Let The VCDX Light Shine Upon You – The Application

Throughout this series of blog posts I will be focusing on sharing my VCDX experience. My intention here is to help people realise that the journey towards a VCDX number is not something trivial and it is worth going through its trials, through its-ups and downs until one reaches the end of the journey, where in reality the end of a journey only marks the beginning of a new one.

The best way for someone to achieve something is set clear goals and never get distracted from being focused on that goal.

I will start off with my application, and in precise the portion where you’re asked for your biography and the reason why you think you’re a good candidate for the VCDX certification, and I could not see a better area to show the journey and not just the field accomplishments.

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One could say that being a highly qualified candidate is not much of a positioning I would dare to claim as  I always see  myself short on knowledge and the more I learn the more I realize that one would need numerous lifetimes combined to calm the craving for knowledge but in reality this is impossible and what we learn is always passed on to others so that they can continue the journey.

My journey towards VCDX started when I touched my first computer back at the age of 10, my journey towards VCDX started when at the age of 12 I started playing hacking games and I learned that if one does not teach himself then it is impossible to keep up in this life. I remember and kept safe (in printed copy) the first two articles that I have read “How To Ask Questions The Smart Way“ and “How to Become A Hacker“, I did not have a computer at home back then and the only way to get access was to linger/help at Internet shops.

Going back to the second article and I quote from the paragraph titled “What is a Hacker?” <There is a community, a shared culture, of expert programmers and networking wizards that traces its history back through decades to the first time-sharing minicomputers and the earliest ARPAnet experiments. The members of this culture originated the term ‘hacker’. Hackers built the Internet. Hackers made the Unix operating system what it is today. Hackers make the World Wide Web work. If you are part of this culture, if you have contributed to it and other people in it know who you are and call you a hacker, you’re a hacker.>

You can image what words above did to a kid of 12 years old, and the learning curve went into maximum-effort mode and till this very day I get inspired by those words.

Until 2008 certifications did not mean much to me, but entering the world of the enterprise revealed to me that even if you have a lot of experience, you would also need something which reflects that experience and would ensure that those whom do not know you would be satisfied to believe a source whom could be trusted that this guy actually knows what he is doing/talking about.

My first certification was CCNA in 2007 (part of a curriculum in my higher studies), and fast forward when I enrolled to the banking sector I got the chance to thrive in an almost barely existing infrastructure and ended up with a completed virtualized infrastructure with a fully reliable DR site and site-to-site VMs replication, it is back then when I got my crush on VMware ESX and couldn’t bear the thought of not virtualizing anything that comes into my way.

Back at the bank I got the chance to be part of the architecture and implementation process and while at it I started studying for VCP (although I haven’t attended a course) and I never got the chance to submit because I had to change my job.

At ICC it was a different kind of job, I was on the partner side now and I had to do the stuff that I did at the bank for a lot more customers, at ICC I had the opportunity to boost my learning curve and managed to get certified in a lot of technologies.

In 2013 I attended my first VMworld (Europe), and I got the chance to attend the first VCAP and VCDX bootcamps that were run my Mark Burnstand, John Arrasjid and Mustapha Khalil and I had not committed myself to any advanced certification at all, but the boot camps were immense and full of knowledge and most importantly it was full of VCDX’s and aspiring VCDX’s and people whom were ready to submit and I was totally overwhelmed by the surge of how the VCDX is the gem of all certifications and that the journey towards the VCDX is something I should not miss no matter what.

On that very day, I decided that I will attempt by VCAP5-DCA at VMworld and I booked the exam on the last day of VMworld, I had my workstation with me and I put a lot of non-stop-sleeping effort during the first 3 days of VMworld, I sat for the exam and after returning back home in 15 days I woke up in the morning to an email stating that I have passed.

From that point forward I became a VCDX junkie (VCDX Art Attack) I could not stop thinking about the certification day/night but at that point I did lack the fact that I do not do design for a living and most of the community members whom I asked replied back that to be able to get through it you should be doing it for a living.

At that point the passion never went down, but I had my facts straightened up and with every action I took I had VCDX in the path, obviously I was aiming at VCDX-DCV at that point and I did work on the architecture portion accordingly by participating with the solutions architecture team at ICC with almost all projects and in any technology.

In 2015 it was the rise of NSX and once again, VMware managed to pull me in further and I couldn’t help but to get attached to NSX and at that point the term “networking wizards” rang in my head and I thought this is a chance to get to walk with the product as it grows from the ground up and luckily my company had the same thing envisioned and this was a shift in the tide and now I was being pointed towards NV but the good thing here is that I got to design and deploy myself.

In 2016 I moved to CCi (subsidiary of ICC) where I was more focused on pure deployment and I was no longer part of the support team. At VMworld 2016, I sat for VCIX-NV (with a broken left/mouse hand) and I passed, also it is good to mention that I have attended all the VCDX workshops that were arranged at VMworld Europe and the online ones as well. In that very year at my company we got accepted as a PPSP, in addition we were certified to do projects on behalf of VMware PSO and this increased my learning curve a lot especially that all of my projects were NSX related.

End of 2016, I still had unfinished business with the VCAP-DCV design exam and I decided that is the time to do it and I scheduled and passed that exam on December 2016 and it was blast for me, to be truthful I did not prepare much for the exam and what I really wanted was not to pass but rather evaluate myself and evaluate whether my mindset is actually working as it should in terms of designing for VMware products and thankfully I believe that my years of experience aligned those thoughts and resulted in a pass and there I knew that I was on the right track.

As I said before my focus since 2015 was on NSX and this focus paid off a lot, I got to do the first NSX implementation in Lebanon for a bank (subject of my defense) and I got to do it end-to-end with the support of VMware of course. At that point it was more than obvious that I should pursue VCDX-NV rather than DCV because it was the logical thing to do where with NSX I had more architectural based experience and I had the knowledge from DCV to back up the NV architecture at the same time and last but not least it felt like a very good challenge to take on and most importantly I am enjoying every minute of it.

I know from my VCDX obsession that there is a mentor-ship program and I contacted one of the most amazing architects I had meet back in 2013 in the same VCAP/VCDX bootcamp and to my luck he agreed to mentor me.

Here I am submitting this application and looking forward to every single nanosecond of it (believe me when I say that my heart is pumping as I am writing these words).

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(Abdullah)^2