Since December 2009, Global Knowledge have been running their own unique VCP Exam Preparation Workshop in the UK for the VCP on vSphere 4, I developed the workshop session myself with the aim of giving people the best chance they had of passing their VCP4 exam. I blogged about the workshop when we first launched it, click on the VCP Workshop tab across the top of the page and you'll be taken there - but don't go there just yet, read on...
Myself and my colleagues have delivered this session many times throughout 2010 and have helped dozens of people do themselves justice on the "big day" when taking their exam. Moving into 2011 we've decided to offer the workshop in new ways on top of the current classroom-based method:
Online delivery
We now offer the workshop as a live-online "virtual" event, so you can participate in the workshop wherever you are worldwide so long as you have a PC, a headset, and a modest internet connection.
Time of delivery
We're running a "virtual" event on Thursday 10th March Wednesday 16th March, this session starts at 5pm GMT - perfect if you're based in the UK or Europe and you need to attend "out of hours", and also if you're based somewhere like the US and you want to be able to participate in an event like this.
Feel free to email me directly if this might be of interest to you, blog readers from the UK should also note that the workshop also forms part of our VCP-related VMware bundles - special pricing for those attending official vSphere training with a view to gaining their VCP or VCAP certifications.
UPDATE: 28th Feb 2011
This session has now been re-arranged for Wednesday 16th March - it's not too late to get yourself booked on!
Twitter has gone pretty crazy in the last 24 hours with those reporting that they got their results for the VCAP4-DCD beta exam - well they did eventually! Something odd originally happened at VMware where they were emailing out the results to the wrong people but it looks like it's all been sorted out now!
Some of those that passed are VCDX3 holders, and the VCAP4-DCD is the only element needed to "upgrade" VCDX3 to VCDX4, so we now have our first batch of VCDX4s too!
Here's a collection of some of the many blog posts from those that took the VCAP4-DCD beta exam, and passed:
Justin Paul
Harley Stagner
Jason Boche
Simon Gallagher
Chris Kranz
Colin Barker
Phil Ditzel
Kanuj Behl
Congratulations to all those who've now gained VCAP4-DCD certification, as well as those who've now met the VCDX4 requirements!
Pearson Vue and VMware ran two separate Instructor Rewards programs in 2010, one in each half of the year, where all VCIs were issued with a special discount code that we could give out to students attending our official courses. Students would receive a 10% discount on the cost of their VMware exam, and we as instructors would earn rewards depending on the number of students using our code.
I blogged about this promotion before, here and here.
I'm glad to say that for the second time I was one of the instructors that had their code used the most, out of over 600 VCIs I came in 10th on the most recent promotion, and I've been rewarded with another polo shirt branded with both the VMware and Pearson Vue logos, as well as a free purchase to the value of $60 with free shipping from MindHub.
I decided to order the VMware vSphere and Virtual Infrastructure Security: Securing the Virtual Environment book by Edward Haletky. Thanks to all the students who used my code, not only did you get yourself a 10% discount off your exam, but I got a polo shirt and a book for my troubles, a win for you and a win for me!
I know VMware have some more certification promotions planned for the first half of this year, I'll release all the details of those when I can - watch this space...
I read an interesting post this week on the VirtualInsanity blog, asking for feedback from the community for the VCP exam for the next generation release of vSphere - presumably this will be titled vSphere 5 so I would expect that the exam and certification will most commonly be referred to as VCP5.
Thomas Mackay, who wrote the blog post in question, is one of the SME content contributors to the VCP certification exam testing and blueprint process, and is inviting comments on the post that he can feedback to his colleagues in curriculum development at VMware. I've done over 20 Microsoft certification exams in my past, as well as having done all three VCP exams, so I have some ideas of my own which I'm going to add.
You wouldn't be reading this blog unless VMware certification was of interest to you, so read the blog post for youself, and make your contribution.
Some updates related to the VCAP4 certifications from the last few weeks:
Registration for the final VCAP4-DCD exam opened in December, it's one of a number of links and resources you can find on the main VCAP4-DCD page on the VMware website.
Global Knowledge are now able to offer the VCAP4 exams at their training centres in Wokingham and Wakefield, these UK locations have now been added to the VCAP Testing Centre Locations list.
Updated versions of the VCAP4-DCA exam blueprint and VCAP4-DCD exam blueprint are now available and should be used as the primary study guides for the exams.
Gregg Robertson has continued to add new links to some really key study resources for both exams to his blog TheSaffaGeek - you'll find links back to my blog there as well as some overlap to some of the links/resources I've posted on here previously.
I'm running my first ever half-marathon on 13th February 2011 in order to raise awareness and hopefully money for a special little girl called Evie. Evie and her family are friends of my manager at Global Knowledge, and he asked some of us in the office if we'd be willing to run the Wokingham Half Marathon with him in order to raise money so that Evie can have surgery in the USA that will allow her to maximise her potential and live her life as independently as possible.
Evie was born 11 weeks premature and spent the first 6 weeks of her life in an incubator. She was diagnosed with quadriplegia cerebral palsy at 11 months old. You can learn more about Evie and the challenges she faces here: Evie's Journey
To make a donation, and find out more about who's running, follow this link: Running for Evie
Evie, her parents, and all of us at Global Knowledge appreciate your donation.
Throughout the whole of 2010 I've been trying hard to attend the quarterly meetings of the London VMware User Group, unfortunately my work schedule prevented me from joining the first three of the four events last year. I did manage to attend my first session in October 2010, and knew many other attendees from my other activities within the VMware community, as well as having trained plenty of those there too!
The group has it's own area on the VMware community forum, it's own group on LinkedIn, as well as many active Twitter users that use the official #lonvmug tag in many tweets. You'll also find many other UK-based virtualisation bloggers that also post various articles about the group.
A change in my job role for 2011 means that I will definitely be attending all the events this year, in fact I will be presenting at the next event on Thursday 10th February 2011! The title of my presentation is VMware Certification - Preparing for Success and I intend to effectively bringing some of the more popular certification posts on my blog to life.
My experience in presenting is very heavily biased towards classroom-based training, but I have hosted a number of webinars in the last couple of years, I ran some vSphere presentation/demo workshops around the UK in 2009, and did a presentation at IP Expo in 2009. I'm really looking forward to having a chance to do my stuff at this event.
There are some other great presentations lined up, being delivered by Gabrie van Zanten, Simon Long (who may or may not turn up in his infamous pink shirt), and Chris Dearden, as well as the sponsor presentation which for this event is Veeam. Well-known EMC vSpecialist Alan Renouf also runs a workshop on PowerCLI in the morning before the presentations in the afternoon. The full agenda and details of the location and how to register to attend can all be found on this post on the VMware community forum.
See you there!
