Tech freebies by Neil Anderson: Cisco CCNA Lab Guide, Cloud Computing, Storage courses and more

Few days back one of my Senior Manager whom I was reporting a year back, reached out to me and wanted to learn the concepts of Cloud Computing. I was happy that I am recognized as reliable resource to reach and someone wanted me to mentor them. I started white boarding with Datacenter Virtualization concepts and then slowly on the Cloud concepts. White Board sessions were a good start for her but needed syllabus to continue the learning. I remembered Neil's email about his new free course about "

A Practical Introduction to Cloud Computing course and that made my job easy. I shared that link with my Senior Manager for further guided training.

 Today I’m checking out the free Cisco CCNA Lab Guide by Neil Anderson – a comprehensive set of hands on lab exercises covering configuration of Cisco routers and switches.

If you’re interested in attaining the Cisco Certified Network Associate CCNA certification, then the Lab Guide is the perfect companion to help you get there and pass your 200-125 exam. It’s also a good guide if you are just interested in finding out how this stuff works in the real world – whether you want to take the exam or not.

The 350 page guide takes you through complete lab exercises to successfully put into practice the required routing and switching theory you need to know for the exam. If you’re looking for a free resource to get you there instead of paying up front for training – this is the book for you.

Have a read through this book, go through the exercises and test yourself to see whether you know the material covered before you take the exam.

The book is written by Neil Anderson, an experienced network engineer and instructor. Neil is not only a training provider but also firm believer in lifelong learning, which shows through this book. You can check out his blog at www.flackbox.com

Other free resources from Neil's repository are:

How to Build a NetApp ONTAP 9 Lab for Free

Introduction to SAN and NAS Storage course

A Practical Introduction to Cloud Computing course

I wish all a happy learning!!!

How Did My November Go with vDM30in30

I always end up doing things at the last minute and most of the times I complete it. vDM30in30 was announced during September end and I decided to participate this year and I had good 1 month time to work on blogs and schedule it for November month but couldn't write a single post to November in advance. When November started, every day I started spending 1-2 hours to prepare contents for each blog post. I picked up preparing the Study Guide for VCAP6-CMA which I was planning from the a long time. Thanks again vDM team for giving me this start.

New Blog Every Day

Following the Blueprint for VCAP6-CMA was easy for me as the topics were in sequence and fortunately my lab was still running on vRA 6.2 version. Somedays it was a great challenge to write a post after having a long day at the office. I still remember the day when I traveled to Dubai from Bangalore for my New Cloud project and I was still pending on that day's post. I was almost fallen asleep while writing the post. I saw so many people participating this time and sharing amazing contents. All thanks to vDM Team for vDM30in30 and bringing the community together to participate and share so much information on all topics.

vCAP6-CMA (Beta) Results

I had appeared for VCAP6-CMA  (Beta) exam and had exactly started preparing 10 days before the last day of the Beta exam (Sept 03). On November 23rd I received an email stating my VCAP6-CMA Beta exam results were uploaded in Certification Manager, I quickly logged in and saw I had Failed. I didn't get any scorecard or score, so not sure how much I scored. It was quite upsetting but I knew I had done some mistakes especially spending 40 mins on the first question. Below are some tips for everyone who are preparing for this exam

1. There are 32 questions, do not spend much time on a single question. You may come back anytime during the exam to resume on the previous question.

2. Some questions are dependent on previous questions, so it is key to complete those questions even if you have to spend little more time. If you are on question #7, then have  a glance at question # 8 and 9 and come back to question #7 just to see if it is worth spending more time if you are struck with something. There are some easy questions here are there which can be completed in very short time, so it is ok to risk some extra time which has dependent questions.

3. Some question have configurations which might take some time to take effect so do not wait refreshing the page or re-running the configuration again. If you are confident about the configuration then proceed with the next question and come back again to see if the chnages have taken effect.

4. Some question has something broken on purpose, you need to fix it and then complete the task.

5. Stick to Blueprint topics and set up your lab and practice the tasks.

6. 32 questions in that given time were just and the exam isn't that difficult. Keep Calm and practice hard in the lab. Time Management is the key.

7. I had an issue where the backspace key was not working, which is very annoying while you are working on command line especially. On the browser, just highlight the whole word and press the delete key instead of backspace.

I will appear again and make sure I wouldn't repeat the same mistake again.

What Next

i Exam was released on November 03, so far I have completed 60-65% of the whole Blueprint for VCAP6-CMA Exam. I will continue writing blog posts on the pending topics but not each post every day. Also, I need to arrange all post in proper sequence and make the main blueprint with hyperlinks to all objectives. Below is the draft so far

Draft-01: vCAP6-CMA Study Guide

More information about Exam here 

I have a long weekend in Dubai as its National Day and there is so much to do in Dubai. I enjoyed posting every day and remember Virtual Design Master team always rocks. Thanks, Eric Wright for your contribution to the community. You are a community Hero!!! #Respect

VCAP6-CMA Objective 6.2: Service Blueprint - Modify fields and field properties Part02

Part02 covers the last task of the Objective 6.2

· Modify fields and field properties for Form Designer

1. Login to vRA and go to Advanced Services > Service Blueprints.

2. We can modify any existing published Service Blueprint or add a new Service Blueprint. For this task lets add a new Service Blueprint. Click on Add and navigate the Orchestrator inventory to your workflow. I am adding out of the box workflow for "creating a user with password in an OU" provided with MS AD plugin. Make sure you have already added AD plugin

Highlight the Workflow and click next

3. Modify the Name and description as needed and click Next

4a. On this page, you have all the field already on Workflow and one Left panel is the list of New field which could be added if appropriate

4b. Hover the mouse on any field, you would see edit and delete option. Use the red cross delete that field.

4c. Click on Edit to modify the field. Here you can modify the type from search to navigation tree or list or so on. Also is the field size can be increased. 

4d. Define default values: Click on Constraints tab where you can whether the field would have a default value, whether to hide this field from requested with the default value defined. Or you may just call an action from vCO by the selecting the External option from the dropdown.

4e. New Fields: To add new field just drag and drop fields from the left panel. Lets you need to just some description or disclaimer to the request. Drag and drop the Text field which is under Form. Add the required Text.

Add other field and define its type from the drop-down

4f. Add a new Page: Click on Green Plus to form page to add a new page and add new field as appropriate.

4g. Screen Type: Click on edit next to Form. You may also edit the screen type in Request Form. if you choose Catalog Item details or Submitted request details, you would not get to see the request form while requesting this service.  It should be always set to Request Form.

Click Next when finished

5. Provisioning Resources are only available when suitable Custom Resources are defined. Click Add.

6. Publish the new Service and update Entitlement publish this as catalog item.