VMworld Day 1 Experience

Sorry for spelling errors and bad autocorrect. This has been written in the wordpress app.

There are plenty of blogs that cover the product announcements very well, so I am not hoping to cover that here. I want to recap my personal experience to hopefully track my growth in the community and hopefully making sure that I am not super awkward.

So I wake up at 5:54 and My first instinct is to check twitter. WTF, EVO RAIL was announced (saw article in New York Times) and in depth blogs from Julian Wood, Duncan Epping, Chris Wahl and others. I thought it was weird to pre-lease a product prior to the keynote, but it probably gave a nice bump on the stock exchanges.

I met up with coworkers for breakfast at Moscone West. Sausage croissant or ham croissant. OK food, and I’m cheap during VMworld so I am not paying.

We setup in the Hang Space to watch the keynote. Lots of places to sit this year, but the plastic chairs were hard and uncomfortable. Different vibe in the hang space this year, but a good one. I met Vmis33 and discoposse in person, which was nice but I think I was totally awkward.

I dropped by the cert lounge to check things out at say hi to Sostech_wp for his test track. It inspired me to take the vcap-dca. I think spent more than an hour in the expo, getting swag and also chatting with vmiss33 at the Netapp booth. Did a quick lunch with some coworkers and then headed to the exam center.

Now during the keynote and lunch I had a soda. I DO NOT recommend eating before this test. I regretted my liquid decisions after an hour. So the exam was really hard. It really exposes the lack of architecture knowledge I have. Even in my company, we may a few of these design choices a YEAR let alone 100 jn 4 hours. Multiple choice was hard but the drag and drop were tricky!!! Design wasn’t too bad but it’s really hard to know what exact elements to include. Read the design question carefully, it SHOULD tell you the requirements.

Also, even though you know something should be done a certain way doesn’t meet it’s part of the requirements.

In the end I was so fed up with the test that I finished early and I didn’t go back to review. Also my bladder was urging me to wrap it up. The screen told me right away that I failed with a 290.

Where did I go wrong?
The score report tells you where you missed at least one question. But apparently I missed one almost everywhere. The report is almost useless for me.

There was some stuff I just didn’t expect and was probably not familiar enough. I got stumped up on drag and drops and second guessed myself on some design questions.

I think I need to review the technology that I don’t touch everyday in my work
Environment. That is always hard to do when you are used to one way of doing it.

What helped:
The vbrownbag podcasts helped for some areas, but I think you need to take some of the talks and apply the concepts from those podcasts.

When do I go back for more punishment?
I have to wait two weeks to take it again. I’m on the fence on whether to schedule it soon or give it some time. One option is to take the 550. Less multiple choice, more design, less time. I think that’s kind of a cop out for me though, I want to finish what I started.

Overall impression:
My least favorite exam (esp since I failed!). As a sysadmin I RARELY use any of these skills. Even with my senior counterparts is it very rare to use these skills. Maybe it’s just my company? Any other large business develop these sort of skills in house? I’ll admit that we don’t so the best job of design and probably have flaws, but it kind of works. I think our design came from the vendor reference architecture. I could see how consultants would love and breathe this stuff. One thing I know for sure is that By going through this process I question our Design a lot more.

Edit: I was too drained talking about the test that I forgot to finish off day 1.

After the test I decompressed in the Hang Space, watched Sean Massey give a vBrownBag on Powershell with vCO I believe. I touched base with my colleagues and then went to the Chieftan for the Log Insight meet up. I met Steve Flanders and Bill Roth (Leila Tudury the PM is on Maternity leave) and a couple of beers with some Irish guy from a company called triangle. I was feeling pretty good, I actually think the Guiness started to sober me up.

The next event was the Giants game that was setup by our VMware account team. I was way too lazy to walk down to the park so I hailed my first Uber. I’m very satisfied by the service and that short ride was FREE because I had a pro code.

Giants game was pretty good, Bochy challenged a play at the plate and won, but they were losing around the 6th when I decided to pack it in. A long walk to Bart and hopped on the train.