Maybe you’ve heard all the rage about the new Certification Exams from VMware at the Associate Level called the VCA! (VMware Certified Associate) and maybe you haven’t! Well, guess what, You’s gonna hear about it now! :)  So a few things regarding these new Associate level certifications…

THEY’RE FREE TO TAKE AND INCLUDE FREE TRAINING!!!

And the test is delivered via the Web – Online from where you are!

###UPDATE!### – Inline in the comments Phil Wiffen points out what I had forgotten… The code is valid until at LEAST Nov 15th, so act SOON! Also you must take the exam within 48 hours of booking it (hence it expiring in 2 days).

Yea you heard me right.  Now this won’t be free forever, but right now if you use the right formulae of success criteria (detailed inline here) you can get this for free. I’ve heard rumor this expires at the end of this year so get it done STAT! I also heard rumor it expires at the end of November, again knock it out!

You can start out by visiting the VMware Pearson Vue site located at http://www.pearsonvue.com/vmware/ which gives you a handy dandy screen like this..



Below this little list here includes a whole bunch of links you can use to go and register for Authorization and Register for Exams.  If you read a previous blog post A Must-Read before taking your next #VMware VCP or VCAP Exam!!! it included the steps of how to go about requesting authorization to take an exam.   But I’ll mention it here, you’ll need to request authorization to take the exam before you can even register for the exam, and thus schedule the exam respectively!

• Free Online Training Resources:
  • VMware Certified Associate – Data Center Virtualization
    • VMware Data Center Virtualization Fundamentals
  • VMware Certified Associate – Cloud
    • VMware Cloud Fundamentals
  • VMware Certified Associate – Workforce Mobility
    • VMware Workforce Mobility Fundamentals

This little list here not only includes a link to take you directly to the FREE training videos, but the grouping below also takes you to the individual sites for each track to Request Authorization and Register for the exams!

Simply click "Request Authorization" for an exam – and then choose the "Register for the Exam" option!





Then click "Schedule an Exam" after which you select the “Associate and Professional Level Exams” and you’ll need to login then!





If you’ve never done an Online Pearson Vue exam you should create a web account. The process whereby you requested authorization will supply you with the Candidate ID which is required to make this setup complete! I ran into the problem whereby my account was sort of messed up and tied to another account which did not let me login. As I know that VMware Education is so good at cleaning up and merging accounts…. I opt’d to create a new account on a different email alias of mine which also created ANOTHER Candidate ID, but at least it let me register then! :)

After logging in you should have the option to Register for a Pre-Approved exam!





WARNING! Unless you’re rocking your Chinese … Change it from the DEFAULT!



OMG ITS $120 YOU LIED TO ME! YOU SAID IT WAS FREEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!! whoa, hold on there!



MORE LIES! YOU SAID ITS FREE NOW ITS ONLY HALF PRICE!@#!@#$@#!@#  Don’t fret yet… wait until you get to the Payment Screen..



Enter this handy dandy code “VCA13ICS” which I’ve borrowed from my dear friend Rasmus Hedlund from his blog post VMware VCA exam experience plus FREE exam voucher

Additional discount / voucher codes available at Free VMware VCA Certification Voucher! thanks to @FrankBrix ! Look below as well.

Coupon Codes:

• VCA13ICS (Expires November 15th)
• VCA13BCN (Expires end of November)
• VCA13GKN (Supposed to be good until Jan 31 2014)
• VMRT6B404C7B (Expires January 31st)



OMG OMG OMG ITS FREE FREE FREE! Yea. Get it while you can! For some reason mine said mine is only able to taken over the next 2 days which scares me into thinking OMG this won’t last… So get out there and register!

Well it is finally here! Are you excited? You ought to be!

Who or what IS Infinio?!?

So I know what you’re thinking, WHAT exactly is this?!  I first came to know Infinio earlier this year when I saw just how awesome this solution is.  Imagine a solution using server-side caching to minimize and off-load I/O requests so only what is required is sent back to the your shared storage.   It essentially takes 8GB of idle memory on your ESXi hosts and creates a deduplicated cache in memory.   Okay, that’s a lot of jibber-jabber, what exactly does that mean?

If you’re using NFS today you can simply download and deploy the tool in minutes.  And then all of a sudden you’re ready to rock and roll!

The installation is as easy as this.  And then you’re ready to go with your NFS datastore being accelerated.

I’ve talked with the engineers and creators of this product and I was excited for this when it was in Alpha and Beta.  With it being GA this is infinitely more exciting!  The coolest part is, this isn’t simply a one-off solution which will impact your operations individually.  It scales with more installations!

Fortunately unlike most products these days, the dashboard doesn’t look like a disgusting pile of sin.  It’s pretty and provides relevant information!

Couple of cool things associated with this release!

• No new hardware. No reboots. No interruptions in service to install or implement.
• Accelerates all workload types
• Download on a 30 day trial and license when complete – The true “Try before you Buy”

This can basically turn your NFS into providing Flash-like performance accelerating whatever your backend storage happens to be.   Hey, worst case you can give it a try and see it for yourself!

For more details you can check out the Tech Field Day earlier this year where  Peter Smith Demonstrates Infinio Accelerator

In addition today with the special announcement day there will be a Live Webinar with Q/A today Nov 5 at 3PM EST.

I’ll unfortunately miss this awesome announcement webinar because… well, Afghanistan, timezones and I’ll be asleep at the 1AM or so that it’s at! :)

So check it out, be awesome, and rock rock rock!

Here we are… on my 250thaversary (I don’t think that’s a word…) and let me tell you… IM STILL ALIVE! Awesome, right!?

You may be able to see it from my tweets, facebook updates, and wacky images I’m able to capture with instagram, but I down play a lot of the ‘threat’ here.  Oh, the threat is VERY real on a VERY regular basis, but I totally downplay it, especially if sharing something might put American lives in jeopardy… so I don’t talk about those things… a LOT of things.   But hey! This isn’t something for you to be worried about! I mean, the threat is just as real as being in Chicago, so I’ll down play it some more! :)

Afghanistan is kind of like being in prison, except for all of the benefits… of being in Prison!

We often joke about the similarities to prison, I mean lets consider a few points…

• Housing is “Free” in that we live in supplied housing.  And while at the same time… my room is roughly the same size, or slightly smaller than a typical US Prison Jail Cell, so that’s pretty awesome! Albeit the building can burn down at any given moment due to the fact it’s essentially made of balsa wood :)
• Food is “Free” in DFAC provided food.  Except the food is typically less desirable than Prison food, which respectively isn’t saying much :)
• OH WAIT, YOU’RE VEGAN. Yea. People often say, “It must be hard being vegan” Yes. Yes it is. Back home it isn’t, but in a warzone it’s HELL!
• Everyone has guns.   Well, it’s true, everyone does, let’s add that we’re surrounded by huge walls with barbed wire. Except we’re trying to keep people OUT not in, per se. ;)
• I live at an airport basically, though I never get to go anywhere! … And unless I’m going home, not really too much of a fan of traveling throughout the country!
• Everybody loves shared showers! Just don’t let your skin touch any exposed surface. Seriously.

So you know, it’s not so bad!   And all, right?!

I mean, it’s not like my life is in constant jeopardy or that on numerous occasions rockets have not blown up within 100 feet of me. …………

So for those of you who wonder what the warzone is like, and the respective lessons learned you can apply to your own life…

• It can be LOUD here. I own a pair of Klipsch X10i headphones. I tend to miss most rockets I cannot directly FEEL because of how well it buffers the sound.   Also if you happen to travel these are beyond invaluable, hell if it can block out the noise of flying inside of a C130, know it handles QUITE well on domestic or international travel.  FYI I have worn these headphones for about 235 of the 250 days, while I sleep.
• If you see something out of the ordinary, say something about it.   This applies to the world in general.  If something or someone looks suspicious don’t let it slide; Don’t be paranoid but also be realistic…
• Do your due diligence and don’t take overt chances.   I’m a risk taker as much as the next guy (Psst… Did you hear I’m in fracking AFGHANISTAN) but I wouldn’t go so far as to play around life explosives or put myself in a position to receive real harm if I can control it.
• Smog is nasty, but a microscopic dust which enters into your lungs and you breathe it everywhere, that’s not so great.
• Do not walk behind a blackwater truck, or hell, near one if you can help it
• Blackwater trucks clean out portapotties, and emit a highly refined spray of feces into the air, it’s the original eau de toilette…

The list can clearly go on, but I need to sleep soon so I wish you all well in your respective places in the world.   I wish you good will, good life and be safe.

YOU DID IT! You are all set to take your VMware Exam which will mean the difference of you having the certification and NOT having the certification! Who knows, this could be the change that your life has been asking for, Excited Excited Excited!!!   But wait, It’s not that simple!

What?!?!?!

This past September our good friends at VMware have instituted an “Authorization” process, whereby you need to take some steps BEFORE you can schedule!    Or semi-specifically and verbatim…

   All VMware exams require prior VMware authorization before candidates can schedule an appointment with Pearson VUE.

Candidates can get authorized by going to vmware.com/certification.  This process can take up to 15 minutes. Once authorized, candidates can schedule their exam.

Awesome, right?! I mean, or not. I know what you’re chanting NANNY STATE. NANNY STATE. Yea. That’s what I said when I was FIRST going to publish this back when it happened several many weeks ago… But time to cut through the chaff to get down to what matters!

Now when you’re ready to take an exam, you can visit the listed http://vmware.com/certification or respectively visit http://www.pearsonvue.com/vmware both of which will provide you relevant links like the following;

It wasn’t until the past week or two where VMware actually FIXED their links to make finding the registration portion ‘possible’, so now both links take you to the appropriate place instead of only one.  Awesome!

When you finally find what you’re looking for, you’ll be prompted to login using your myLearn account, and then you get a list of ‘Pre-Requisite” sections to fill out.    Interesting thing to note here; while running this through in my tests I was never able to get the “Continue” button to function correctly using Chrome, but it worked in Internet Explorer… Hey, whatever it takes, right? (If you experience a similar problem of the button not working, try another browser).

However, you may also notice that SOME of the tests you want to Authorize for may not be available, receiving only a “Back” button.   We’ve historically found this due to some of the following reasons;

• Your VCP not being recognized on your account
• Your class not being recognized on your account
• You took the VCP Exam and THEN took the Class, and they’re not granting you credit for it since it was done ‘after the fact’.

Irrespective of what problems you may experience, I’ve found the folks at Education to be *great* at helping out, and I have opened numerous cases (on this, and over the years for account mergers)   Just shoot a mail over to “eduoperations@vmware.com” explaining your problem and they have a 48hr SLA for response to get it resolved.   This can be a major challenge if you’re all excited to test TOMORROW and you cannot get your authorization in, so something to consider while thinking ahead!

That in essence covers the bulk of it, Pearson VUE changes due to VMware Policy LIKELY will impact you if you do not plan ahead.   So, plan ahead, get authorized and Pass Pass Pass!

Keep up the virtually good work. OMG WORST TAGLINE EVER! ;)

Well hello VMworldians, attendees, random friends and foes throughout the interwebbers!   Here is a basic synopsis of the first few non-conference days and what shenanigans went down!    A story like this wouldn’t be complete without covering a little bit of what turned out to be days –3 and –2 respectively which were essentially the ‘commute’ for me.   I realize I’ve been quoting it as a ~44hr trip, but in all honestly when considering ‘local time’ and the time I essentially was on my way, consider it this way.. I started my journey to VMworld at 3PM PST (Localtime) on Thursday Aug 22 only to arrive on Saturday Aug 24th at 4PM, so lets chalk that up to a 49hr trip.   Probably one of my worst… but it is what it is/was!

Only to compound matters worse were my shoes MELTING in Dubai, I guess it was hot…

Unfortunately this resulted in nasty blisters on my feet which has effectively turned me into a hobbling mess.   I don’t know if I have JetLag because lets be honest… after some ridiculous travel like that… You should be exhausted regardless! So I’m playing all of that by ear!

But let’s focus on what’s going on with Day 0 and Day –1 … Obviously!    Outside of the standard name tagging and bombs of the Photo variety which sure beats the hell out of incoming rockets! (Though I’m not sure if anyone has ever referred to Josh Liebster (@jlobster) as an incoming rocket before…)

So the Welcome Reception kicked off with a resounding Success!  Cheers to EMC for having a ‘Win an iPad mini after every presentation’ I mean, if there were ever any better metrics to win something? Those certainly take the cake.   Special props go to the presenter of the session the 5 of us sat through, he was very entertaining, very good at his job of engaging and delivering.   The unfortunate side-effect of that is that after they built up a great story talking about VIPR it fell off after that.    It’s like OMG AWESOME+AWESOME=AWESOME == VIPR.  And then don’t say a DAMN thing about what VIPR really means beyond some buzzwords, though I hold that against the marketing group who gave them the pitch they were delivering; It has to be more than a slide saying OMG.

As always is the case… Was able to make it ~50 feet at most during the Welcome Reception because the traffic of conversation can be rather encompassing!   But I look forward to visiting various awesome vendors throughout the week, especially some of the smaller ones you likely have never heard of, but should.   

To top the evening off our good friends who run the VMUnderground Party kicked off a pretty awesome event at a very interesting and sizable location, so well props to them and future and further successes to them!   There may be additional stories to share on that… but I won’t open Pandora’s box yet!

I expect so much more throughout the week, and I’ll be meeting with some potentially game-changing vendors and partners to share the awesome that is they have to share.   As always if you’re looking for some particular insight, shoot up a flare and I’ll personally launch a vendetta to ensure we all walk away more educated. :)

Finally, A few comments…

This isn’t the first year I’ve had to say this, but VMware in their infinite wisdom are all like HEY LETS HAVE VMWORLD IN ONE OF THE MOST EXPENSIVE CITIES IN THE WORLD WITH SOME OF THE FEWEST HOTELS. And then someone else chimes in, “When should we do it? I hear the America’s Cup is on until August 30th, lets make sure it overlaps so the already ridiculous priced hotels are even more expensive”.   I mean, that HAS to be the conversation because seriously? San Francisco? I talked to someone tonight who’s paying $618 a night for their hotel.   Not that ridiculous comes to mind but it’d be cheaper to rent out half of vegas and still host 200 simultaneous conventions while STILL having affordable hotels available.   Not that I’m bitter, I’m here but I’m not worried about *me*.   This is for all of the smaller SMB/SME organizations who need the benefits of Virtualization and a CONFERENCE of virtualization the most.   They’re the ones who suffer by the all encompassing high costs of San Francisco for a convention venue.