I.T.HINK …So you don't have too…

2/8/15

Once again being a very active member of the www.techexams.net community I have discovered VMUG. VMUG is a user-based group that focuses on the areas of VMware and it’s solutions. I joined the network and 3 weeks ago I purchased the VMUG Advantage subscription and to my amazement this year VMware is offering the following software for home-lab users:

Included products are:

• VMware vCenter Server™ 5 Standalone for vSphere 5
• VMware vSphere® with Operations Management™ Enterprise Plus
• VMware vCloud Suite® Standard
• VMware vRealize™ Operations Insight™
• VMware vRealize Operations™ 6 Enterprise
• VMware vRealize Log Insight™
• VMware vRealize Operations for Horizon®
• VMware Horizon® Advanced Edition
• VMware Virtual SAN™

VMUG Advantage: link

Well one of the neat things they did recently is now the subscription allows me to use 3 hosts with up to 6 CPU’s and unlimited cores. So…… now my home cluster can have Enterprise Plus licensing with vCOPS and vSAN. I still have enough for a 3rd host later on down the road if I choose to get one for even more testing.

One of the things I really like is vCOPS and what it shows you in one pane of glass. The feature of this solution really help for complex and large datacenters. I’ve been using at work and the centralized management of my cluster is amazing. it makes vCenter look like a walk in the park. At some point I will test on vRealize but for right now I’m having way too much fun with the vSphere 5.5 w/ vCOPS and vSAN in my QNAP Ts-420 IP SAN in the home lab.

I’m really quite excited that VMware is doing this technet-oriented subscription for VMware. I like home-labbing and spend over 20+ hours a week invested into labbing with VMware, Cisco, Microsoft, and Sonicwall technologies and having a licensed and fully working VMware cluster really helps replicate a Enterprise grade network as close to the real deal as can be physically possible.  I’m looking forward to now cramming these existing twin Dell R610’s with 64 GB’s of RAM and fully utilizing there benefits to a home cluster…..

My only problem now is I need to expand my home network out of a /24 into a /23 or use multiple vlans for all my VM’s and projects, lol! – Never thought that would happen!

Below is my vCOPS for my home lab, and without this solution I would have never been able to see that my VM’s are over provisioned.

Whelp it was a long study but after 5 months of study I’ve completed the VCP5-DCV course study and passed the exam on January 5th 2015. Since taking the ICM class at Stanly College in Locust NC back in October of 2014 I was basically living in my home-lab 5 hours a night during the week and about 10 hours on weekends and working with VMware 5.5 on a daily basis on the job at customer locations. I was actually kind of shocked by getting into the ICM class back in September and kind of pissed, I was literally 3 weeks from taking my CCNA:R&S exam but I had to shift gears and move into the VMware track…

In-fact in the month of December I did 10 full VMware ESXi 5.5 deployments sporting Dell R720 servers, Dell Equalogic SAN storage, HP/Cisco/Dell Switches for both iSCSI and FCoE as-well as deploying networking fabric to enhance the capabilities of customer networks. It’s been a blast and it really helped me pass the exam, also knowing that customers server infrastructure is state of-the-art! …But this kind of stuff is what I like doing…

I really underestimated the complexity of the exam and how hard it really was, but I managed to pass it. I really enjoyed working with VMware’s vSphere and vCenter products so this was quite the achievement for me personally (once I’m done with my next 2 certifications I’ll probably tackle the VCAP5-DCA) and furthermore how this product suite can truly make for a better working environment for pretty much any IT infrastructure that doesn’t yet utilize visualization. The features it provides your classical IT design strategy really helps a IT department sleep better; this is all coming from a IT person like myself that dealt with IT before the use of visualization.

The VCP5-DCV exam was hard, but now I’m getting back on the bandwagon and pressing onward and back on-track towards my Cisco Certified Network Associate: Routing and Switching (CCNA: R&S) since I’ve been using Cisco for a few years now but I want to get certified in networking and Cisco has the networking sector by the balls. My goal is to be CCNA:R&S certified by the end of March 2015. My overall goals for 2015 are to get my CCNA:R&S and my MCSA, if I have time the CCNA: Security.

Now some of you may-be like wow you have a pretty extensive lab; well I do but there is a method to my madness. I wanted to get my CCNA:R&S 1st but fate had a different route and I got my VCP5-DCV 1st so now I’m getting back into Cisco, once I get my CCNA:R&S I’ll pursue my MCSA. See this lab may-be extensive but it’s many solutions built into one package, that package is as close to a enterprise network as can be done.

Currently my VMware cluster has 2 different forests being used on two of the vLAN’s in the Cisco lab, this mimics two different Windows Domains and VMware datacenters and since this Cisco lab is setup to be isolated, the domains never leave the Cisco lab but the vCenter appliance is linked to a management network connected to my home LAN so I can manage them as if I had access to both networks, it seems complicated but it’s really not, we not for me at-least. See it may not be a very large scale deployment but its the practice that makes perfect I always say.

Below is a picture of my current Cisco Lab Topology for those that are curious:

Key:

1) the dotted squares represent network boundaries or vlans

2) The red lines are the production/management vlans

3) the green lines are for iSCSI/vMotion/svMotion only traffic.

Welcome!

I figured since I like posting my labs and all I figured I’d make a blog for my VMware/Cisco/Microsoft Pursuit. – Right now the blog is being updated as I move along in my studies.

This is a work in progress. I’ll be adding content along the way.

-Trevor