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.

VCAP6-CMA Objective 6.2: Create and publish a service blueprint Part01

This objective has below tasks,

· Configure ASD to enable vRA / vRO communication
· Configure advanced endpoints in ASD to enable communication with AD
· Create and Publish a service blueprint
· Modify fields and field properties for Form Designer form

the first two tasks are already completed in the previous objective

· Configure ASD to enable vRA / vRO communication
· Configure advanced endpoints in ASD to enable communication with AD

· Create and Publish a service blueprint

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

2. Click on Add and navigate through the vCenter Orchestrator inventory to the Workflow which you wish to publish and click on next

3. It takes the name given on vCenter Orchestrator or you may change as needed and click Next.

4. Form could be customized here as needed just by dragging the items from the left.Click Next

5. Provisioned resource wouldn't be available unless the custom resource is created.  

6. Click on Add

7. Service Blueprint is created but it is still in draft mode.

8. Highlight the Blueprint and  click on publish. 

9. Go to Administration > Catalog Management > Catalog Items, there you would see the newly created Service Blueprint.

10. Make this part of Service and add Entitlements to add this service as Catalog Item.

VCAP6-CMA Objective 6.1: Configure advanced endpoints in ASD (vCenter, AD, SOAP, REST, PowerShell) part03

This is the last part of this Objective on

Configure advanced endpoints in ASD (vCenter, AD, SOAP, REST, PowerShell)

vCenter

1. Login to vRA and go to Administration > Orchestration Configuration > Endpoints

2. Click on Add and select vCenter Server from the Plugin drop-down and click  Next

3. Give a name to vCenter and click on Next

4a. Instance Properties: Enter the IP or FQDN of vCenter and click onNext

4b. Connection Properties: Enter username and password 

5. Click on Add

AD

1. Click on Add and Select Active Directory from the plugin drop-down and click on Next

2. Give a name and click on Next

3. Enter the details as per the screenshot 

4. Click on Add

SOAP

1. Click on Add and Select SOAP from the plugin drop-down and click Next

2. Give a name and click on next

3. SOAP Host: I am using developer instance of ServiceNow for this purpose. Enter the name, WSDL url and click on Next

4. Host Authentication: Select Basic for Authentication type and enter the Administrator user of ServiceNow.

5. Click on Add

REST

1. Click on Add and Select HTTP-REST from the plugin drop-down and click Next.

2. Give a name and click on Next

3. REST Host: I adding NSX Manager as REST host here, Enter the Name and URL

4. Host Authentication: Select Basic for Authentication type and enter the Admin credentials for NSX Manager

5. Click on Add

PowerShell

1. Click on Add and Select PowerShell from the plugin drop-down and click Next.

2. Give a name and click on Next

There are two option, Basic & Kerberos. Kerberos needs WinRM configuration on Host and vCO. For this purpose, I am setting up Basic.

3. Select WinRM, HTTP, Basic for PowerShell host type, Transport protocol, Authentication respectively, and enter the Host/IP & credentials.

4. Click on Add

VCAP6-CMA Objective 6.1: Configure Advanced Service Designer Part02

In this part, I will continue with next tasks of the main objective

· Configure an external vRO server to run workflows

· Create a vCO endpoint to enable vRA to communicate with an external vRO server

· Configure an external vRO server to run workflows

1. Login to vRA and go to Administration > Orchestration Configuration > Server Configuration

2. Select the radio button option for "Use an External Orchestrator Server"

3. Update the vCenter Orchestrator information as per the screenshot and click on Test Connection. You should see "Successfully connected to the Orchestrator Server" then click on Update.

· Create a vCO endpoint to enable vRA to communicate with an external vRO server

1. Login to vRA and go to Infrastructure > Endpoints > Endpoints

2. Create the Credentials for external vCO by going to Credentials. Click on New Credentials and update the name, username and password. Click on green check to save the settings.

3. Click on New Endpoint > Orchestration > vCenter Orchestrator

4. Enter the name, address (add the port 8281/vco), add the credentials, Add the new property "VMware.VCenterOrchestrator.Priority" and set the value to 1 or higher which represents priority. Click on OK to save the settings.

5. This completes the additional of vCenter Orchestrator as Endpoint to vRA. You may perform the data collection to make sure vRA is communicating with external vCO. Hover the mouse on the newly added external vCO Endpoint and select Data Collection and click on Start.

6. Click on Refresh and make sure Data Collection succeeded.