General Enterprise Architecture Design & Strategy
I recently had an interesting interview with the team who run “The Forecast by Nutanix” a few months ago. They asked many insightful and in-depth questions about the state of the cloud and where technology is heading in the future. They published the podcast episode last week, titled “Architecting Paths from Private Data Centers to Azure Public Cloud”.
Last week, Broadcom deactivated the public VMware Certified Design Expert (VCDX) directory. It now points to a Broadcom digital property covering the VCDX program.
Previously, you were able to lookup the names and VCDX numbers for current VCDX certified individuals. You could also check for VCDX mentors and panelists and see who worked where. Not any more.
With the exit of VMware EUC to Omnissa, the VCDX program is now reduced to three tracks (DCV, CMA, and NV). However, past VCDX-DTM and VCDX-EUC certifications are still active in a VCDX holder’s certification profile with Broadcom.
So you are looking to hire or partner with someone that claims to be a VCDX. How do you validate this is true? Use the following options to verify their VCDX certification.
Using my CertMetrics link as an example.
Using my Credly badges as an example:
I took the VMware End-User Computing Advanced Design 2024 Exam recently.
It took me two tries to pass this exam. It was one of the most poorly constructed exams I have seen from VMware. I suspect with the Broadcom acquisition, this exam build was rushed. I did not see the usual polish and quality that VMware is known for. Examples include, substandard grammar, bad spelling, obtuse and confusing questions. If I was not motivated by upgrading my VCDX-EUC certification to 2024, I would not have bothered with the resit.
In addition, Objective 3.3 of the blueprint did not appear in any of the questions I saw. Frankly, that part of the blueprint did not make any sense to me.
Reserve some patience for the Broadcom/VMware/Omnissa link clicking extravaganza to find URLs that actually work. Obviously Omnissa is a newly spun-off company from Broadcom for the EUC portfolio, and there are many questions that need to be answered:
With that being said, I am still a fan of the VMware/Omnissa EUC product suite, I think it delivers a ton of business value and I am sure these things will be resolved in the coming months.
These are the study links I used (all links worked at time of publishing):
I took the VMware Cloud Management & Automation Advanced Design 2023 Exam recently.
It was very weird studying for an exam that was released before the Broadcom acquisition, you have to trick yourself into thinking that VMware Cloud is still a real product that VMware is investing in and promoting as the preferred SaaS architecture over on-prem. If I was not motivated by getting my VCDX updated to VCDX-CMA 2024, I would not have bothered with this one.
I used 8.12 as the version for all of the VMware Aria documentation, this is because the Aria name change was in this version, and the exam was published around that time (including the Aria product name change in the exam blueprint).
The VMware Aria Cloud documentation was more of a challenge, the links below reflect the closest I could find.
These are the study links I used:
I took the VMware NSX 4.X Advanced Design Exam recently and these are the study links I used:
I recently had an interesting interview with the team who run “The Forecast by Nutanix” a few months ago. They asked many insightful and in-depth questions about the state of the cloud and where technology is heading in the future. They published my profile last week, titled “Simplifying Hybrid Cloud and Migrations to Azure Public Cloud”.
This was driven by Microsoft wanting our customers and partners to quickly and easily size their NC2 on Azure instances.
vcdx133.com 