

http://communities.vmware.com/servlet/JiveServlet/download/11498-6-60388/VMware-Stencil2-vSphere.zip

http://communities.vmware.com/servlet/JiveServlet/download/11498-6-60389/VMware-Stencil1-vSphere.zip

http://communities.vmware.com/docs/DOC-11498

http://communities.vmware.com/thread/24068

http://communities.vmware.com/docs/DOC-13703

http://communities.vmware.com/docs/DOC-13702

http://viops.vmware.com/home/docs/DOC-1338

http://viops.vmware.com/home/docs/DOC-1406

http://www.veeam.com/vmware-esx-stencils.html

http://technodrone.blogspot.com/visio-stencils-happy-holiday-to-you-all.html

http://graffletopia.com/stencils/475

http://www.vi-tips.com/2009/05/visio-stencils-for-vmware-icons-and.html

http://virtualisedreality.com/vmware-and-related-visio-stencils/

www.visiocafe.com

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/hw/prod_cat_visios.html

http://vsphere-land.com/generalvi3-links/stencil-graphic-links.html

http://www.techhead.co.uk/vmware-vsphere-powerpoint-graphics-visio-stencils

http://www.vmguru.com/index.php/articles-mainmenu-62/general-mainmenu-63/33-visio-stencils

NSX Icons

Hope you find all these links useful while preparing your VCDX Design and Good Luck to you all who are going to defend at SF and Barcelona VMworld 2012.

Update:

@joshuatownsend has blogged about Visio stencils for vSphere and View Horizon which you find here.

Please share your designing skills which can help others to become a better presenter. :-)

Cheers

 

VCAP5-DCD - The Hot Target for VCDX

I am thinking to start blogging about the Objectives of both the exams soon.


VCAP4-DCD  - yes that's right this is version 4 for now as version 5 is not GA yet (but will be soon)

VCAP5-DCD - Once it becomes GA then link will be available.

VCP5-DT 

All other certification details are available here.

You can also find out the blog posting by others on the similar subject.

All the discussion and material is purely made for my own study purpose so you can make the changes and use it accordingly.

Brain dumps people - this is not the place you should visit as there won't be any questions and answers here ;-)

Well lets get started.

I am going to start posting the objectives for the Design Exam as it will be GA in near future. If any one wants to do any guest posting, all are welcome to contribute and share the knowledge.

Just contact me offline through @mandivs

VCAP5-DCD

Objective 1.1 – Gather and analyze business requirements 

(e.g. current availability, manageability)

Skills and Abilities

·         Determine the relevant data set required to understand the current customer environment.

·         Given a design requirement and data set within a multi site environment, determine which components would be included in a design.

·         Given results of a requirement gathering survey, identify the business requirements.

·         Given one or more business requirements, analyze and determine the impact of the requirements on the design.

Tools 

VMware Virtualization Case Studies                                 

Cloud Readiness Self-Assessment Too

Five Steps to Determine When to Virtualize Your Servers

-          A good  VMware design matches products, features, and capabilities to business needs

-          Business need is the combination of many things summarized by: requirements, constraints, assumptions

-          Resulting in the identification of – design decisions, justifications, impacts, risks

Architecture vision

-          Scope – project boundaries, eliminate creep

-          Goals – business problems we’re solving with measurable results

-          Requirements – must meet

-          Assumptions - valid but not proven, as few as possible

-          Constraints – limit design choices

-          Risks- every design will have them, find them and communicate them

The vision will guide the project through its phases

Which may not fall into requirements and constraints are fall in to assumptions

Take the assumptions from customer and get the clarity – valid but not proven

e.g. customer budgetary concern, don’t have enough infrastructure but will purchase additional hosts in future

Wrote categories on the board

Requirements, assumptions, constraints and risks (which are not conveyed properly or not clear)

Five steps of design

1)      Initial Design meeting – scope, goals, requirements, constraints, who should be invited?

2)      Current state analysis – complete datacenter inventory, virtualization candidates, tools, constraints, assumptions

3)      Stake holder and SME training educate SMEs who can help make informed design decisions

4)      Design sessions – design decisions with stakeholders/SMEs, no surprises later

5)      Design deliverable – documentation capacity analysis, hosts, vCenters, clusters, network, storage, monitoring, patching, backup, restore, DR, security, installation, operations, scalability, support, logical, physical etc.

Current state Analysis and vApps

-          Identify virtualization candidates and applications (identify non-virtualization candidates)

-          Capture baseline performance metrics including average and peak loads (feeds into capacity requirements, feeds into consolidation rations, can be used for comparison purposes)

-          Identify unique dependencies

-          Identify reusable hardware for the design

Design best practice Gems

-          Avoid known problems and achieve predictable results

-          Use as flexible guidelines, not rigid rules

-          Blend with the business unit goals and requirements

-          Evolve with technological advances

-          VCDX defense caution (Requirements, constraint, Assumption or Risk?

Managing downtime

-          So while major disasters may be infrequent events, the risk of downtime is still constant and costly.  The graph shown here breaks down the average cost of downtime by industry, but you can see that the average is around $1.5 million dollars per hour.  This includes not only lost revenue to the company, but also lost employee productivity and damage to a company’s relationship with partners and suppliers.  

-          Another key fact to point out is that downtime is common.  More than half of companies experience some amount of downtime in a given year, and some analysts have found that around a quarter of companies have had to declare a disaster at least once in the past five years.  Often these events are due to causes like an extended power outage, something you wouldn’t normally think of as being a disaster.  Companies who weren’t prepared to handle such disaster recovery situations would stand to lose millions of dollars and, if recovery takes long enough or is ultimately unsuccessful, could also lose their business.

Recovery Risk

-          So while major disasters may be infrequent events, the risk of downtime is still constant and costly.  The graph shown here breaks down the average cost of downtime by industry, but you can see that the average is around $1.5 million dollars per hour.  This includes not only lost revenue to the company, but also lost employee productivity and damage to a company’s relationship with partners and suppliers.  

-          Another key fact to point out is that downtime is common.  More than half of companies experience some amount of downtime in a given year, and some analysts have found that around a quarter of companies have had to declare a disaster at least once in the past five years.  Often these events are due to causes like an extended power outage, something you wouldn’t normally think of as being a disaster.  Companies who weren’t prepared to handle such disaster recovery situations would stand to lose millions of dollars and, if recovery takes long enough or is ultimately unsuccessful, could also lose their business.

 Additional Reading

http://www.vmworld.com/docs/DOC-4831  

http://www.vmworld.com/docs/DOC-4645 

   

Recovery Time Objective (RTO) is the period of time within which systems, applications, or functions must be recovered after an outage. This defines the amount of downtime that a business can endure, and survive. Recovery time includes: fault detection, data recovery, and bringing applications back online.

Recovery Point Objective (RPO) is the point in time to which systems and data must be recovered after an outage. This defines the amount of data loss a business can endure. Different business units within an organization may have varying RPOs.

Business Continuity is a holistic approach to planning, preparing, and recovering from an adverse event. The focus is on prevention, identifying

risks, and developing procedures to ensure the continuity of business function.

Disaster recovery planning should be included as part of business continuity.

Objectives of Business Continuity:

- Facilitate uninterrupted business support despite the occurrence of problems.

- Create plans that identify risks and mitigate them wherever possible.

- Provide a road map to recover from any event.

Disaster Recovery is more about specific cures, to restore service and damaged assets after an adverse event. In our context, Disaster Recovery is the coordinated process of restoring systems, data, and infrastructure required to support key ongoing business operations.

Business Continuity Planning (BCP) is a risk management discipline. It involves the entire business--not just IT. BCP proactively identifies vulnerabilities and risks, planning in advance how to prepare for and respond to a business disruption. A business with strong BC practices in place is better able to

continue running the business through the disruption and to return to “business as usual.”

BCP actually reduces the risk and costs of an adverse event because the process often uncovers and mitigates potential problems.

In summary you have 3 major complications in a traditional DRP that is based on physical systems:

First, a variety of information and data that needs to be protected. All of which needs to be available to ensure recovery. These different kinds of data require different processes and tools. For example, backing up system disks (which are typically on internal storage) uses a different process than backing up data disks. Tracking hardware configuration requirements is also difficult. A common approach is to use spreadsheets, which easily become out of date or get lost. And backups used to protect data can be easily misplaced or corrupted.

Second, a very complex recovery process. Organizations are also faced with a complex recovery process with lots of steps, which can cause recovery to fail. For example, it is easy to miss a hardware dependency that leads to a failure and additional steps. Given the number of manual steps, it is easy for the staff who are executing recovery to make errors that impede recovery. All in all, the process can easily take days, and maybe even longer.

Third, DRPs are very difficult to test. Organizations face significant difficulties testing recovery plans. Tests may require additional servers and storage arrays so that the recovery environment is not disturbed. It is also very difficult to test without disrupting production systems and protecting the process.

Disaster protection for services tends to be tiered. Tier one includes services for which no downtime at all can be tolerated. These services tend to be deployed from the start in active-active configurations. For the remaining services, however, disaster recovery plans are typically in a three-ring binder to be used in the event of a disaster. Instructions in the binder describe how to recover a particular server, configure particular hardware, reinstall the operating system, recover from tape, and so forth.

Of course, these steps are very manual, and they are often very difficult to test.

A Recovery Point Objective is the point in time restored systems have to be started with. A Recovery Time Objective is the amount of time allowed between the disaster and the time when you will have recovered systems to match the RPO. The terms “recovery point objective” and “recovery time objective” will be discussed in more depth later in this course.

Disaster recovery planning  and business continuity planning  are two different things. A DRP is designed to be a plan or a set of procedures that guides employees during the chaos of a disaster and the time immediately following a disaster. It is focused on safeguarding assets and personnel and it is procedure-oriented. It will include things like a step by step procedure on how to get critical systems back online fast at the recovery site. By nature, it is designed to provide a temporary safe harbor for the business. This involves failover planning. Failover is the process by which key business systems are transitioned rapidly during an emergency to a remote recovery site. In contrast business continuity is the process of keeping daily operations running after the disaster.

A Business continuity plan, or BCP  provides guidance on how to keep day to day business operations going at the recovery site. Business continuity planning also changes depending on perspective. For example, the IT department might be concerned mainly about data backups. (Data backups must continue to be made even while operating at the recovery site.) Other departments might have a wider view. To get a call center back online, you not only need your customer data, you also need a facility with desks and phones.

BCPs  should specifically address three things. First, how to run business operations with the smaller capacity of the recovery site. Second, how to prevent interference between recovery operations and the production operations that were formally run at the site. And third, how to eventually failback to the original primary site.

Talk about RPO (recovery point objective) – which is about how much data is lost, i.e., since the last BU.  We can handle most anything, from minutes to years.

Also talk about RTO (recovery time objective) – which is about how quick we can get back to work.  We cannot do real time or near real-time.  Hours is generally what we can do, but it is very important to understand we must test to determine exactly what is possible 

Continued .......

Objective 1.2 – Gather and analyze application requirements [soon]