Category: Certification

VMware VCP-NV certification (VMware NSX-v)

VCP-NV  (VMware Certified Professional – Network Virtualization) certification. I did VCP-NV this month and here are my ‘few’ words about it based on my little knowledge 🙂 .

Just to recap.. VMware vSphere provides two virtual switches – standard vSwitch and vSphere Distributed Switch (VDS).   Standard vSwitch is created/managed at per host (ESXi host) level.  Distributed Switch is created at vCenter level and the same can be deployed to all the host(s) managed by the vCenter. It is like create once and deploy the same across all the hosts in the cluster. Distributed Switch needs Enterprise plus license and comes with lot more features than standard vSwitch.

Though there is already virtual switches present in the vSphere product, it does not provide actual/complete network virtualization. It is required to depend on the physical devices change  (For e.g. a new network (VLAN) is created). Also traffic between two networks needs to go to physical network and comes back to ESXi host even though both the networks are residing in the same ESXi host. There are many usecases like this.  There were missing items in VMware vSphere environment to fill in SDN/overlay technologies.

VMware did good decision, (I think so), to acquire Nicira and there comes network virtualization platform “VMware NSX“.   VMware NSX comes in two flavours NSX-v (for vSphere environment) and NSX-mh (for multihypervisor environment).  This certification covers only NSX-v.

I skipped VCA-NV and directly did VCP-NV as I have a valid Cisco certification currently (See Path 3 from VCP-NV certification page).

“Path 3: Valid CCNA Data Center or CCNA Routing & Switching or CCNP Data Center or CCNP Routing & Switching certification or CCIE Data Center or CCIE Routing & Switching. Note: This path is only available until January 31, 2016” – from VMware VCP-NV page

Here are some suggestions for exam preparation.

1. Take free self paced training from VMware about VMware Network Virtualization Fundamentals

2. Check out exam blueprint 

3. Understand VMware NSX from “VMware NSX Network Virtualization Design Guide” .  This guide contains everything you to know about NSX in general and pass the exam.

4. There are two courses available in Pluralsight.com  by Jason Nash about VMware NSX. You will find it very useful.

VMware NSX for vSphere Introduction and Installation by Jason Nash

VMware NSX for vSphere: Network Services by Jason Nash

If you are not ready to view the whole series, you can watch selected portions where you have confusions

( Pluralsight offers 10 free days (up to 200 minutes) to view their videos. )

5. Take a practice exam at VMware site and see how much you can score.

6. Makeuse of VMware Hands On Labs (HOL)

Image Courtesy: VMware (design guide) – Diagram explains the sequence of steps to prepare the NSX vSphere environment.

Hope you find this post useful!

 

CCNA and then JNCIA

It has been long time since I wrote certification exam. The last one I did was SCJP 1.4 (Java Certification in 2007).

My work is based on Network Management System (NMS), I was planning to give some network certifications for many years but could not do it due to work/family/masters degree commitments…

To start on this plan, I did CCNA R&S on February 2015 and JNCIA on April 2015.  Alhamdulillah.

Here are details about my JNCIA preparation which might help someone.

Take a look at Juniper Networks fast track certification program Click here

The syllabus of JNCIA (Junos) is not heavy as CCNA. JNCIA (Junos) is the first level certification and it is the Pre-requisite for all other Juniper Networks certifications.

JNCIA exam covers

  • Networking Basics – OSI, TCP/IP, Subnetting, etc..
  • Junos OS – You will love the beauty of Juniper Networks Junos OS CLI and its cool features!
  • Routing Fundamentals
  • Routing Policy
  • Firewall Filters – Like Access list in Cisco IOS

How did I prepare for this exam ?

#1) Take Juniper Networks Web Based Training (Free)

Networking Fundamentals – WBT  – It is worth taking this self paced training. It will help review the network fundamentals. Even if you are CCNA certificated, this training will help review basics.

Junos as a Second Language-WBT – Know the Junos OS CLI in this training.

#2) Day One guides

Juniper Networks provides great free Day One guides.  Below two guides will be useful for this course.

Day One: Exploring the Junos CLI

Day One: Junos for IOS Engineers – If you know Cisco IOS already, download this pdf.

#3) Free JNCIA Study Resources

Download the two small pdfs from fast track portal and understand the concepts.

JNCIA-Junos-P1_2012-12-19.pdf and JNCIA-Junos-P2_2012-12-20.pdf

#4) Take a practice exam at here

#5) Take pre-assessment exam to get exam discount (you will get 50% exam discount voucher).  You can take  pre-assessment exam as many as times you like.

#6) If you have Android/iPhone/iPad device, download Junos Genius App and practice the questions in it.

#7) If you find difficult to answer questions from any of the topics, then study those topics alone from old jncia study guide pdf.  I had difficulty in understanding Routing Policy, so I just study that chapter alone from this study guide.

You may need an account to download/view any of the above resources, so register for a login. It is again free :-).

Exam fee of JNCIA is 100$ and you will get 50% discount on successful pre-assesment exam. So fee will be 50$.

That’s it. You are good to go.  Book JNCIA exam and get JNCIA certified 🙂

Bonus Tips: If you need hands on experience in Junos device, you can download Juniper vSRX and deploy it in VMware ESXi/KVM.  Enjoy practicing Junos OS CLI!