Month May 2024

VMware Education and Communities Website Changes

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There has been some big changes in the past week with migrating various VMware websites to the Broadcom side. Let’s start off with education. There’s a new education portal called CertMetrics, which is where you can view your existing VMware certifications, schedule exams, and view previously taken trainings. The training history was originally not going to be migrated over so I am glad to see it was. VCP and VCAP certifications are now $250 each. My favorite change is that an official training class is no longer required to be certified. No more $4000+ week long class if you don’t want to do it. Now only passing the VCP exam will earn the cert. This is a huge cost savings and levels the playing field for new people to get into VMware products. Though, definitely worth taking a class if you have the opportunity. A couple of other changes to quickly mention: security advisories are now within the support portal and Flings are now accessible through the communities portal. By the way, if you are not thrilled like me to all of a sudden receive daily digest emails from Broadcom, you can unsubscribe from here.

Getting Pumped for VMware Explore 2024 Las Vegas

Brian Owen 1 Comment

VMware Explore Las Vegas | The Venetian | August 26-29, 2024
Agenda – vmware.com/explore/us/attend/agenda
Registration – vmware.com/explore/us
LinkedIn Group – linkedin.com/groups/2028037

VMware Explore 2024 Las Vegas is less than 4 months away and Barcelona is 6 months away. I will focus this article on the Las Vegas event and will write more articles when more details are announced. Registration recently went live and you can take advantage of the discounted event pass. You need to be registered for the event to be able to book the discounted rate of $169/night at the Venetian. You have until July 19th to get the discounted rate.

It’s too early to talk about the specifics of the event, but that will soon change as we get closer to August. In general, I am eager to see how the event will be with Broadcom. Cloud and private AI will surely be the focus of the event. I will spend a lot of time analyzing the breakout sessions when they are released.

My favorite area of Explore is always the expo area. Last year was packed with attendees. I hope there will be more companies in the expo this year because of the great turnout last year. As always, half off VCP and VCAP exams during the event. Even if you are not taking an exam, stop by the exam area. They usually give out certification pins. Instructor led hands on labs are back. These sessions are very useful if you think you may have questions. If you feel confident to do the lab with the provided instructions, you can save the time and do something else during the event. Then do the labs at home.

I highly recommend going to Explore this year. There is no better time to network with our peers. Being there in person always boosts my motivation when I return to work. Also, the event is a lot of fun with nonstop action.

Issue with vCenter Server Upgrade

Brian Owen Leave a comment

A friend of mine solved this issue and he said I could share it. It’s a quick solution that was tricky to find any documentation on resolving the issue. He had a vCenter upgrade that would not go past 50% on stage 2 of the upgrade. That’s the stage where the new vCenter is brought online and the data from the old vCenter is migrated to the new vCenter. Turned out to be a duplicate IP address between the old and new vCenters because the old vCenter wasn’t going down quick enough. Therefore, he went through the upgrade process again and disconnected the vNIC on the old vCenter when at 50% on stage 2. Then the upgrade successfully finished.