July 2020 Update

Here's my monthly update on the latest news with VMware training and certification!

vSphere 7 exam for VCP-DCV 2020

The Professional vSphere 7.x exam is now live and available for testing. This exam will be key for those taking the most common VMware certification - VCP-DCV.

A few things to note about how the release of this exam affects you if you're working towards your VCP-DCV 2020:

1. If you already hold VCP-DCV 2020 from completing the older vSphere training and exams this year, passing this new exam on vSphere 7 will NOT result in you being awarded any additional certification

2. If you pass this exam as part of working towards your VCP-DCV 2020, you WILL NOT also need to pass a vSphere Foundations exam

3. If you ignore this exam and are working towards your VCP-DCV 2020 with the Professional vSphere 6.7 exam, you WILL also need to pass the vSphere 6.7 Foundations exam

4. The vSphere 6.7 Foundations exam and Professional vSphere 6.7 exam will both be retired at some point, but don't worry yet as there is no date set for their retirement

Read the official news on the exam release.

VMWorld 2020

For the first time, VMWorld goes virtual - and you can attend most sessions for FREE! There are some sessions reserved for those who buy a Premium event pass, but a FREE General pass gives you access to most sessions.

As if that's not already enough of a reason to register, you will also get access to special sessions from the Education Services team AND exam voucher discounts too!

So you really have NOTHING TO LOSE by registering and attending...

More new exams and courses

The Advanced Deploy vSphere 6.7 exam is also now available - this is one of the advanced-level exams for the VCAP-DCV 2020, the older exam based on vSphere 6.5 retires on November 30th.

On demand courses are now available for vCloud Director and vSphere 6.7 > 7.0, plus some new courses for NSX-T and VMware Cloud Foundation - the July announcements page has more information and links.

Regular readers will already know about VMware Learning Zone and the special Premium subscription promotion currently running, new content is released all the time - here's the most notable content for July.

Local and remote testing - COVID-19

For the latest information on testing centre re-opening and remote exams, read this blog post.

VMworld Europe 2010 - Day 3

OK, so I'm not in Copenhagen any more, but I still wanted to write something about what I got up to on the final day of VMworld Europe 2010...

My last day in Copenhagen started a little late, but that might be related to enjoying myself at the VMworld Party and in the bars I went to afterwards with friends... (you know who you are!)

I attended an excellent session delivered by Chad Sakac from EMC and Vaughn Stewart from NetApp - Best Practices to Increase Availability and Throughput for VMware - even though their organizations compete it's clear that they have a common interest, and the banter between them helped to make this one of the best breakout session of any VMworld or TSX I've attended before.

I also spent time in the Solutions Exchange area, talking specifically with some of the Education Services team at VMware, my friend Jane Rimmer who was there with Centrix Software, and collecting a few freebies for my kids, then it was time to head to the airport and home...

I've had a different experience at each of the four VMware events I've now attended, it really is an event that you can get whatever you want from - whether it's networking, hands-on labs, attending some of the larger breakout sessions, or participating in a group discussion or even a one-to-one.

Thanks to all those involved in making it happen, and a shout out to all those I met up with - see you next year!

VMworld Europe 2010 - Day 2

Well, this will be a short blog post...

I've not been to the Bella Center today, I've been at a hotel with a dozen other VCIs attending a VCI Mentor Workshop. I've held Mentor status with VMware for a couple of years now, but attending this new Workshop means I will retain my status from January 2011.

Being a Mentor means I understand the technical and delivery standards expected of a VCI, so I am able to sign off prospective VCIs against those standards. The Workshop was straightforward, the framework used by VMware is similar to that used by the Institute of IT Training in the UK - and I've been a qualified IITT Assessor for about 6 months now.

It's VMworld party night tonight, I'm heading out for dinner soon with my Global Knowledge colleagues, then we'll be heading to the Forum in Copenhagen to the party - it's a party for Abba fans as Bjorn Again are the headline band. I'm looking forward to a good night, then it's back to the Bella Center tomorrow morning for Day 3 and the journey home...

VMworld Europe 2010 - Day 1

So today was the first "proper" day of VMworld Europe 2010, and the first thing that struck me was how much work went into the Solutions Exchange area between 5pm on Monday and 10:30am on Tuesday - when the VCI day was over the area looked far from being ready and yet this morning everything was setup and ready - a lot of hard work goes on behind the scenes to make that happen.

After chatting to Chris Skinner from VMware on the Metro on the way to the Bella Center, I spent the first hour "walking the floor" of the Solutions Exchange area with Linda Smith - the Business Development Director for virtualization at Global Knowledge UK. We caught up with people from VMware, Quest, and Veeam amongst others, then we split up and headed off to breakout sessions.

The first session I attended was Virtual Machines Outperforming Physical Machines with the always-impressive Scott Drummonds and Dave Korsunsky, where Scott highlighted the impressive volume of performance improvements from ESX 2.5 through to the vSphere 4. Dave and Scott then presented how those enhancements had enabled various workloads to run better in virtual machines rather than be run in the traditional physical manner. Some of the gain was related to scalability issues that are directly related to the applications themselves and other gains were realised by the VMkernel being able to take advantage of the latest hardware technologies. The session emphasised the importance of finding "the sweet spot" for each application in terms of sizing the virtual machine - and Scott highlighted that in most cases these days a 2-way or 4-way VM gave the best scalbility and performance of most virtualized workloads.

I attended my first "group discussion" session later in the afternoon, Storage with Chad Sakac, where Chad led an interactive Q&A and discussion session on storage protocols, filesystems, best practices, challenges, as well as trying to gather feedback on how VMware and storage vendors could support their customers better. Chad also discussed some potential future enhancements to vSphere that could allow some of today's limitations to be removed or circumnavigated.

I really enjoyed both sessions - I deliberately chose them based on the subject as well as the presenters and wasn't disappointed!

I also spent a little time today in the Bloggers Lounge, behind the Solutions Exchange area, where I chatted to Vladan Seget, Alex Mittell, Mike Laverick, and Simon Long to name just a few...

Whilst most people were attending the Welcome Reception in the Solutions Exchange area, I attended the CTO Reception for the current batch of vExperts - the VMware CTO is none other than Steve Herrod, and Steve brought many principal VMware staff and engineers with him. I spent my time chatting with other vExperts, and also got to meet John Troyer for the first time - John works incredibly hard with social media, the VMware community forums, the VMTN blog and podcast, as well as managing the vExpert program.

Once we had finally left the Bella Center for the day, Linda and I ate a really tasty meal, then headed back to our hotel to re-charge our batteries, ready for another busy day tomorrow!

VMworld Europe 2010 - Day 0

I arrived in Copenhagen late on Sunday afternoon, headed straight to the Bella Center on the free shuttle bus, and completed the registration process for VMworld - I love the bag! My phone wasn't working straight away, so thanks to a guy I met on the bus I managed to phone a friend of mine (Rakesh - a freelance VCI from the UK) and met up with him. We got the excellent metro into the central area, then headed to my hotel where we also met with Marcel - a colleague of mine from GK in the Netherlands. After a couple of drinks in the hotel, we eventually found somewhere to eat dinner and grab a couple more beers.

I've spent today at a VCI day, arranged by my friends Andy Cary and Undeleeb Din - it was a packed day, with presenters from the VMware Education team as well as product managers and consultants, the agenda ran like this:

- Introduction and VCI benefits
- Education update
- Certification update
- VCI program and portal update
- VCDX session with current VCDX holders
- vCloud Director Q&A
- View 4.5 Q&A

After dinner this evening, we headed to the Customs House for the VMUG event - it was busy in there when we first arrived and I met a lot of people who I've chatted with via email or online before - Kendrick Coleman, David Davis, Gregg Robertson, Vladan Seget - as well as catching up with some older friends from the virtualization world.

On to the main event, starting tomorrow morning...

VMworld Europe 2010 - See you in Copenhagen

I'm sure most of you will be aware that VMware's annual conference is titled VMworld, and each year they run an event in the US and one in Europe - I'm a regular attendee of the Europe event, and will be in Copenhagen next month along with however many other thousands of people decide to go!

I'll be joined there by a number of key colleagues from Global Knowledge around the EMEA region, and have a fairly hectic schedule already:

Sunday October 10th
Fly in from London

Monday October 11th
VCI day - Various roadmap sessions with VMware Education, and some Q&A sessions with VMware experts

Tuesday October 12th
Main conference

Wednesday October 13th
VCI Mentor Workshop - A chance to refresh my Mentor status as a VCI, so I can continue to sign off new VCIs

Thursday October 14th
Main conference
Fly back to London

I love going to VMworld - I've got plenty of people that I'll be seeing while I'm there and will no doubt bump into many other ex-students and ex-colleagues there too - if you've not been before and this will be your first time take advantage of all the different activities there:

Breakout sessions
Hands-on labs
Solutions exchange
Parties!

I'll try and do some blogging while I'm there too about what I've seen and who I've seen, and generally sharing my experiences of the event. I will be spending my days wearing a Global Knowledge shirt, well they are paying for me to go, so look out for me and come and say "Hi" if you see me :-)