(Part 2) Top products from r/vmware

I would recommend switching from SATA disks to NL-SAS disks as soon as you can - SATA disks have a queue depth of 32, whereas NL-SAS disks have a queue depth of 254.

You'd be surprised how inexpensive nice NL-SAS drives are these days: http://amzn.com/B00AA76GQU?tag=amz-link-20 (I use these and they work great)

I had the "VSAN Nightmare" due to using SATA magnetic disks and a low queue depth, and after moving to a RAID controller with queue depth of 1024 and NL-SAS disks the performance has been fine. You can learn more about the queue depth here: http://www.yellow-bricks.com/2014/06/09/queue-depth-matters/

Luckily your RAID card is fine but I honestly wouldn't trust a production VSAN cluster to SATA disks based on my experience


My environment now is 8x Dell R720xd with 3 disk groups each - 1x 200gb Intel DC S3700 SSD and 3x Seagate ST2000NM0023 2tb 7.2k NL-SAS, behind H710P controller. Machines are connected to 10gbe network physically isolated just for VSAN use.


I had tried at first to screw around with policies in terms of # of disk stripes per object, but ultimately noticed almost no real-world difference in VM performance. After picking up the VSAN book that was recently released, it said effectively, don't screw with the # of disk stripes setting. The only time that changing that policy setting would improve performance (per the book) is if you have a huge amount of read IO to the point that you are outstripping the read cache on the SSD and reads are coming from disk. This doesn't apply to my environment so I ended up going back to just a "1x FTT, 1x stripe" policy as my default (matching the "unassigned" policy default which you shouldn't use), and then a "2x FTT, 1x stripe" for really important stuff.

Truthfully don't have a lot of time for benchmarks these days and our environment is heavily production so I try not to look at it the wrong way; I think in reality, as long as you have properly set up network, good RAID card, fast SSD's, and SAS magnetic disks, you will effectively be playing in SSD cache most of the time and there isn't much more you can do to tweak it.

VSAN is pretty low on customization options, really the ONLY thing you can do is fiddle with the policies, but the experts basically say "dont touch them" and that seems to work for me

Thanks. I appreciate that. I find the vmware site to be a behemoth. The designers could benefit from reading Don't Make Me Think.

Or maybe it's just me.

I liked these books:

• Mastering vSphere
  
• vSphere Instant Reference
  
• vSphere Quick Start Guide
  
• vSphere Implementation
  
  Some of those are more quick reference style, I guess it all depends on what you are trying to learn. It might not be a bad idea to print out the Basic System Administration guide and the Resource Management guide from the docs and read those as well.
  
  Edit: Clarity.

Managing and Optimizing VMware VSphere Deployments: Lessons Learned on the Virtualization Journey (IT Best Practices)

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Managing-Optimizing-VMware-VSphere-Deployments/dp/0321820479

VMware vSphere 4.1 HA and DRS Technical deepdive is a technical but very nice read!

My VCP class was pretty sparse as well.

Word of warning: it gave you a basic overview but it did NOT prepare you for the exam. I took the class, studied for six months, built an infrastructure at work with shared storage etc, and still failed the test two weeks ago (albeit by a small margin).

That doesn't mean it's not doable, you're on the right track for sure.

You will want these two books as well.

This is indispensable: http://www.amazon.com/Mastering-VMware-vSphere-Scott-Lowe/dp/1118661141/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1406551332&sr=8-1&keywords=vmware

And this is great for practice and covering exam topics (This version for 5.5 will be released Aug 24 - I'm using the 5.1 book as I'm going for the VCP5.1): http://www.amazon.com/VCP5-DCV-Official-Certification-Covering-VCP550/dp/078975374X/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&qid=1406551332&sr=8-7&keywords=vmware

Links for anyone looking to purchase a copy of these books

 

Mastering VMware vSphere 5.5
Amazon |
Barnes and Noble |
Google Play |
iTunes |
O'Reilly |
Wiley

Mastering VMware vSphere 6
Amazon |
Barnes and Noble |
Google Play |
iTunes |
O'Reilly |
Wiley

 

Happy VMing!

VCP is in 3 parts.

See https://www.vmware.com/education-services/certification.html

First: get VCA which is free and online

Second: do VCP Foundations where the course materials are on Kindle and also in tree form. Exam is open-book and online but costs money

Third: VCP is gained by doing a recognized VCP course such as Install Configure Manage (ICM) which is not free and the exam is done at a Person VUE testing center (also not free)

See https://mylearn.vmware.com/portals/www/search/results.cfm?ui=www_edu&menu=search-results&searchtype=simple&category=schedule&id_subject=84058&filters=countryID&countryID=2&autofilters=countryID for schedules in the UK

​

HTH!

Purchase copies of both the Clustering Deep Dive and Host Resources Deep Dive books. You can also find digital copies from Rubrik for free at the following:

​

https://pages.rubrik.com/host-resources-deep-dive_request.html

https://pages.rubrik.com/clustering-deep-dive-ebook.html

​

If you're going to run vSAN there is also a vSAN Deep Dive book available.

​

Home, Licensing in your vSphere client will tell you what license type is applied if you're using vCenter.

Otherwise, if it's standalone, click on the host and go to the configuration tab, under "Software" and "Licensed Features".

I highly recommend the Sybex book by Brian Atkinson as well. You'll have to look to see if there's a newer version out.
http://www.amazon.com/VMware-Certified-Professional-vSphere-Study/dp/1118181123/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1395248631&sr=8-1&keywords=vcp+vmware+certified+professional+on+vsphere+5+study+guide

EDIT: I missed that you are on vSphere 4.1. Maybe this one?
http://www.amazon.com/VMware-Certified-Professional-vSphere-Study/dp/0470569611/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1395248693&sr=8-2&keywords=vcp+vmware+certified+professional+on+vsphere+4+study+guide

Thanks! And it's the CASP study guide by sybex

Pretty disappointing, I've found several more typos/mistakes (minor).

Ahh I see that you are not familiar with Google, please see reference to an amazing book that can assist you with your troubles.

http://www.amazon.com/Google-For-Dummies-Computers/dp/0764544209

Here is a good book that explains basic storage concepts. It covers EMC's Information Storage and Management exam however it is largely hardware agnostic.

This might help:

VMware vSphere 6.7 Clustering Deep Dive https://www.amazon.com/dp/171982746X/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_w5.xDbBRNQYSZ

I'm curious if this new book will have the 5.5 material.
http://www.amazon.com/VCAP5-DCA-Official-Cert-Guide-Administration/dp/0789753235/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1396896455&sr=8-1&keywords=vcap-dca

VMware Horizon Suite: Building End-User Services (VMware Press Technology) https://www.amazon.com/dp/0133479080/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_0FSDybG5Q47FQ

I've used VMware since v3.5 so lots of hands on experience to draw from, VMware's vcp6 practice exam, some vcp6 flashcards on the app Quizlet, some http://www.elasticsky.co.uk/ practice tests, and reading this book https://www.amazon.com/VCP6-DCV-Certified-Professional-Data-Virtualization-vSphere/dp/1119214696

No. This is for the VCP-DCV (VCP550) exam. If you are wanting to study for the VCP-Cloud exam, I'd pick up a copy of the VCP-Cloud Offical Cert Guid by VMware Press.

You might want to also consider taking the VCA-Cloud exam to get familiar with the VMware Cloud products.