You knew it was coming, No seriously you did. … Probably. :)

But yea, Veeam the maker of various Virtualization supportive technologies has released the Veeam Certified Engineer (VMCE) certification!

A few interesting things I noticed with this announcement; First of all the Certification exam itself will not be available for a few months so keep that in mind if you were looking at pursuing it today (as I had… :))

Secondly, they take their certification and respective recertification pretty serious with this clause;

How long is a Veeam certification valid?

In order to ensure that Veeam certification is a valuable indicator of a candidate’s knowledge, Veeam will require re-certificating on all major releases of Veeam solutions. To upgrade your certification level as a VMCE, you will have 120 days after the release to take the upgrade course and pass the corresponding exam.

If a VMCE fails the exam, there will be another 90 days to re-take the course (full) and pass the exam (full).

If after this time a VMCE didn’t confirm the certification, it will expire.

At this time, the training is only available in the US, and the online videos haven’t been recorded yet (Hey, we’re getting ahead of ourselves a little bit!) but lo and look forward to the future as I can see this start to explode in the near term.

If you haven’t heard of or about EMC Elect by now, let this be a reminder!  For those unaware, EMC Elect is the EMC Equivalent to the Microsoft MVP Program, or the VMware vExpert Program.    It is with great honor I accept this reward two years in a row since its inception.

Look for more continued and contributions to the community this coming year involving Virtualization and EMC as well.  I’ve included some links below from various other members of the EMC Community and with more details on EMC Elect!   Good luck all and have an awesome 2014!!!

The EMC Elect of 2014 – Official List

How were the EMC Elect of 2014 chosen?

EMC Elect 2014 Honorees Announced

Welcoming the EMC Elect of 2014

EMC Elect for 2014 Announced

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!

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! ;)