Fri
Feb
3
Earlier this evening while playing “Go to sleep daddy so I can stick my finger up your nose” with my 2yo I received my invitation to sit the VCAP5-DCD. Needless to say I’m exhausted from thinking about certification exams but I’m going to give it a go before the deadline of March 2. Definitely looking forward to getting it out of the way and seeing what VMware is offering up with the new version.
I do want to mention a something that I am a little “meh” about.
This is coming really late with respect to the required VCP4 to VCP5 upgrade requirement without coursework. I would have really liked to have seen VMware release VCAP5’s with some overlap. Why? Because I’d love to upgrade my VCAPs and have my VCP upgrade as well. Call me silly but I’m pretty sure if you’re taking a VCAP then the VCP isn’t supposed to be a challenge and then becomes just another couple hundred bucks and many hours down the drain.
Update: Upon further reflection the fact that I was invited without having my VCP5 yet gives me hope. In fact it does state in the blueprint that for a period of time there is no requirements for upgrade.
My complaint is that there is no overlap or announcement about the potential of this being the case. My disappointment is that now many folks eligible for VCAP5-DCD are already having to worry about VCP5 upgrade if they haven’t done it already (and haven’t taken “What’s New” - which fortunately I got an opportunity to take)
This is my first beta exam opportunity and I plan on taking it, and hopefully passing. As such I’m going to ditch my VCP5 exam attempt next week and just work on this exam. I would love to not have to worry about the VCP5 at all and give my poor brain a rest, but I’ll do what I have to do. I wish the other beta invitees the best on this and the VCP5 if you haven’t taken it already.
Update: Started looking at the blueprint and this one is going to be another excellent challenge. Well done VMware team!
Well, time to get to reading. I need to make sure I know how to design with all of these amazing new features! Thanks for reading!
Thu
Feb
2
Hi Scripters! I got excellent news today! Over the last couple of weeks I’ve been doing a great deal of work with the Cisco UCSPowerTool which provides PowerShell functionality for managing your Cisco UCS server environment. I began using this tool last summer with a simple 149 cmdlets. It provided some functionality but left entirely too much requiring XML calls. The latest beta release, v0.9.6.0, is now available with over 1400 cmdlets!!
I will be doing quite a bit of work with this tool over the coming months and plan to post scripts that we find useful. Now that this later release is now available all scripts I write will run on this version until further notice.
I have seen some extremely amazing things available through this tool so make sure you read the Getting Started Guide and stay tuned here for more scripts and resources.
You can download the UCSPowerTool and Getting Started guide from
http://developer.cisco.com/web/unifiedcomputing/microsoft
This requires a Cisco Developer Network login to download.
May the -force be with you!
Mon
Jan
30
I saw recently posted on Twitter that VMware will be releasing a vCloud Director certification. http://blogs.vmware.com/vsphere/2012/01/vcloud-director-certification.html
Initial comments seemed to be mixed, including a comment about how this seemed pointless. I do not wholly disagree with this sentiment but my bet is that this is going to be part of a much bigger picture. I anticipate that this certification is going to be a valuable step towards the next level of VCDX defense. I recall hearing rumor at some point that future VCDX submissions will require addressing cloud design and technologies. I do not have direct evidence to support this mind you.
If this is the case then I definitely welcome a vCloud Director certification. If not then I question the reader…Will this have value? Interested in your feedback as well as future information released from VMware.
Note: I get the impression that more certification news may be forthcoming from VMware during PEX next month. I hope this is the case as I’m needing to figure out what my VCDX track may look like later this year! I’ll try to make sure to post something once this information has been released. Thanks for reading!
Being a SafariBooksOnline subscriber was a tough choice for me initially even though it was part of my desire to go all digital as I describe in a previous post. My primary hesitation was whether or not I’d actually use it enough to justify the cost. Well, I’m several months in and I’d say that I definitely got my money’s worth so far just in the amount of resources that were readily available to me on my iPad and PC while preparing for the VCAPs and now the VCP5.
One key book for me was access to Scott Lowe’s Mastering vSphere 5 book. I’ll be purchasing this one with tokens once it is released to do so but in the mean time it’s been another example of Scott’s excellent work. While perusing for new releases I happened by one that I had never expected: VMware Press’s rough cut for The Official VCP 5 Certification Guide by Bill Ferguson. This is the first book that I can think of that is officially sanctioned by VMware as a certification preparation material and I am ALL for it!
I immediately added it to my Virtualization folder and loaded it up on the iPad (my Safari reader of choice). I was instantly engaged when I saw the “Do I Know This Already?” quizzes at the beginning of each section. One of my biggest challenges in exam prep is studying. In the past I have almost solely relied on sheer experience (which has served me well) but the VCP5 involves a ton of tech new to me. The question seem to resemble what I would expect from the actual course (though perhaps easier). After jotting down my answers for the first section imagine my surprise when I didn’t find any answers!!!!! Now how do I know if I need to read this section!?!
No worries, this is a rough cut so I’m not going to be upset about this at all. I’m sure Appendix A will show up eventually! :) I will be politely requesting from VMware Press to release Appendix A answers for the chapters provided in the Rough Cut.
Content
The book in many ways feels much like most study aids I’ve seen except much easier to read and follow. Also it feels much more personal, including part about exposed “license key” in one of the sections being WAY expired. :) As I’ve continued reading I’ve found a variety of useful tidbits that have filled in small gaps in my knowledge of vSphere 5 as well as provide something I expect will show up on the exam.
There were several times while reading that I felt the content jumped around. At first this bothered be a fair bit until the author makes note that he is more or less following the blueprint provided by VMware for the certification exam. Once that was mentioned I found the shifts a little less disruptive since my expectation had changed, but not ideal as a cover to cover read. I wouldn’t suggest making any changes to this format however because I think the real value here is that you can quickly locate the necessary content for a specific objective on the blueprint without a great deal of effort.
Another facet of this book I really liked were the figures. The images were well chosen in most cases and provide quick glimpse into where to locate information in the vSphere client or elsewhere in the environment. One of my favorite figures was the one illustrating different cloud services. Well done folks!
I’m not going to go deeper on content in this post since this is a Rough Cut and I want to show true deference to the author and publisher in their efforts. I can see that this book is going to be an excellent resource for those preparing for the VCP5. Now if only it were done before next week when I take mine!
Thu
Jan
26
One of my favorite parts of my job is the regular need to gather and conform data. Actually it can be a real pain sometimes but it’s usually an interesting challenge. I came across this issue several months ago when trying to generate a function that would format the data output so that it could be imported into another tool. I can’t go into specifics about this but I can highlight something really cool I learned.
The data output needed to be in tab delimited format. Clearly this is a common form since it is the default option when importing data into Excel.
Unfortunately I did not see an Export-TSV cmdlet so I poked around at how I might go about creating this output. Thankfully I ran Get-Help against Export-CSV and lo and behold!
But wait! There’s a stipulation!
So it appears that a character is required in order to use a specialized delimiter! Well that makes since but how am I supposed to use a tab then? I pulled out my handy sonic screwdriver and pointed it at the internet. It grabbed a list of the special characters recognized by PowerShell. [Note: I wish I did have a sonic screwdriver.]
The following special characters are recognized by Windows PowerShell:
`0 Null
`a Alert
`b Backspace
`f Form feed
`n New line
`r Carriage return
`t Horizontal tab
`v Vertical tab
These characters are case-sensitive.
from <http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd347558.aspx>
Looks like `t is the one I’m looking for so I plugged it into a test one-liner for validation.
Get-Process | Export-Csv -Delimiter “`t” -Path “C:\Temp\TabTest.txt” -NoTypeInformation
Worked like a charm. We’ve since used that function for many things in order to grab information and pull it into our application. Now our PowerShell/PowerCLI scripting initiatives fall right in line with existing tools and has made adoption that much easier! I think I would have made PowerCLI Man proud!
Wed
Jan
25
The popularity and fun I’ve been having with creating pseudo #powershell scripts has started to spread. Not only am I writing more of them every day but I’m seeing many others as well. Recently Cody Bunch and I spat a few back and forth and it looks like we’ve settled on the Twitter hashtag of #PoshFun for these little scripts. I figured I might as well post some of the more recent ones. I have a feeling I’ll be doing this periodically. Since I want there to be a “learning” element to this I’ll try to find clever ways of demonstrating PowerShell functionality when I am able. In the end I’m going to go where geek culture and humor take me. I invite you to join in! Post your #PoshFun in the comments and on twitter with the #PoshFun hashtag!
————————————————————-
Get-Rings | where{$_.rule -eq “all” -and $_.findthem -eq $true} | Bring-All | Bind-All -destination “Darkness”
————————————————————-
$thelove = (get-feeling).type
————————————————————-
Get-Dork | where{$_.name -match “Josh”}
Courtesy of my wife :)
————————————————————-
Get-Jungle “The” | Write-Host “Welcome to $_”
————————————————————-
Hey-Sister -Size “Little” | Get-One “Want” | Hey-Sister -Size “Little” | Write-Host “Shot gun!”
————————————————————-
Get-Restaurant -Location (Get-Universe -Location “End”)
————————————————————-
#BrownBag #PoshFun
if ( $vcp -ne 5) { Get-BrownBag -location “http://bit.ly/z3ugke” -time “7PM CST”}
From Cody Bunch
————————————————————-
$timetilbrownbag = (Get-Date “1/26/2012 1am”) - (Get-Date).ToUniversalTime()
Tue
Jan
24
If you’ve been managing a virtual environment for any period of time you’ve probably received this email:
Josh,
Next week we plan to do an upgrade for XXX application and would like a clone of the following servers to kick off the upgrade window.
- bigapp-db
- bigapp-web01
- bigapp-web02
- bigapp-web03
- bigapp-file01
- bigapp-…01
- bigapp-…09
KThanksBye
Person
I recently got this request for a large application group and decided to write a PowerCLI function that could take that list and make clones dynamically. This function works for both live and cold clones.
Check out my doc on the VMware community forum and to download the script.
http://communities.vmware.com/docs/DOC-18155
Thanks. May the -force be with you!
It’s that time of year again. Election time. No, not for POTUS, but for vSphere-Land’s vLaunchPad top Blog award! I have to say that the work that Eric Siebert does every year to update and maintain the vLaunchPad is tremendous. He certainly deserves a great deal of appreciation for his work. The usefulness and quality of content is precisely the reason why I have kept it as my browser home screen for several years. OK, here’s the link before I start rambling. :)
http://vsphere-land.com/news/voting-now-open-for-the-top-vmware-virtualization-blogs.html
Note: Please feel free to continue reading after the image.
Thoughts from Josh
This year is quite different for me since I have a blog that is considered for voting. During my voting I had an impossible time picking 10 top blogs to be considered for the top 25. It is an amazingly daunting task given the number of strong blogs out there with amazing contributors. I can’t lie, this year I voted for someone other than Duncan for the #1 spot but as I always say “I can always count on two people thinking what I do is excellent…me and my mom.” In truth I feel that my choice was appropriate since while I have learned so much from so many on the list, my own experience blogging over the last year has driven me to learn more, share more, think more, and do more.
I am certainly not expecting anyone other than me (or mom…meh, not likely) to choose my blog as one of their ten. I would love, however, to be considered for one of the categories that I’m eligible for: New Blogger and Scripting. Even with those categories there are some amazing contributors…shucks I just like being part of the community!
Please do take a moment and cast your votes. The folks listed in this “election” are extremely hardworking individuals who expend a great deal of time, energy, and resources in order to share their knowledge and experience with others. I know this now more than I ever did before. Seriously, some of these folks are just flat out amazing. Thanks for reading. Go Vote! http://vote.vsphere-land.com/
P.S. This year TrainSignal is giving away some of their vSphere 5 and VMware View training courses to random voters.
Fri
Jan
20
It’s become a little joy of mine to make up funny cmdlets. These are not actual scripts that you can run but mainly a demonstration of ways you can describe the world with PowerShell
Get-DeathStar | Get-Target -Type “ExhaustVent” | Where{$_.Size -like “WompRat”} | Set-Fire -Type “NotImpossible”
Another new classic.
$search = Get-Droids | Where{$_ -notnear $jedi} ` If($search -eq $null){Move-Along}
Sometimes when I write #PowerShell, I use the -force
P.S.
I would also like to share a little script I found today and inspired me to publish these one-liners today. Thanks for the contribution Zach (@WIDBA)!
http://widba.blogspot.com/2011/09/quoting-star-wars-out-loud-on-your-pc.html
