After 3 days of an information overload, the final day started off with PowerCLI scripting with Alan Renouf and Luc Dekens showing new features when using PowerShell 3.0 and some example scripts showing what PowerCLI can do.
Some other tips that were very useful to me is knowing about the existence of the SDK Referance guide, which contains all information about commands inside PowerCLI. The other tip was that when using PowerGUI, you can easily find all extended properties using the Debug mode that will help you create even more advanced scripts.
After the sessions I was able to talk with Luc about the vCheck script I customized for multiple environments at my employer and ask how to improve it even further. When I get back coming week, I will try to make some time and post my improvements here for other people to use. Most of the improvements are applicable to environment-specific elements, but who knows; maybe it can still be used by others! =)
Next I went to the VCAP Datacenter Quickstart Session. This sessions is meant to prepare you for the VCAP Datacenter Administration and VCAP Datacenter Design and give you some pointers of what to do to prepare yourself like using the Exam Blueprint and some practical tips like study when you had enough sleep and to be on time at the exam to prevent stress.
The VCAP exams (Administration and Design) consist of live labs that you will be working with during your exam assignments. A (what I think) cool thing, is that the idea about using live labs is that you are actually working on a live environment. When you break your ESX host during the exam, it will be game over and you will fail the exam. If I recall correct, the Administration has 26 labs which you have to complete and afterwards you will hear if you passed or not. The Design exam is somewhat different, as you have to create diagrams in a Visio-like application where after it has to be reviewed by an examinator, which will take a while (approximately 2 weeks).
Finishing up with the quickstart session, I went to the Certification Lounge and did two labs that reflect the same kind of labs during the VCAP exam. These went well, so hopefully after (finally!) upgrading my VCP from 3.5 to 5.1 I will be allowed to do the VCAP exams.
I had 3 other sessions planned for today, but I went to the Solutions Exchange to have some conversations with HP, Cisco, VMware, Citrix, EMC and Mozy to get some information that might be of value in the environments I administer. The second reason for this is scoring goodies for my colleagues back in the Netherlands =)
At 16:00 I went to a session about vSphere replication with my colleagues and am very positive about this product! It’s free when you have a vSphere Essentials license and gives you the ability to replicate on VM-basis in a ROBO or backup site environment to make sure that during an outage, your VMs can be brought back online and ensure availability with a minimum downtime.
This will be my last blog about VMworld 2012 in Barcelona! I hope I was able to bring out the VMworld feeling to people reading my posts!
Thanks for reading and keep checking for new blog postings, as I will be filling it with tweaks, scripts, best practices and everything you can think of that can be of value when you are running into problems or setting up a new environment.
SnowVM 