VMware Certification & General Advice Thread

[khrall]

Found what I was looking for and from a development point of view, it looks really promising but complicated. If I become a service partner does that effectively give you access to all VMware products for a monthly fee or are you restricted? I'm quite confused. I only started looking into this yesterday because I upgraded VMware Workstation Pro to version 16 and that got me thinking about VMware hypervisors.

I used to work at a VMware Cloud Provider, so happy to give you an overview of the hosting scheme.

When you become a service provider, you purchase your VMware Cloud Provider Program (VCPP) point from an Aggregator on a monthly basis.
Each product you use on your hosting platform costs an amount of points.
Points multiplied by vRAM Reserved in the platform equals the amount of points you need to buy from the Aggregator.

For example, if your using the VCPP SP Bundles and using a 7 point bundle (or FLEX core):

100 VMs running on the platform, with 4GB each (all RAM fully reserved) = 400GB x 7 points = 2800 points.

You can lower your costs by only reserving 50% of the vRAM (the minimum allowed) = 200GB x 7 points = 1400 points.

If your VMs need 32GB fully reserved, good news, the vRAM reservation "cost" per VM is capped at 24GB .

If you want to add an extra feature, you either need to move up bundles (7/8/9/10/12 points) depending on the features you want/need, or if you are on the FLEX plan, you can just add the product (7 points core + points value of feature e.g 1.5 points)

The trick with VCPP is to make a minimally viable platform for your business needs & not throw all the bells and whistles at it. VMware do audit and they do hunt down money owed, so don't fudge it!

If you want any more info, feel free to ask.

 

[Cromulent]

I used to work at a VMware Cloud Provider, so happy to give you an overview of the hosting scheme.

When you become a service provider, you purchase your VMware Cloud Provider Program (VCPP) point from an Aggregator on a monthly basis.
Each product you use on your hosting platform costs an amount of points.
Points multiplied by vRAM Reserved in the platform equals the amount of points you need to buy from the Aggregator.

For example, if your using the VCPP SP Bundles and using a 7 point bundle (or FLEX core):

100 VMs running on the platform, with 4GB each (all RAM fully reserved) = 400GB x 7 points = 2800 points.

You can lower your costs by only reserving 50% of the vRAM (the minimum allowed) = 200GB x 7 points = 1400 points.

If your VMs need 32GB fully reserved, good news, the vRAM reservation "cost" per VM is capped at 24GB .

If you want to add an extra feature, you either need to move up bundles (7/8/9/10/12 points) depending on the features you want/need, or if you are on the FLEX plan, you can just add the product (7 points core + points value of feature e.g 1.5 points)

The trick with VCPP is to make a minimally viable platform for your business needs & not throw all the bells and whistles at it. VMware do audit and they do hunt down money owed, so don't fudge it!

If you want any more info, feel free to ask.

Thank you for your reply. So if I am understanding correctly (and if I am not please correct me) it is the number of VMware products used multiplied by server resources used equals total points spent which gives you your monthly charge to VMware?

Does VMware support memory ballooning or whatever it is called in the VMware world? Where you allocate X amount of RAM and the virtual machine only uses that much if the guest needs it. Thus you can oversell server resources on the assumption that not everyone will max out their virtual machines at the same time.

 

[Throrik]

Thank you for your reply. So if I am understanding correctly (and if I am not please correct me) it is the number of VMware products used multiplied by server resources used equals total points spent which gives you your monthly charge to VMware?

Does VMware support memory ballooning or whatever it is called in the VMware world? Where you allocate X amount of RAM and the virtual machine only uses that much if the guest needs it. Thus you can oversell server resources on the assumption that not everyone will max out their virtual machines at the same time.

Yes VMware do support ballooning. In fact I have an open case with their support team for ballooning at the moment as ours has run into a snag. But for the most part it works great. We're overall oversubscribed on our memory by around 2TB, mostly because we're not great at the pre-sales/architect part and no rightsizing is ever suggested until it gets to me.

 

[khrall]

Thank you for your reply. So if I am understanding correctly (and if I am not please correct me) it is the number of VMware products used multiplied by server resources used equals total points spent which gives you your monthly charge to VMware?

Does VMware support memory ballooning or whatever it is called in the VMware world? Where you allocate X amount of RAM and the virtual machine only uses that much if the guest needs it. Thus you can oversell server resources on the assumption that not everyone will max out their virtual machines at the same time.

Correct. Its the combination of products/features you have installed multiplied by the RAM reservation.

As Throrik said, it supports overprovisioning/oversubscribing - this is where the vRAM reservations come in for the billing.

A RAM reservation guarantees access to said RAM during a period of resource contention. If you sufficiently spec your hosts & don't over sell your physical memory resources too much, you can lower your vRAM reservations, lowering the amount you have to pay in licensing. It's a balancing act between memory allocation & licensing costs.

 

[Cromulent]

I'm looking at Softcat as a service provider aggregator. Has anyone got any experience with them? I'll fire off an email tomorrow morning to enquire about things and see what they are like.

 

[khrall]

I'm looking at Softcat as a service provider aggregator. Has anyone got any experience with them? I'll fire off an email tomorrow morning to enquire about things and see what they are like.

Full disclosure I work for a reseller that is a competitor to the above company, but we're not a VMware VCPP Aggregator.

I would personally go straight to distribution partners rather than through a reseller if you can, it could work out cheaper.

 

[Cromulent]

Full disclosure I work for a reseller that is a competitor to the above company, but we're not a VMware VCPP Aggregator.

I would personally go straight to distribution partners rather than through a reseller if you can, it could work out cheaper.

Hmm, having problems finding a link to a list of distribution partners on the VMware website. The only reason I emailed Softcat was that they were on a list of "official" aggregators which I got from the VMware website.

 

[Cromulent]

As long as I can create a virtual machine from the command line with custom specifications using VMware tools it sounds like the perfect option.

Edit: Or through an API such as a REST API for example.

 

[Throrik]

As long as I can create a virtual machine from the command line with custom specifications using VMware tools it sounds like the perfect option.

Edit: Or through an API such as a REST API for example.

vSphere in particular has the MOB which is I believe everything which is exposed to the API. You can use stuff like Terraform and all of the modern day DevOps style stuff to automate it.

 

[ChrisD.]

Don't forget that not all APIs are exposed, it depends entirely on the license that the ESXi host has. For example, backup APIs are not exposed on the free license.

 

[Cromulent]

Don't forget that not all APIs are exposed, it depends entirely on the license that the ESXi host has. For example, backup APIs are not exposed on the free license.

I wouldn't mind paying for access to a backup API depending on how much it costs.

Since this thread is also about VMware certification exams. What is the most entry-level VMware exam you can take? I might buy the study guides for it (I doubt I'd actually bother to take the exam itself). That should at least give me a general overview.

 

[ChrisD.]

The exams all cost the same at VCP level, the main issue most have is that the course is mandatory and can cost several grand to complete.

 

[khrall]

I wouldn't mind paying for access to a backup API depending on how much it costs.

The Backup API is available in any paid for version of ESXi.

 

[Cromulent]

The exams all cost the same at VCP level, the main issue most have is that the course is mandatory and can cost several grand to complete.

Unfortunately, I don't have several grand at the moment. I'm in the process of trying to get a business loan but wouldn't be able to dedicate that much for a single course and exam.

 

[Throrik]

You used to be able to down the Stanley Uni course which was about £200 for the pre-req, don't know if it's still the same.

 

[ChrisD.]

I took the opportunity last night to sit VCAP DCV Deploy 2022, I passed which renewed my VCIX to 2022.

It was interesting doing it from home, the larger screen real estate definitely helped with the lab compared to those at the test centres. However it being a ~3h30 exam and not being able to go for a pee made me wish I was in a test centre so you can at least go to the toilet. I also find that going to the toilet at a test centre really helps in terms of getting away from the screen for a few minutes, something you might have blanked on before comes back to you.

 

[ChrisD.]

Last week I sat and passed VCAP Network Virtualization Deploy, head down for the design exam as I'd like to be double VCIX by the end of the year.