VCDX Sponsorship - A cool idea !!

Hi VCDX Aspirants,

If you are not aware about this but recently Nutanix has offered Sponsorship to anyone who is going for VCDX or in process of attaining VCDX.

The exact criteria is described here:

"We are looking for someone who has successfully completed all of the prerequisite exam requirements for VCDX and is ready to submit a Nutanix-based design for their VCDX defense. The lucky chosen candidate will receive as much preparation support as needed and have all submission fees paid for by Nutanix. Let us help you achieve your ultimate goal of becoming a member of the exclusive VCDX community."

And the benefits are:

The chosen candidate will receive:
• A VCDX bootcamp to prepare the candidate for the VCDX defense
• The VCDX submission fees paid for by Nutanix
• Travel and lodging for the VCDX defense


Now looking at this trend, wondering tomorrow or in near future all the big players e.g. EMC, NetApp, IBM, HP etc. will come up with an offering like this, which would give a candidate a chance/motivation to include the components in their design and get benefits of such offerings.

Now this is just my assumption here but it is something which can be done and the company will get more visibility in the community by promoting the VCDX process as a whole which is Elite and Unique in itself.

People are becoming more innovative day by day so not sure what kind of other offers they may started getting from such organizations or even from their employer, which eventually boost the morale of a person to go for such valuable status being a "VCDX".

Good Luck to those who entered in this offer from Nutanix and love to see more of such offers from others in the community.

Share and care !!

Cheers !! 

Passed VCP-Cloud - Links and Resources

I attempted the BETA Exam and missed it by few. Saw all the Tweets when the BETA results was announced as people were passing. I had nothing but to take that as an opportunity to prepare again and Never give up.

For last week or so I have been studying the vCloud, vShield, vCloud Connector and Chargeback.

Today I went to one of the centers to give the VCP-IaaS Exam and after finishing the survey my heart beats are started to becoming little faster. With all the study resources I have gone through which were immensely  helped me to understand the concepts of vClound and other components tied up with it.

Chargeback is definitely a BEAST which will play a crucial role in organizations when it comes to cost and resource allocation. So much new to learn about it and I can see the future of Chargeback is very bright along with the vCloud implementations where the strength of the same can be utilized in both Public and Private Clouds. Now a days everything e.g. Storage, Networking becoming cheaper in the cost per GB per / MB. But still to see if your underlying hardware resources are fully optimized or not and giving you the best ROI with reasonable CAPEX/OPEX involved, it will be a priority subject for any organization which are in the business of using IT infrastructure.

I would probably posts about Chargeback in near future as it keeps attracting me by its features and offerings.

Finishing the 85 questions I got only 90 minutes but was able to finish it within lot of time to review the questions. As I pressed End Exam and I could not see the "Congratulations" word right away but saw your score which was "426", which means I passed. :-). I was excited while attempting the questions so not even bothered to review all the questions but just went back reviews 4-5 flagged about which I was double minded. Now the journey is just started in the vCloud track as VCP-Cloud is the first stepping stone while going for VCAP-CID (BEAT recently finished) and VCAP-CIA (not released yet).

Now lets discuss the resources I have used to prepare for this exam.

1) First of all the official documentation are the highest priority who ever is preparing for the examination. Majority of them are listed here by @davidmdavis.

2) I went through all the videos posted on mylearn.vmware.com for vCloud Training which I blogged about earlier. 

3) vCloud Deploy and Manage Course - offered by VMware Education.

4) VMware vCloud Director Fundamentals - offered by VMware Education.


5) Before going for the exam David Davis also helped me in last few days to review the recently launched training from TrainSignal "VMware vCloud Director Organizations" by @jakerobinson which I highly recommend to anyone who wants learn about vCloud Director and preparing for this certification. Its kind of paced training so the basic requirements includes the knowledge of related components to understand the subject better. there is vCloud Director Essentials Training is also available which will give you the knowledge about vCloud Director setup and other features offered by the same.

6) I'm previous post I have listed some links where similar resources are blogged about community members. but recently I referred the blog from Larus Hjartarson (@lhjartarson). He blogged about VCP-IaaS study notes. 

7) VCAT 2.0/ 3.0 documents

8)  Home LAB :-)

Cheers and Good Luck to all.