Monday, May 25, 2009

VMWARE Project:

We are about to start a vmware project to completely separate vmware environment from all others. I want to note the time line and accomplishments of the project. We are looking at a possible server addition with disk. Once the project is approved I will start to post what's going on along with pictures from the project.

Current environment:
4 VM hosts with a 1 host lab server, and 3 hosts clustered servers.
Cluster consists of DRS, HA, VMOTION, and is currently attached to a SAN.
Currently 53 vm servers in the environment.




Possible SAN solutions for the new storage.
NetApp FAS3100 Series:
Very Powerful and feature packed
Very Good NAS Solution close to FC





EMC CLARIION CX4-120/240
Very Powerful with lots of I/O
Writes to large cache for better performance
Great SAN via Fiber Channel solution
Fiber Channel attached disks
Brocade FC Switches provide path redundancy
and fail over.


More to come:

Sunday, March 29, 2009

I passed the CCNA on my first try, 3 hours of studying every night for a month and a half paid off. Some of you may be wanting my Brain Dump, but I did sign an agreement stating I would not disclaim exact questions from the exam. What I can tell everyone is that you must know your ACL's, NAT, and subnetting. I was asked a hand full of router summerization questions, and also was required to do a NAT lab. While studying I did every NAT possible as many times as possible to the point I could do all my nat commands without using a ? during the command execution. I did the same thing on the test, and had my NAT lab done in about 30 seconds. ACLs where basicacly look at ACL's and come up with solutions to problems, and explain how adjust ACL's in order to solve those issues. There was a hand full of wifi questions also, and some frame relay. The truth is you need to get a book to study, I used the Sybex book for the 640-802 by Todd lammle, and I also got the CCNA flash cards. I highly recommend the flash cards, because it comes with a good test engine that is included with it. Some of the questions in the test eingine have incorrect answers, so if you get a question wrong that you thought was right, go research it. I would also say any question that you get right off of a good guess, go research it. For the CCNA you need to really know and understand everything, no guessing just knowing.

Good luck to anyone who is looking to take the Cisco 640-802 CCNA exam.

Friday, February 27, 2009

I am now getting ready for yet another exam and cert. I have gone as far as I can go with the linux certs, so I am switching over to the cisco certs. I will be starting with the CCNA which I am about to schedule for soon. I have read the entire todd lammle book for the CCNA, yes all 870 pages of it. I am doing a two week study cram with labs and exam sims to prepare for this test. If I pass, I plan on diving into the CCNP right away.

Here are my current certs.

CNA = Certified Novell Administrator
LTS = Linux Technical Specialist
CLA10 = Certified Linux Administrator
CLP9 = Certified Linux Professional "SLES9"
CLP10 = Certified Linux Professional "SLES10"
NCA-AS = Novell Certified Administrator - Enterprise Services on SLES10
NCA-ES = Novell Certified Engineer - Enterprise Services on SLES10
CLE10 = Certified Linux Engineer "SLES10"

My goals for the remainder of the year are the following:
CCNA = Cisco Certified Network Associate
VCP = VMWare Certified Professional
CCNP = Cisco Certified Network Professional
CCVA = Cisco Certified Voice Associate

If I can get two of my goals done for the end of the year I would be happy. The cisco certification exams appear to cover a lot of the fine detail that we as engineers or administrators tend to forget about. We know that large networks should be seperated with VLANS, and we know how to do this, but cisco wants to know if you know what the packet that goes between the switches has tagged on it before being delivered to the destination address when using a VLAN. What type of User ID is on that packet and when is it removed? The Linux certification exams that I took where all about putting your skills to the test and making things happen. Walking into a Lab and given a lab manuel saying make sure these 24 tasks are complete in 4 hours, and then doing it. No questions to answer, just show that you can apply what you know to real world scenerios.