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My ITIL 2011 Flashcards

I created these ITIL flashcards by myself. They helped me to remember the most important topics and to pass the exam. To hide the answers (and encourage you to make an effort), I got inspired from a technique that I discovered on Cisco Dreamer’s blog . To see the answer, highlight the text after the “A:” letter. Enjoy! Q: Define a Service . A: A means to create value to customers Q: What does a service do? A: A service allows the customer to get an output, without forcing him to own the costs and risks, Q: true/false: a service is durable A: False; a service is highly perishable, if not consumed when needed Q: What’s the impact of the ITSM on an company that uses IT? A: With ITSM, a company becomes an IT Service Provider, instead of a technology provider Q: To which type of customers does a service provider provide services to? A: both internal and external customers Q: Define ITSM. A: ITSM: a standardized set of methodological capabilities that allow an organiza...

Microsoft Loopback Adapter In Windows

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For Which Purpose do we Need it? A Microsoft Loopback adapter is useful during home lab creation. If you study for any networking exam such as Cisco, then you may need to emulate subnets in order to see how end points communicate with each others across routing or firewalling devices. That is exactly what I am doing in my eve-based home lab. If you read my older posts, all the subnets you see are based on Microsoft Loopback adapters. Creating a Microsoft Loopback Adapter Here is a method to create a Microsoft loopback network adapter in Windows. I executed this process on Windows 7. Therefore, I don’t know what it would look like in Windows 10.   Go to Control Panel –> Device Manager In the Device Manager menu, right click on the icon that has your computer name and select Add Legacy Hardware In the Add Hardware Wizard , accept the warning and click Next : Select the second radio button that says Install the hardware that I manually select from a list (Advanced) and cl...

Solarwinds Certified Professional: Pass

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Passed today on my second attempt. 95% of the questions are different from what I had in my last attempt. I was saying “Oh s***” during the exam. Most of the topics I reviewed were not covered in the second attempt, which makes me think that Solarwinds certification team is generating new questions each time. That’s great! This should make it harder to pass. Bottom line: if you do network administration/mgmt on a daily basis, and have played with Orion components (which are available for free evaluation), you can pass it.

Solarwinds Certified Professional: Failed

I sat for the exam and failed on my first attempt with 68.8%, which is not bad I messed up the Orion section, the exam requires some hands on. I’ve only used NPM in very basic ways (top 10, device details) I knew the logic of things since I’ve been using Cisco LMS for years. However, the question choices assume that you know the names of the components and menus. Anyway, it’s a decent network management exam.

Scheduling Vmware exam through Pearson Vue

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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 Service Models

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

Vmware vCloud: My Study Notes

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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...