VMware Certification Roadmap And A Quick Update

I've been at the new position for about a month now. I'm one of the Admins for a global Linux based network. There's no shortage of oddities to deal with around the globe. I'm enjoying it and it's really nice to be with like minded folks (nerds!). I've had to adjust to a larger environment moving from a 2 man team to a 6-7 man team in a rather large company. It's going to be fun.

I've started some classes as well. A second Network Security course which is very Windows centric. I suppose when you're trying to patch holes you go for the most breakable OS.  I plan to sit for the Security+ exam after this class and will hopefully end up with a voucher from the course. Of course this means I'll be giving some more money to Darril Gibson for his audio material and ebook covering the SY-301. This will finish up my security courses for a while until I start work on the CCNA:Security sometime in the next year or two.

My second class is the VMware vSphere: Install, Configure, and Manage V5. It's being offered at my local community college for a fraction of the normal 1-3K cost. It does however come with the caveat of being 16 weeks long. You do most of the labbing in a "Pod" which is a virtual setup of a small vSphere installation. It's a not huge difference from deploying Openstack locally and having a private cloud at your disposal. As I understand it though, the VCP5 exam (VMware Certified Professional) requires a good amount of studying in order to pass the exam. That said, it's not just the VCP anymore.

Thc VCP exam has been broken out into 4 different flavors (and I might be late to this game), VCP IaaS, VCP Cloud, and VCP desktop, and VCP datacenter virtualization. 

VMware's new certification roadmap:

and of course, links to all the exams:
http://mylearn.vmware.com/portals/certification/?ui=www

RHCSA "Cheat Sheet"

I've got the RHCSA scheduled for June 8th.Originally, I was scheduled to take the exam back in early April, but I had two classes cancelled on me. As it turns out, if the RH200 5 day class isn't booked by at least 4 people, the class and exam are cancelled. Consequently, it's best to call and book over the phone in order to see which classes are "GTR" or guaranteed to run.

In my final preperation for the RHCSA I've gone through and found some good references for a "cheat sheet," pulling from Michael Jang's RHCSA/RHCE study guide as well as this fantastic wiki: http://rhce.co/rhel6/Main_Page for those seeking their RHCSA.The RHCE portion is incomplete, but the RHCSA part is complete and only slightly outdated. It is a fantastic resource.

Between those two sources, notes from Tommasino's Hands-on Guide to the RHCSA/RHCE, and my personal knowledge, I put together this study guide based on the RE200 exam objectives as of 2012 05 15.


Objectives:

Understand and use essential tools

• Access a shell prompt and issue commands with correct syntax.
• • Change TTY
  • ctrl+alt+F1 
  • F1-F7 are available
  • Icon on top of left of GUI
  • -Menu/Applications/System Tools/Terminal
  • 
    
• Use input-output redirection (>, >>, |, 2>, etc.).
• • > overwright
  • < send into a command or file
  • >> append
  • << append into a command or file
  • • cat >> hoge.txt << _end
    • • cat the file
      • enter text in tot he file until _end has been met 
  • | funnel into
  • 2> redirect errors
  • 2>&1 redirect errors to std out
  • 
    
• Use grep and regular expressions to analyze text.
  • grep for nocase 
  • • # grep -i
  • egrep ‘^(wheel|root)’ /etc/group
  • less file | [e]grep string
  • inverted search with grep and egrep
    • grep -v ^# /etc/nsswitch.conf
      egrep -v ^# /etc/nsswitch.conf
      
      
• Access remote systems using ssh and VNC.
• • SSH user_name@host
  • ssh with x windows pass through
  • SSH host -lX user_name
  • vncviewer remote_host
  • 
    
• Log in and switch users in multiuser runlevels.
• • Runlevels 2, 3, 5
  • su - username
  • 
    
• Archive, compress, unpack, and uncompress files using tar, star, gzip, and bzip2.
• • # gzip big.jpg
    # bzip2 big.jpg
    # gzip -d big.jpg.gz
    # bzip2 -d big.jpg.bz2
    # tar czvf home.tar.gz /home
    # tar xzvf home.tar.gz /home
    # yum install star
    # star -xattr -H=exustar -c -f=home.star /home/
    # star -x -f=home.star
    
  • 
    
• Create and edit text files.
• • touch filename
  • vi filename
  • 
    
• Create, delete, copy, and move files and directories.
• • touch, rm, rmdir, rm -fr, cp, mv -r, mv
  • 
    
• Create hard and soft links.
• • ln source destination ## hard link
  •  ln -s source dest, 
  • 
    
• List, set, and change standard ugo/rwx permissions.
• • ls -l
  • chmod +x +w +r, 
  • chmod 755 ##folders default
  • chown user.group
  • chgrp
  • 
    
• Locate, read, and use system documentation including man, info, and files in /usr/share/doc.
• • man command_name
  • man -k command_name
  • search for command in the doc directory
  • ls -l /usr/share/doc | grep httpd
  • 
    

Note: Red Hat may use applications during the exam that are not included in Red Hat Enterprise Linux for the purpose of evaluating candidate's abilities to meet this objective.

1 Month Hiatus & Comptia / LPIC / Novell, 3 in 1

I haven't posted in about a month. I was going for weekly posts there for a bit, but have gotten caught up in my RHCSA, OpenStack, and SAN/NAS studies. Not to mention Family, work, and some sleep here and there. Now that my RHCSA exam has been cancelled twice by Red Hat (separate locations), I'm taking small pauses to do some personal stuff, like posting here.

For folks pursuing the Comptia Linux+, LPIC-1, or the Novell Certified Linux Administrator, there is good (old) news! When you pass the certification for the Comptia Linux+ exam, you also qualify for the LPIC-1 as well as the Novell Certified Linux Administrator certification.


These partnerships were made back in early 2010, however I don't think a lot of certification candidates realize the option is available to receive all three certifications with one exam. When ever the partnership is brought up in forums, a handful of people always seem to ask questions about how to go about receiving their Novell certification (Linux+ being the more popular choice).

To get to the point, I had come across the partnership notes on LPI's site with instuctions on how to attain the certification from Novell. So, I thought I would lay it out for those looking. Quoted from afore mentioned site:

NOVELL Certification Partnership

LPI is pleased to announce that holders of LPIC certifications are now eligible to apply for and receive the Novell Certified Linux Administrator (CLA) certification at no additional cost or exams.

This initiative is the result of a new partnership agreement between Novell and LPI. Under this program those Linux professionals who have earned their LPIC-1 status will also have satisfied the requirements for the Novell Certified Linux Administrator (CLA) certification. To further support this initiative Novell Training Services has formally agreed to include the required LPIC-1 learning objectives in its CLA course training material.

To apply for your Novell CLA, please fill out the required form at Novell. You will need to provide your LPI ID, verification code, name and contact information.
All LPI alumni are able to validate their LPIC status by providing their LPI ID and verification code.

Please refer back to this page for further information on the availability of Novell training programs which are based on LPIC-1 objectives for self study, on demand, and partner-led classroom training.

LPI alumni will know that LPI has worked with Novell for a number of years on exam development and that Novell provided an initial industry endorsement of our LPIC-3 program.
This new partnership with Novell further demonstrates that LPIC-1 is the industry standard in Linux certification and confirms LPI's longstanding position that LPI certification qualifies IT professionals to work on any Linux distribution.

* This program initiative with Novell and their CLA certification is not available to LPI candidates in Japan

Some additional resources:

Comptia Linux+
LPI's LPIC-1
Novell Certified Linux Administrator

Primer on reading Michael Jang's Red Hat Linux Certification Study Guide

I started reading Michael Jang's RHCSA/RHCE Red Hat Linux Certification Study Guide about 2 weeks  ago, then took a brief detour (3 days) to get my VM server up and running (see post - RHCSA Labs and Shuttle trouble - Just Getting Started). I'm working my way through the book and although it gets great reviews and is it's a great reference, I can't help but feel it's a tad all over the place.

For instance, The first couple of chapters have labs working through the chapter that are referenced at later points in the book (with things like "if you followed the previous lab, you should be here..."). However, it's never really clear if you're supposed to work those labs or only the ones at the end of the chapter, which seem a bit more official. I've been working both. On one hand the repetitive action is great, on the other it's starting to get a bit confusing.

Then there's the references to random sections in regards to previous and more advanced topics, which can drive one mad if you let it. Take SELinux for instance. When you are initially focusing on setting up VMs and deploying via kickstart, why not just set SELinux to permissive to allow a more clear focus on Kickstart? Instead there are random commands with no explanation other than referring to Chapter 4 and 11. Granted I know not all can be be explained at once, so why not circumvent the more advanced technology for the time being and address it with more a in depth explanation later in the book?

Well, enough ranting and besides, I really do like the book so far, sans the lab murkiness. Where this leads me is to a desire to list coherent directions on how to approach Jang's book. So, I'm going to layout how I am doing the initial 2 chapters and hope that will help keep me straight on what's going on.


Also, take note, some of the same tasks need to be done multiple times.


Chapter 1 Tasks:

1. Read through chapter 1 without attempting exercises or labs
2. Note drive partition suggestions (somewhat important for VM labs).
3. Note basic installation steps
4. Download demo of RHEL, download Scientific Linux 6 / CentOS 6 
1. I grabbed a 30 day evaluation of RHEL (requires registration) and the flavors
5.  Do Exercise 1.1 - Partitioning during install of RHEL (or flavor) on VM server
1. if you setup the VM host as part of exercise 1, ignore the partitions he noted as you will need more space for VMs
2. I'm working remotely, so setup VNC for host machine. Here's good instructions. 
6. Follow along with noted basic installation steps
7. If using a server to host VMs, ensure it is KVM capable Intel vmx or AMD svm
1. #egrep "vmx|svm" /proc/cpuinfo | less
1. in less type "/vmx" to search for vmx in the results
8. Setup and configure default file sharing services (http & ftp) on VM host
9.  Do Exercise 1.2 - configure Apache and vsFTP  on VM host
10. Do Lab 1 
11. Do Lab 2 - copy install media contents to the share directory on VM host
12. Do Lab 3

Chapter 2 Tasks:

1.  Ensure KVM is installed (pdf p.4-6)
2. Ensure the KVM modules are installed correctly
1. #lsmod | grep kvm
3. run "virt-manager" with root privileges from a shell within the GUI
1. The hypervisor (virt-manager) is supposed to prompt for the root password if run from a normal user, but I was unable to run it at all that way. Thus, VMM was not an option from the user's desktop menu
4. Do Exercise 2-1 within the hypervisor
5. Configure and create a VM (pdf p.15-19)
6. Do Exercise 2-2 with the VM you just created (why wasn't that an exercise?)
7. Note the VM deletion method on p.24
8. Configure VM server to be a kickstart server (pdf p.29-31)
9. Do Exercise 2-3
10. Install kickstart configurator and create kickstart file with it.
1. *Name it something different than the ks config from Exercise 2-3
11. Configure X over SSH on VM server or one of the VMs
12. Work through the 8 Labs. 

 The rest of the chapters are a bit more straight forward and so I won't do a layout for them.

 As another side note, Chapter 4's primer on SELinux can be well supplemented by the following:

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 Security-Enhanced Linux - User Guide

Linux Journal's Paranoid Penguin - Introduction to SELinux
Linux Journal's Paranoid Penguin - Introduction to SELinux, Part II

Switching Gears.

I finished a one term class today, 12 weeks early. I planned it that way and with the leap year, I actually finished 1 day early. Ha. The LAMP / Eucalyptus class is still moving along, although we're covering Open Stack and not Eucalyptus anymore.

It seems the professor (A Sr. Systems Engineer at The Aerospace Corp.) was a part of a group who had deployed Eucalyptus and found that when the resources were maxed out, VMs would just get dropped (disappear). Openstack by contrast does not allow new VMs to be deployed once all available resources are spoken for by other VMs. So, we are moving forward with Openstack.

With my (short term) class completed (Linux Administration), it marks a shift in focus to my next certification. Originally, I was thinking that would be the Comptia Security+, but that will be put off till I receive the exam voucher, later this year (no reason to waste money!). Then, I was thinking the ITIL V3 would be good, but now I'm thinking I will move the ITIL to April and work on the Redhat RHCSA in March. I'm pretty enthralled with Linux right now. I'm also reading Classic Shell Scripting: Hidden Commands that Unlock the Power of Unix.

Links to Amazon's site.

 So, tonight we (me and the mouse in my pocket) start reading Mich Jang's Red Hat Linux Certification Study Guide, I've laid out the month long schedule for the exam and scheduled it for April 6th. Here's the month's calendar.

I'm looking forward to the next few months with the exams, classes and what not. This is the reason I got into IT in the first place!

Cisco Network Academy - Switching from Student to Alumni

For those of us fortunate enough to take the Cisco Network Academy courses (Exploration being better than Discovery, in my opinion), we have an opportunity to switch our account over to Alumni status. This can only happen once we've completed the student courses successfully and the instructor has marked the Network Academy grade book with a passing grade.

This switch can sometimes be an elusive task unless you know wheat you're looking for. For instance, the T.A. at my local brick and mortar community college missed out on the Alumni account opportunity. The Alumni account option eventually expires post course completion.

The Alumni home page looks exactly like the student home page, but it has different options. You loose the option to view the student page once your Network Academy class is completed. The Alumni home page allows access to course materials, the Alumni forums,  career tools,and more.

The Alumni Network Academy home page. © Cisco Systems

Here's the info from Cisco about the Alumni benefits:

Alumni Enrollment Is a Valuable Benefit Starting back to school and finishing a school term are perfect opportunities to get registered as alumni with Cisco Networking Academy. We can show you how. Why should I register as an alumni member? Students who do not register as alumni will lose their access to Academy Connection soon after they leave the classroom if they do not enroll in a subsequent class. That means you’ll no longer be able to access the Course Materials to study for certification or re-certification. If certification is one of your career goals, you’ll want to maintain curriculum access as a valuable resource for your exam preparation. Alumni privileges include access to Course Materials (for courses you passed). Even if you’re still in class, you’ll want access to benefits available only to registered alumni. Along with continued curriculum access, there are a number of other benefits available to you as a registered member of the Alumni Community including: Headlines and updates regarding curriculum and competitions Peer support through Alumni Community forums and chats Access to the CCNA Certification Prep Center on Cisco Learning Network Access to career development tools and resources through the Career Connection job board at cc.netacad.net Opt in to the U.S. Alumni Newsletter (U.S. students only) Discounts on products and services Eligible students and grads will see the Alumni Home link on their Student home page. Register now to secure your access as an alumni member. Click here to watch a brief video about the alumni registration process. For more information, send an e-mail to academy-alumni@external.cisco.com. [PRINTER FRIENDLY VERSION]

So, how do you change over to Alumni once your class is done? Here's how:

1.  Navigate over to the Cisco Network Academy and log in.
2.  Verify minimum age requirements
3.  agree to the terms
4. Update your profile (required)
5. You'll then be able to edit your information and enable "Opt-ins"
6. lastly click register on the "Opt-ins" page to be given 99 years of Aceademy Alumni access. Awesome.
7. You'll eventually receive an Email letting you know you'r registered as an Alumni. That's it.

Hopefully this will be helpful for someone to be able to utilize the Academy Alumni resources in the future. 

2012 picking up fast.

I have invested a bit with Darrill Gibson's security+ books/audio and got caught in the holiday rush thus missing the deadline for the SY0-201. The exam offering was closed on 20111231. So, I picked up the new CompTIA Security+: Get Certified Get Ahead and started to read it. About 1/3 of the way through, I was in communication with a professor at my local community college, who informed me there would be  a voucher available to me if I completed a security course with them in the fall. So, the Security+ is postponed till fall 2012.

With that I picked up Bradly Orand's Foundations of IT Service Management with ITIL 2011 and have been making my way through that. I'm thinking I'll pick up a CBT to supplement the book.

Speaking of that CBT Nuggets has a $24.00 for 24 hours of access to all videos within their IT library. The IT library includes a ton of training subjects, that would last well beyond you 24 hour allotment. Still, for a single subject it's a fantastic deal. Here is CBT Nugget's IT Library offerings.

Beyond that, I started a LAMP / Eucalyptus class at my local B&M which should be interesting. I will be studying for the RHCSA during this class and plan to sit for that in April / May. The class is based on Scientific Linux, a clone of Red Hat Enterprise Linux. I picked up a copy of Michael Jang's RHCSA/RHCE Red Hat Linux Certification Study Guide and will have started working my way through that.

So, this means I'm slow on posts to the blog, but things are picking up cert wise. I did come across some other of my CCNA lab resources and once I find them again, I'll post my last installment in the CCNA LAB resources series.

Cisco Career Certification Path

I was snooping about on one of Cisco's pages entitled "Benefits of Hiring Cisco Certified Professionals." I've seen the question of how companys can benifit from hiring Cisco certified individuals before, but have never really come across a definitive "Yes, CCNA / CCNP get discounts on gear" page. That is still the case,

I did however, come across this nice document laying out Cisco Certification Paths (pdf). It's not new news by any means, but it's laid out nicely and is a good at a glance resource.

© 2011 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.link to PDF.

CCNA Done.

I finished up the CCNA this past week. After going through the big push over the last 2 months, I felt I was ready and went for it. I found that knowing the material isn't all that is necessary. Time management ( you need to be able to pull off 1 question every 1:15 min.), quick fingers, and fast reading come into play for Cisco certification exams. Interestingly enough I failed my first exam by running out of time. The second exam I finished in about 2/3rds the alloted time. From one extreme to the other.

So, after a days rest I've laid out my Comptia SY0-201 (link) path finishing right before the exam retirement deadline of 20111231. The materials are Darrill Gibson's "Get Certified, Get Ahead SY0-201" linked in my last post, Labsim Testout Security+ (which is why I want to take the SY0-201 and not 301), and the CBT Nuggets Security+ videos. I went ahead and laid out a plan like I did with the CCNA. Here's the madness, although a lot lighter than the CCNA study course.

CCNA 35 days till the exam

I'm 3 weeks out for sitting for the CCNA. It's been scheduled and I'm in insane review mode. I took a Boson test exam a few days back and scored a 72% on it. Which I'm thinking would have been a bit better but the sims were not loading giving me the "command set failed to load" error. Thus, I had points taken off and not gained. Still I have a few weeks left of review, so I'm thinking I should be scoring in the 90-100 range before the exam. At any rate, here's what my schedule looks like for the review time. I'm putting in on average 5 hours a day from multiple sources. It's grueling, but well worth it.

Mind Map - Update

Just a quick update regarding the mind mapping online software I posted about a few days back. I started thinking more about how I wanted to lay out information in order to better grasp it and the thought of examples came to mind. Why not screen shots?

Cacoo.com, although slightly more difficult to input information into it has the great ability to import images from the web, your local machine, or can even take a screen shot. This feature makes me almost completely forget the less intuitive method of input. The input method is essentially, click & drag a shape, select the color properties, color the shape, type text, click the link icon, etc. Unfortunately, bubble.us, which has a very intuitive input method, has no feature for image input. Looks, like I'll be using Cacoo more.

Mind Mapping

I've been looking at memory aids recently. I find I'm at the point where I grasp all the concepts and can lab the CCNA stuff till I'm blue in the face, but still need to memorize all the exam details. This is things like the range of area numbers and other things I've read a few times, but not completely committed to memory. Incidentally, that available area range is 0 to 4.2 billion.

So, I've been playing with the loci method (memory palace), mind maps, and have long been a fan of association techniques. below is an example of an online mind map and how I think Ill use it with my studies. It's called bubble.us. An interesting site that gives 3 free worksheets and then paid membership for more. I like the interface and keyboard mapped interactions. The caveat is that its flash 10 and therefore not Ipad compatible. With flash cards along and a mind map like this I'm hoping to better memorize the details of the exam.



Cacoo (link) is another service but slightly more elaborate, allow for the creation of many more types of diagrams and charts. Below is an example of their mind map. The issue I see with Cacoo is that it takes a lot more effort and time to create a diagram and this doesn't serve taking notes.

www.mind-mapping.org has some great sites and software recommendations, where these both came from. If you think mind mapping the protocols, commands, and anything else might help. Give them a shot to see if there is some software that can help  you in your exam sucess.

iTunes Store Top 10 Audiobooks - Technology

While in my car for only a short time daily (approx. 15-25 min. to and from work) I generally enjoy listening to Marketplace or one of the morning NPR shows. As of late though, I've been listening to the CCNA Cram Guide Audio version by Paul Browning (requires a paid membership). Its a quick 30 minute guide to some key notes for the exam. Although, after listening to it for a month, it can get a bit old and so I've started looking for something a bit more elaborate. I believe I will end up with "Mastering the CCNA" audiobook as it see well put together and is still inexpensive at $14.95 US. With 4 hours of lecture it should go a bit more in depth than the Cram Guide. This is course is only supplemental to Sybex CCNA v7, The official CCNA Study Guide, Packet Tracer, and videos.

"Mastering the CCNA" Chritopher Parker  

Meanwhile, the search lead me to an interesting page on Apple's UK site, the "iTunes Store Top 10 Audiobooks - Technology". Interesingly, the US site doesn't appear to have this chart, yet the UK site includes the US statistic as its first listing. Additionally, I'm not sure what the interval is for the statistics. Still, it's an intereting chart and has some good audio books listed.

*20110825  - I looked again today at the page and the statistics have changed. I suppose this means the updates are daily.