Where is Colin? Passing the VCP exam (VMware Certified Professional)

Life has been busy lately, with the promotion, CCDE practical, and new team members I have been working 60 to 70 hour weeks for the past month or so. Part of my new role is developing new reference architectures surrounding Data Center technologies. Of course, VMware and virtualization technologies in general are key pieces of any Data Center architecture now.

Because VMware is central to Data Center architectures, I decided to do a deep dive over the past week. This is not my first foray into virtualization, I have used VMware workstation since 1999 and got my first exposure to Storage Networking in 2004 with ESX. Read an article from 2005 about me dealing with network issues in ESX. However VMware has added so many interesting and relevant features that I found it was good to do a ground up review on. I have to say, that review was helpful. There are many features that as a network designer that should have been in the forefront of my mind, that I hadn’t grasped the full potential of.

As always, after a deep dive into game changing technology I am filled with more questions than answers. But the answers I do have are enough to try my luck at an exam. With an afternoon free, I decided to try my luck at the VMware Certified Professional Exam (VCP-310). Apparently my deep dive worked, because I walked away with a new cert for the binder 😊

Now with a better understanding of the value adds that VMware Infrastructure 3 (Vi3) has in the Data Center, I need to deep dive again on VMware Infrastructure 4 (Vi4) and figure out how Virtual Data Center OS (VDC-OS) and VMware based application virtualization tie into the classic methods of application virtualization (load balancing and content switching) as well as lay down some common network architectures utilizing the Nexus and converged data center fabrics for the move towards cloud computing in the enterprise. I’ll keep you posted on the results of these deep dives, I am sure it will be interesting.

Needless to say, it is a fun time to be a Data Center geek…