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Ever wondered about software-defined data centers? Well I guess you experimented a bit with VMware Workstation sometime in your networking journey. If not, then I hope you have heard of VMware vSphere, because in the following short article I expose my study notes on the topic. Terminology Having experimented with VMware Workstation in my college studies (to emulate Linux guest OSes such as Fedora, Suse and Red Hat), I worked later at a very high level with virtual servers that run on vSphere. A couple of examples of that would be Cisco VSOM and Cisco UCM 10.x heard that VMware vSphere is arguably the number 1 data center virtualization solution in the world. This suite does not run as a silo. It integrates with other VMware products. VMware offers the following vSphere editions: Standard Enterprise Enterprise Plus Operations Management with Enterprise Plus: this version has been discontinued because VMware wants to align its vSphere distributions to its standard release naming path. ...

There’s an info on the Internet that says it’s possible to pass Vmware VCA certs for free. It’s been a while now and Vmware retired this offer. However, there are some folks that say they could get around and pass without spending a penny. They say it’s a matter of combining promo codes. I’ve been trying all the codes. Pearson Vue warned me that they’re going to shut down my account if I do another attempt! :p So I created a new Vmware account. And I chose very famous first and last Names: The nice part is that Vmware responded positively to my schedule request! The certification team did not watch the Jason Bourne Trilogy, lol: Anyway, back to serious stuff. The 100% discount is officially retired. Only 50% promo codes are still valid. I’ll publish valid promo codes in a later post, inchAllah.

Cloud providers in general and Vmware in particular defines at least three typical vCloud service models.   Infrastructure as a Service IaaS Flexible environment: customers have complete control over the VMs on which their applications run customers are responsible for OS patching and VM maintenance two services emerged from the IaaS: Desktop as a Service (DaaS) and Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) Platform as a Service PaaS useful for web hosting stable environment PaaS Providers are responsible for patching and upgrading the underlying OS, which is sometimes a slow process customers can customize how their applications work Software as a Service SaaS are provided by SaaS Providers applications must be available to customers anytime, anywhere examples: Google Gmail, Zimbra customers are not concerned by how these applications work customers should be able to customize the look and feel of their applications

Here are my quick and dirty notes while I was preparing for the VMware vCloud VCA certification. Cloud Deployment Models The cloud can be deployed in one of four ways: Private cloud: all the hardware and the software is owned by the organization management and monitoring is the responsibility of the organization (the IT department) builds on top of traditional virtualization technologies (think vSphere) resources are almost always guaranteed  Community Cloud: the cloud is shared by two or more organizations that have similar technical requirements Public Cloud: is hosted on the provider network resource management and monitoring is the responsibility of the cloud provider  resources are transparently shared by customers providers should allow customers to oversubscribe resources, without impacting other customers’ vDC performance providers should enforce security and prevent unauthorized access between Org vDCs providers allow customer to provision resources for future growth Hybr...

Today I successfully passed the exam! I got a score of 420. How I studied for the exam I watched the Vmware E-learning fundamental videos, took notes, reviewed them with a big mind map, then registered and sat for it. I sat studying in many small sessions (remember the power of chunking). What it feels to get Vmware certified It’s great to sit for an exam and pass it from home :) it’s also great to see there are other folks out there who are sharing the same experience. Thank you Vmware! It took me a total of 6.5 hours of learning: