VCAP7-DTM Design Exam Passed

On 21 October I took my first shot to pass the VCAP7-DTM Design exam and failed as you already know from my this article. Today I am happy to share that I finally passed the exam! 🙂

What did I do with the last information and notes I had about my weaknesses from the last exam score report? I read a lot additional VMware documents and guides about:

  • Integrating Airwatch and VMware Identity Manager (vIDM)
  • Cloud Pod Architecture
  • PCoIP/Blast Display Protocol
  • VMware Identity Manager
  • vSAN 6.2 Essentials from Cormac Hogan and Duncan Epping
  • Horizon Apps (RDSH Pools)
  • Database Requirements
  • Firewall Ports
  • vRealize Operations for Horizon
  • Composer
  • Horizon Security
  • App Volumes & ThinApp
  • Workspace ONE Architecture (SaaS & on-premises)
  • Unified Access Gateway
  • VDI Design Guide from Johan van Amersfoort

Today, I had a few different questions during the exam but reading more PDFs about the above mentioned topics helped me to pass, as it seems. In addition to that, I attended a Digital Workspace Livefire Architecture & Design training which is available for VMware employees and partners. The focus of this training was not only about designing a Horizon architecture, but also about VMware’s EUC design methodology.

If you have the option to attend classroom trainings, then I would recommend the following:

I had two things I struggled with during the exam. Sometimes the questions were not clear enough and I made assumptions what it could mean and that the exam is based on Horizon 7.2 and other old product versions of the Horizon suite:

  • VMware Identity Manager 2.8
  • App Volumes 2.12
  • User Environment Manager 9.1
  • ThinApp 5.1
  • Unified Access Gateway 2.9
  • vSAN 6.2
  • vSphere 6.5
  • vRealize Operations 6.4
  • Mirage 5.x

But maybe it’s only me since I have almost no hands-on experience with Horizon, none with Workspace ONE and in addition to that I’m only 7 months with VMware now. 🙂

It is time for an update, but VMware announced already that they are publishing a new design exam version called VCAP7-DTM 2019 next year.

What about VCIX7-DTM?

 In part 2 of my VCAP7-DTM Design exam blog series I mentioned this:

Since no VCAP7-DTM Deploy exam is available and it’s not clear yet when this exam will be published, you only need the VCAP7-DTM Design certification to earn the VCIX7-DTM status. I have got this information from VMware certification.

This information is not correct, sorry. VMware certification pulled their statement back and provided the information that you need to pass the VCAP6-DTM Deploy exam, as long as no VCAP7-DTM Deploy is available, to earn the VCIX7-DTM badge.

I don’t know yet if I want to pursue the VCIX7-DTM certification and will think about it when the deploy exam for Horizon 7 is available.

What’s next?

Hm… I am going to spend more time again with my family and will use some of my 3 weeks vacation time to assemble and install my new home lab.

Then I also have a few ideas for topics to write about, like:

  • Multi-Domain and Trust with Horizon 7.x
  • Linux VDI Basics with Horizon 7.x
  • SD-WAN for Horizon 7.x
  • NSX Load Balancing for Horizon 7.x

These are only a few of my list, but let’s see if I really find the time to write a few article. 

In regards to certification I think I continue with these exams:

This has no priority for now and can wait until next year! Or…I could try the VDP-DW 2018 since I have vacation. Let’s see 😀

VCAP7-DTM Design Exam, Part 12

I failed the VCAP7-DTM Design exam, but expected it and the first try of the exam showed me what stuff I need to learn better and where my weaknesses are. Let me tell you about my exam experience.

I arrived on time at the PearsonVUE test center, but they had PC problems and so I had to wait first for 30min until I could start the exam. The timer showed me that I have two hours for the 60 questions. The most of the time I was guessing and eliminating the obviously wrong answers and so I was through 50% of the questions of 50% of the time. If you would know a little bit more than I do and you work/worked with all the products on a daily basis, I would say that the exam is a piece of cake!

Nevertheless, I answered all 60 questions 15 minutes before the timer ended, but I didn’t review any of them, because I knew that I still wouldn’t have the better or correct answers. This may sound to you like I failed with a score of 0, but no. I had 252 of the 300 needed points and this is a sign for me that I just need to improve my weak spots and the topics I didn’t check during my preparation time.

Today I’m going to travel to VMware Airwatch in Milton Keynes (UK) for my VMware Workspace ONE: Deploy and Manage [V9.x] training which starts tomorrow. And I have to prepare a presentation for a roadshow with five events where I will be the speaker of a 30min slot. This means no time for studying yet.

But I’m lucky that I still got a seat at the Digital Workspace Livefire Architecture & Design training taking place in three weeks. This will be last part of my preparation for the retake which I planned for 23rd November 2018. But first I have to wait for my new exam voucher. 🙂

I cannot tell you which topics/technologies or questions were asked during the exam, but I can assure you that I didn’t expect some of the questions – they were just craaaaazy or about veeeery old stuff.

This is also one of my problems. You have to study things which are not valid anymore for the today’s product version or implementation. In a few cases the configuration limits or some parts of an architecture have changed.

So, I read the exam blueprint again and checked some of the attached URLs and document links again. In my opinion the following products and versions you should know for the exam:

  • Horizon 7.2
  • VMware Identity Manager 2.8
  • App Volumes 2.12
  • User Environment Manager 9.1
  • ThinApp 5.1
  • Unified Access Gateway 2.9
  • vSAN 6.2
  • vSphere 6.5
  • vRealize Operations 6.4
  • Mirage 5.x

So, this was my exam experience of the VCAP7-DTM Design exam and my advices after. It is totally okay to fail, because it will just help you if you are not prepared well enough or just went to early for your first shot.

My last advice: Use the note board for the difficult answers and topics you have no clue of. If you have enough time, reviewed your answers and you are ready to end the exam, memorize all your notes. Just in case you didn’t pass, you now have the notess in your mind and could transfer themto your personal notebook. This is totally legal and really helpful! 🙂

Good luck to you if you take the exam. I have another four weeks now to fill the gaps. 🙂 See if I passed or not.

VCAP7-DTM Design Exam, Part 8

This is the 8th part of my VCAP7-DTM Design exam series. In part 7 I covered the creation of a physical design for Horizon desktop and pools. Now we take a look at section 7 of the blueprint, the creation of an application architecture design for Horizon 7:

Section 7 – Incorporate Application Services into a Horizon Physical Design
Objective 7.1: Design Application Integration and/or Delivery System(s) using Horizon Application Tools
Objective 7.2: Design Active Directory to Facilitate Application Assignment Objective 7.3: Design and Size RDS Application Pools and Farms
Objective 7.4: Create Application Architecture Design
Objective 7.5: Design Application Integration and/or Delivery System(s) using Horizon Workspace One

The purpose of implementing VMware Horizon 7 is to deliver virtualized applications and/or desktop for end users. You have different methods of application delivery and the delivery depends on many factors. The delivery method can have major impacts on the user experience.

End users want the “fat client experience” – they want speed and performance and ease of use. IT has to define and find a balance between user experience and security and these opposing goals of IT and end users could be a challenge.

Today, people don’t want to wait for anything. They want to use, consume, be independent and have all the permissions they need to download and/or install applications – they just want to do their job. In this case, for example, a self-service portal with workflows could provide the necessary flexibility and security. But what about application performance and delivery?

One of the biggest challenges during a VDI project are legacy applications and IT still has to manage them in 2018. And sometimes, the customer is making the money with legacy applications. If the performance suffers or these applications don’t work anymore, neither does the business.

Application Delivery

With Horizon 7 you have different options for app delivery:

  • Manually installed applications in the master image or in the virtual desktop
  • Delivery using ThinApp, App Volumes or RDSH (RDS application pool)

workspaceone apps

Each method has advantages, disadvantages and a different way of management. In most of the cases you will find a mix of these application delivery methods, but it depends on your use cases which ones you are going to choose.

I expect you know the features and technology of ThinApp and App Volumes and therefore I don’t explain them further. Just think about flexibility and management. I assume you don’t want to end up with 10 different master images which you have to maintain separately and modify once or twice a week. In general, Office applications and Adobe Reader are installed in the base image and the other applications can be delivered by App Volumes. If you need a “secure browser” (sandboxed browser) environment, then ThinApp is the right solution for this. Maybe you have the same application but with different versions? Then, it depends on the use case and requirement – your options are the manual installation, the delivery with App Volumes and ThinApp. Make yourself familiar with all those methods and also study the multi-site reference guide of each product.

Note: Sometimes it’s hard to know all features of a specific product, but reading and understanding the release notes can save your life sometimes. Example: ThinApp 5.2.3 only supports Firefox version 50.1 and nothing else. Maybe you can install and deploy Firefox 52.9 which is working, but is not officially supported by VMware. And then, when you want to upgrade to 60.1, suddenly the compilation with ThinApp is not working anymore even it was with 52.9, which was also not supported.
If you have read and understood this requirement before, you or your customer wouldn’t have a problem now.

thinapp

Just think about if you provide secure browsing with Firefox delivered by ThinApp and you have a high security environment. When a new Firefox version gets published which is more secure and is supported by Mozilla, you cannot deliver this browser anymore. What are you doing now? Do you have enough time to find, design and test another solution?

By the way, ThinApp’s general support ends in March 2021.

ThinApp, App Volumes and RDSH have unique characteristics that allow them to increase the user experience and decrease resource utilization. Evaluate each solution and use the appropriate one for your design.

xenapp thinapp
PS: If you are using XenApp/XenDesktop you could also consider App Volumes

This is all I have to say about application delivery without going too deep. Make your homework and know what you need! Next time we take a look at section 8 which is about session management and client devices.