The Nutanix Design Guide

Since October last year, RoundTower Technologies has been collaborating with Nutanix on the First Edition of “The Nutanix Design Guide”. This book was written to explain the “Why?” of Nutanix and to present a 40,000ft view of the Nutanix Enterprise Cloud eco-system. This book has something for everyone, even if you have just been introduced to Nutanix or are an experienced Nutant. At 264 pages, this tome has a pleasing weight, when held in your hand.

It was a community effort, with Angelo Luciani and myself as co-editors/co-authors and 15 other Nutants authoring content (including 6 NPXs) to complete the final book. Dheeraj Pandey was also kind enough to write the Foreword. We are incredibly proud of the final product which included hundreds of hours of collective effort. Listen to this Nutanix Podcast Episode to hear more.

How do you get a copy?

Easy, a physical copy will be provided at strategic locations around the event when you attend Nutanix .NEXT US in Anaheim (there will be a book signing on the Wednesday with Dheeraj and team) or contact your Nutanix/RoundTower Account Executive for a copy.

DOWNLOAD THE NUTANIX DESIGN GUIDE – FIRST EDITION PDF

You are most welcome! We hope you find value and enjoy reading it.

Rapid VCP

Last week I was at VMware EMPOWER and had some interesting conversations with other partners and VMware Education that provided an insight into how quickly the VMware eco-system is evolving. Also included was the announcement of the new VMware Partner Connect program and the planned fifth VMware on AWS Master Service Competency.

The summary – with the move to VMware Cloud SaaS services, VMware has most definitely moved from a waterfall development approach to agile sprints. Gone are the days of the 2-year development cycle and products are now being released with a quarterly cadence. This means that VMware Education and Certification has to match that cadence. And VMware Partners have to keep up if they want to maintain their Solution and Master Service Competencies. Welcome to the turbo-mode certification treadmill!

The certification and accreditation requirements of these competencies generally looks like (they do vary – check links for exact breakdown):

You can deduce from the list above, that the VCP plays a big part in how a VMware partner proves mastery of skills and solutions. And with the increase in VCP cadence, it will be difficult to keep up. However there is light at the end of the tunnel: VMware allows the upgrade from VCP6-NV to VCP-NV 2019 by completing a free online course. Bingo! This is what we need for every VCP – a free online course that allows you to quickly and cheaply upgrade your VCP from the previous version.

The table below shows that VCP-NV 2019 is the only one to provide a free upgrade with the online “What’s New” course. VCP-DCV 2019 and VCP-CMA 2019 require a hefty fee (might as well read the free documentation and spend $250 to take the new exam instead) and the EUC tracks do not support it, you have to sit the latest exam – no bueno!

You may make the argument that VMware will not generate education and certification revenue. My opinion is that every VMware partner makes a significant recurring investment in VMware training and certification to become a partner and maintain that skill-set. VMware wants to increase their revenues year-on-year and the VMware partner eco-system is responsible for a large percentage of those revenues. Remember that some vendors (e.g. Nutanix) provide all of their online and on-site training services for free; they understand that partner training is good for business.

My hope is that VMware Education modifies their upgrade policies for VCP (and possibly VCAP), to give partners and customers the ability to complete a free online course to maintain their service & solution competencies. I still have a strong opinion that the Master Service Competencies should also have a mandatory VCDX requirement (including the SDDC Service Competency).

References:

VCDX – The Zone

Have you ever been walking up a set of stairs and when you think about what your legs are doing, you stumble and have to grab the handrail to save yourself from falling? Defending VCDX is the exact same thing, on the day of the defense you want to be in “the zone”, going with the flow, thinking on your feet and making it happen. You want to let your subconscious take control and perform the task at hand.

Continue reading VCDX – The Zone

Horizon View Design Considerations

This is the VMware Horizon View Design Deep-Dive.  I have aggregated all of the design considerations that Wayne Conrad and myself needed to answer for our VMware Horizon View architecture design.  Brevity and bullet-points are used to keep the information concise and readable. They are phrased as questions the architect needs to answer.

Continue reading Horizon View Design Considerations

Top vBlog 2018 Success

This last four months have been crazy busy, with defending VCDX number 4, Dell-EMC Master Enterprise Architect (DECM-EA) and Nutanix Certified Sales Expert (NCSX) plus holding down my day job and family life, it has been a marathon. I am glad I made it to the other side largely intact. To top that off, last week it was a pleasure to be voted #10 in the Top vBlog 2018 voting and also to win the Favorite Independent Blogger category as well. This type of award enhances your blogging experience, it means that your community recognizes and appreciates the effort expended. Thank you for reading my content and voting!

It was very competitive this year, indicated by the points totals for positions #6 to #12 where there was a tiny 47 point spread. This emphasizes the importance of having a great Google Pagespeed rating and being consistent with posting content year on year, to maximize your point score. It was also great to see many newcomers to the Top 25 and Top 10, it goes to show you that anyone can blog and be successful.

Those of you that are blogging and are looking to break into the Top 50, Top 25 and Top 10 lists, my advice is to pick a niche that is unique to you and your voice and then focus on that. My specialty area is Architecture Design, including the master-level and expert-level certifications for design; it took me a while to find that voice, but once I did, I was good to go. If I can do it, there is no reason why you cannot also.

It was great to see Angelo Luciani jump a massive 28 spots to #30 this year, an OG blogger/VMUG leader and a true community advocate. The same goes for Paul McSharry, up 22 spots to #27. Great work guys, keep it up.

Big thanks to Eric Siebert, Eric Wright, Angelo Luciani and John Troyer for their efforts and Turbonomic/Nutanix for sponsoring the event.