VMware VCIX 6 Exam Details Released

Rejoice details on the VCIX 6 exams for Data Centre Virtualization & Cloud have finally been released!

I’d originally held off sitting the VCAP-DCD 5 exam back in Feb 2015 (im already a VCAP-DCA holder) as the VCIX 6 exams were supposedly imminent, that wait is finally over and study can begin in earnest.

Details of the beta have been posted on VMwares blog site in 3 parts here

Part 1 – https://blogs.vmware.com/education/2015/12/vcix6-certification-announcement-part-1-of-3.html

Part 2 – https://blogs.vmware.com/education/2015/12/vcix6-certification-announcement-part-2-3-updated-structure-paths.html

Part 3 – https://blogs.vmware.com/education/2015/12/vcix6-certification-announcement-part-3-of-3-exam-guides.html

Exam registration is expected early to mid-January with first beta appointments in late January.

However, questions still remain on the prerequisites for the VCIX/VCAP6 exams.

It isn’t clear whether VCAP5 holders can jump straight into upgrading to VCIX

or whether they first need to sit and pass the VCP6 exam.

Blog post part 2 states the following

“From VCAP5 Administration to VCIX6 → Earn the VCAP6 Design certification by passing the VCAP6 Design Exam”

“From VCAP5 Design to VCIX6 → Earn the VCAP6 Deployment certification by passing the VCAP6 Deployment Exam (lab)”

However the official exam guide states

“Candidates are required to obtain a valid VMware Certified Professional 6 certification prior to attempting this certification”

Personally I feel the VCP6 cert should only be a pre-req for non VCAP holders, hopefully when the new VCIX sites go live things will become clearer…

For now, I’m concentrating on bringing up my lab & study, I’ll update this blog when the prerequisites become a little clearer…

 

 

 

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Horizon 6.1 NVIDIA GRID vGPU

VMware Horizon 6.1 now supports NVIDIA GRID vGPU for their virtual desktop users, but before jumping on the rich graphic bandwagon there are some considerations to be made, for instance NVIDIA GRID VGPU doesnt support vMotion or HA because of the direct-path access to the hardware.

in addition to that there is no support for vGPU in a Linux guest as NVidia drivers are not availble

https://gridforums.nvidia.com/default/topic/285/nvidia-grid-drivers/grid-driver-for-ubuntu-and-centos-/

A handy comparison of vSGA, NVDIA GRID vGPU and vDGA is shown below

GRID

Before using the hardware-based (GPU) virtual Shared Graphics Acceleration (vSGA) feature in vSphere, you must install and configure the NVIDIA GPU VIB (vSphere Installation Bundle) on ESXi.

More information can be found here

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=2033434

I’m sure there will be some use cases for GRID, but I’d imagine the lack of vMotion & HA support will be a deal breaker for most.