Tag Archive: Trainsignal


The latest course of vSoup was published today , featuring myself and fellow community members , Ed Czerwin & Christian Mohn of vNinja.net. This time we’re looking at some security, high availability and a few other topics , listen carefully though as there are questions to be answered. Answer them right and you could be in with a chance to win a copy of the vSphere Troubleshooting Video pack form Trainsignal , kindly donated by David Davis from Trainsignal.com .

 

For all of the show links & feeds including iTunes , head over to http://vSoup.net

Train Signal is The Global Leader in Profiessional Computer Training

 

While the rest of us were stuffing our faces with Turkey , drinking just a little bit too much port and falling asleep in front of the TV over Christmas , David Davis from Trainsignal has been hard at work with a screen recorder to put together his latest in a very comprehensive series of vSphere videos.

Loosely following a similar outline to the VMware course on the same subject , David takes you over a bit of a recap on subject you might miss as part of your day to day work , or if you haven’t seen some of the previous videos , such as deploying & installing the vMA appliance & a Distributed switch refresher – I found the latter of these very handy as not being an Enterprise Plus customer I dont use VDS on a day to day basis.

There are a few lessons devoted to logging – finding , collecting , viewing and analyzing from a number of different sources. Log files are hardly the most fun thing in the world to look at but if you really want to know what’s going on , they are the best weapon in your arsenal.

The next major section is on networking – I though this was particularly well done as not personally coming from a packet pushing background , a few of the concepts are pretty new to me. If I’d had access to this video set (especially the PVLan Lesson! ) before I sat my VCAP-DCA exam beta , then there are certainly a couple of questions I’d have not torn my hair out in frustration at 🙂

Storage trouble shooting is next on the list, looking at general storage log analysis and diving deeper into NFS and iSCSI storage – again very handy refreshers if you don’t use those technology every day. If you are running a home lab as all budding VCAP candidates should be – there’s a great walkthrough on NFS configuration with openfiler & common issues you might get including some pretty misleading error messages !

The last part of the course is around a more general troubleshooting section – looking at Vmotion / Svmotion troubleshooting along with DRS and HA troubleshooting. Finally there is a troubleshooting kickstart which not only has some handy things to keep in mind for an exam but all those little tips and tricks that’ll make you look like a superherorockstarninja 😉 in front of your managers and workmates !

 

One last point of the Trainsignal Course delivery – not only do you get instant access online  , but the DVD set arrived 36 hours later from the US , complete with DVD’s & Mobile device friendly formats – which make it an invaluable companion on a long journey. I look forward to seeing the rest of the VCAP series , but think this would be a great resource for some post VCP upskill work.

image Looks like Veeam are not the only people running a competition at the moment. Greg Stuart from vDestination.com is running a great giveaway on his site – for the chance to win a smorgasbord of goodies from some of the top vSphere booked signed by the authors , to a complete set of vSphere trainsignal videos ( for a review of the videos ,check out my post here )to some bumper stickers and t-shirts !

 

To enter the competition , follow the link below.

 

http://vdestination.com/2010/08/08/win-the-ultimate-vsphere-reference-library-and-more/#contact-form-398

trainsignal

Great as it is to take a week off to go on a classroom based training course , its not always possible due to restrictions on work / home life. Do not despair , you can still assimilate knowledge quicker than Neo in a battered recliner chair thanks to some of the many video training providers. These allow to to press your study at your own pace from work or from home. If you are looking for VMware training videos , then you need look no further than Trainsignal , who have been producing some of the best VMware training videos I’ve seen for quite some time.

The most recent release is the second volume of the vSphere Pro Series, a video training series that seeks to really go beyond VCP level , not only teaching you things you need for the exam but skills you are much more likely to need in your day to day life as a VMware admin. Series 1 covered such topics as VMware view, Power CLI and the Cisco Nexus 1000V virtual switch. Series 2 takes you into some vSphere Advanced features , VMware Site Recovery Manager , more PowerCLI , VMware Data Recovery and what I think is a first of many a section on 3rd party tools , in this case the Veeam series of products for vSphere , but more detail on all of that to follow.

The Keystone presenter of the Trainsignal VMware videos is David Davis – a voice you’ll recognise well from the old videos in the series and also from his free video site at http://www.vmwarevideos.com/ – if you like the content on there , you’ll know the Trainsignal videos are worth every penny.

He’s not alone though , in this series you’ll also hear from Eric Siebert ( http://vmware-land.com/ ) , Sean Clark ( http://seanclark.us/ ) and Hall Rottenberg (http://halr9000.com/ ) a Trio of fellow vExperts who should all feature heavily in your RSS Reader & twitter feeds.  Having more than one presenter makes this series for me as not only does a change of voice break things up a little , you get the feeling that each presenter is giving a talk on his strongest subject the he really does know inside and out ( and in many cases *did* write the book on! )

For a summary of the lessons , I’ll refer you to the link below – The TS folks describe their products much better than I can !

http://www.trainsignal.com/VMware-vSphere-Pro-Series-Training-Vol-2-P98.aspx

As you can see – there is a LOT of content in this pack – and mean a lot- 21 Hours. I anticipate needing a lot of redbull to try and watch them all in one session. However if I had to pick my favourites out  of the lessons so far, I felt that the Direct Path & VMCI sessions from Eric Siebert’s sections really taught me something new – not having the biggest home lab , I’ve yet to get a play with SRM , but found great value from Sean Clarks sessions. The most topical for me personally was the sections on Veeam’s Backup & Replication – as a product I am in the middle of rolling out I am going to try and persuade the powers that be that the purchase a multiple licence for this set so we can make use of the videos as on demand training sessions.

You are also spoilt for choice in terms of formats – not only do you get the DVD’s them selves , but on disk 3 there is also a copy of the Videos in MP3 / iPOD video / WMV and finally high quality AVI. As a non apple type person , I uploaded the WMV versions straight to my Touch HD2 to keep me occupied on the train back from the London VMware user group, The MP3’s went straight onto a USB stick to play in the car on my drive to work. The videos are also available as streaming content via the Trainsignal website – handy when you find yourself with a little spare time and a web connection.

I still have a few more videos to watch but I have a pretty quite weekend ahead , so I’m going to find a comfy chair , laptop and before you know it….

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EDIT: In the interests of disclosure I would like to make it clear that I received a complimentry copy of the video reviewed.