Showing posts with label beginner. Show all posts
Showing posts with label beginner. Show all posts

Thursday, March 2, 2017

A "Thank You" post - passed the VCP-NV 2V0-642! A look back

Wow, what a ride it has been.

This blog, from the beginning, has been dedicated to helping a current VMware admin who works in DataCenter Virtualization, to get accustomed with network virtualization, and a big thing for me has been pointing out free resources and opportunities to get the equivalent certs and training that this VMware administrator had to take. So I made posts like:



I was able to talk from this point of view, since that was exactly me! The more I learned about NSX, and the more I looked for information, the more resources I found from amazing people who give a lot back for free. 

I'm also very proud to have been selected vExpertNSX in 2016. This was because I shared my enthusiasm for NSX with my VMUGparticipated in SocialLabsvBrownBag and the large latin community. There are many, many, many others that are ahead, technically, over me - this has always been the case in many things - but I decided that I would do my part in letting people know this is the next big thing. If anything, what I want people to feel is a sense of excitement of what's possible, that wasn't possible before!

I decided my first big milestone would be getting the VCP6-NV certification. You may remember from this post that the VCP6.2 NV beta dates coincided with Elver Sena's book release during VMworld (where I actually met him, and got my signed copy!). Meeting Elver was super cool (we got an interview in Spanish done), and having his book, plus the accessible cost of the exam, made me take the plunge, and I got the happy news today that I passed! I wholeheartedly recommend getting the premium edition from Pearson, as those 4 practice exams have lots of questions that I feel helped me a lot!




I think there is a lot more to come for NSX, much more than what we have already seen. I highlighted it is a unique product that offers capabilities no other product can match, especially in security. Likewise, it requires some skills, and busting silos inside companies. I even have some ideas for what will come in the future, when NSX will simply be able to handle all IT assets in the company, starting with IPAM. I know now its next step is that it will be able to handle all IT assets, being the one glue for real visibility and automation, on premises and in the cloud.

My next milestone> I'm looking forward to more experience with NSX (vExperts have both NSX and vRealize Network Insight licenses for homelab use, while vExpertNSX's have had it for a little more time than that) and taking on the VCAP6-NV exam. I already have some great vCommunity resources lined up from Gabriel Maciel and Clinton Prentice and Iwan Hoogendoorn. I just wish I had some real networking switches to play with, but I hear Tim Davis, the official Face of #vExpertNSX, may find some cheap for my homelab - and with a little work, we can make some cool blog posts!

If anything in this blog post, I want you to Get excited about NSX, and do something about it. Go for that first cert, push for a POC or some licenses in your company, and play with it. Dive deep. I guarantee you that it is time well spent, and may I hear about your success soon!

PD, if anyone is still thinking you can't download NSX, I would like to remind you that you can; because it's the only supported upgrade of VCNS, almost all paying customers can access the bits, and this has been the case since NSX 6.2.3. The documentation is public, you can play all day in the HOLs, and everything you need to "hop on" is available. 

Friday, June 17, 2016

NSX 6.2.3 and some exciting news for current customers with access to vShield

NSX 6.2.3 was released June 9. It's really an important release, although not a major one. I think a lot of the features are being added in response to actual customers hitting deployment limitations that no one had bothered to finish implementing. You can check the full release here

Some of the more important updates were:

  • Change in the VXLAN UDP port from 8472 to 4789
  • Hardware VTEP
  • Lots of UI & management enhancements
  • Log Insight for NSX now available

However, there is one big consequence that ended being quite the nice surprise.

Change in default license & evaluation key distribution: default license upon install is "NSX for vShield Endpoint", which enables use of NSX for deploying and managing vShield Endpoint for anti-virus offload capability only. Evaluation license keys can be requested through VMware sales.

What this means is huge. If you had vShield in your organization, the upgrade path is NSX. Since you had access to vShield before, you get access to NSX now.

Note: vShield isn't a high requirement. vShield Endpoint is part of Essentials Plus and up. Most enterprise vSphere customers will now see the NSX 6.2.3 download available if they look for the vSphere binaries, even if they choose version v5.5 (that is still the minimum, but please install the latest for your labs)



With this, the "floodgates" have opened and much more people have access to the NSX bits. You still need a real license to play with all the features, but at least the NSX OVA is in your hands and you can start deploying it and learning.

One can expect to see more NSX content out there, and also, I would think a lot of content and community presentations for people upgrading from vShield to this new NSX level.

I think VMware has released this at a good time and hopefully soon I'll add my grain of salt and help everyone that came from being a vSphere admin in learning NSX.

Friday, May 20, 2016

NSX Socialab NYC 05-2016

This was a cool session. I was able to see Prabhu Barathi and Mike Fortuna (sorry, no twitter, please remind him about that) again after seeing them in the last VMUG and meet other VMware administrators who were eager to learn about NSX. I also got to meet Julie Starr, who is a firewall specialist inside the NSX team (I put some of her blog posts here).

The dynamics consisted of VMware employees giving you a more technical presentation than you would get at a VMUG, with people testing out the homelabs, and basically answering every question that came up. This is actually very important, because the people that showed up (over 100 signed up, we had three simultaneous classes on this date) have different backgrounds: from CCIE or firewall specialists with no VMware experience, to students that are just learning about VMware. The work of teaching and explaining about NSX is quite difficult since it encompasses so many skills until you get the "aha" moment.

The website that features the Hands On Labs is web.hol.vmware.com/socialabs . You can create an account and possibly also have these HOLs count for cloudcredibility.com (this is a great list of all the NSX tasks https://www.cloudcredibility.com/nsx/tasks/list ).

Some excellent tips for the labs:

1) Increase the Hands on Labs VM resolution. By default it's not set to the maximum!




2) Use the "More Options" on the Manual and select Split Screen



Tell it to send the manual link to your e-mail. This is a special link that gives you the manual in full screen (without the whole HOL)




3) HOL documentation in PDF and HTML format is also available at docs.hol.vmware.com


Tuesday, May 17, 2016

Como le explicaria NSX a un colega en 10 minutos

I just came back from manning the Q&A interface on the Mission VMUG event. I was able to translate my VMUG presentation into Spanish and join other 5 friends . I'm switching to Spanish now

Hola amigos de Latinoamérica! Fue un honor participar en las sesiones de comunidad de este evento. Fue muy divertido ponernos de acuerdo entre todos para asegurarnos q esta oportunidad de presentar en un evento global de VMUG en espanol! 


Grabe dos sesiones "Como le explicaria NSX a un colega en 10 minutos" y "¡Entra en la comunidad virtual!". Aqui dejo las presentaciones para que puedan aprovechar los links :)

Aqui están los twitter handles de todos los presentadores en Espanol: