Dave's VCDX journey

As many of you know I'm going to attempt a VCDX defense at this year's VMworld. The interesting problem I'm running into is that the environments I've help build never had any defined requirements. Usually the equipment were pre-purchased and my task was to build the best virtual environment possible with them.

I decided to design a virtual environment to support 700 servers which are mixture of P2V & new servers, must support SQL 2008R2 failover cluster, DR capable & try to re-use older equipment.

It feels like I'm cheating if I come up with all the requirements & constraints. I'd like to ask the TE community to shoot me some design requirements/constraints. They can be requirements you've worked with or something you'd like to see someone design around.

Thanks in advance,

Dave

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Comments

dave330i

Hit the big send button. Submission was 6mb in size. Hopefully it won't bounce. My trial Visio expires in 15 days, so I guess I should start working on my presentation.

jibbajabba

Good luck

kriscamaro68

Hope everything goes well. Good luck.

Essendon

You got this one bud! Good luck!

TheProf

Good stuff! Good luck!

kj0

That's awesome dude. Best of Luck!

dave330i

Just got an e-mail from VMware. I'll be taking part in VCDX defense at this year's VMworld.

QHalo

Solid. After your submission I'd have been surprised had you not been asked.

meadIT

Awesome! Congrats! That was a fast turnaround. Are you going to attend VMworld also, or just going for the defense?

dave330i

Sigh.... jumped the gun. It's been forward to panelist review. They can still reject it. Guess more waiting.

meadIT

Here's my timeline of events to give you an idea of how long each step took.

1/4: Submission Deadline
1/9: Application "administratively complete." Meaning I filled in all the blanks. "Now pay me money to review your design."
1/26: Invited to defend at PEX. "Now pay me more money for your defense."
2/1: Received defense time slot.
2/28: Defense date.

I somehow "lucked" out and received the final slot of the week, which meant I spent most of the evenings after the sessions in my hotel room studying and revising my presentation.

dave330i

@meadIT,

Thanks for the schedule. Guess I'll sweat it out for another 2 weeks.

dave330i

My design was rejected. It seems I didn't spend enough time explaining 'why?'

cgrimaldo

Im sorry to hear that!

Essendon

Curious, did you pay anything to have your design looked at? Going by Brent's timeline, did you get to the end of 1/9?

jibbajabba

Dang ... Sorry to hear that .. just shows how hard this one is - First thought on my mind when I saw your design "damn, that looks solid and I couldn't have done that myself" ...

dave330i

Essendon wrote: »

Curious, did you pay anything to have your design looked at? Going by Brent's timeline, did you get to the end of 1/9?

I got past the adminstrative review. Didn't pass the technical review.

The way things are shaping up I would have had to pay for the defense out of pocket, so maybe it was a blessing to fail. Not planning on traveling internationally to defend, so my next chance is 2/14, I think.

jibbajabba

"Why" is usually a biggy - alongside "Why Not" .....

blargoe

Sorry to hear that Dave, though as you said it may be a "blessing in disguise".

meadIT

Sorry to hear Dave. Paying for the SFO defense out of pocket would have been pretty pricey. Heard the SF area hotels are running around $600 per night due to demand. I believe you can still submit your design for one of the international dates, but defer your defense to a later one. May give you additional chances for getting your technical review passed if needed.

dave330i

@meadIT,

Thanks for the info. I'll have to look into deferring defense.

druiddk

I would love to take a look at the design Dave.
Is it available at a Dropbox as suggested earlier?

dave330i

Need to start working on this again. Debating if I want to build a new design based on the new job. Also, so much to do with the new job, it'll be tough finding time to work on this.

dave330i

Crap. Applications are due 12/20. Need to stop goofing off and get serious. PEX is at SF this year.

TheProf

Good stuff, I am sure you can manage to put something together! If you need some peer reviews, I'll be happy to help!

Essendon

Hey Dave, are you able to tell what made the panel reject your design? Was it a lack of something or your design wasn't done the VCDX-way, though I'm sure it must have been a resounding success with your customer. Reason I ask is so I (and other folks here) tailor mine accordingly.

On a side note, are you not able to submit the same design again after making the changes the panel would like to see like having lots of those "why's" the panel's after?

dave330i

@Essendon

Mainly lack of detail. The big mistake I made is I wrote it like a customer facing design. I should have wrote it to pass a certification.

You're allowed to resubmit a design after making changes. I chose to abandon the design because I didn't find it interesting.

Essendon

Thanks for the reply mate. You are right about them wanting the design the "VCDX way". The VCDX Bootcamp book provides some valuable insight into the panelists' way of thinking and it's quite different from the way one would write it for a customer.

dave330i

Hmmm.... May end up revisiting this Q1 next year.

Essendon

Great! Going with a new design or improving on the first one?