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The purpose of this article is to assist people who are looking at attending VI3: Installing and Configuring and CTX1456 Citrix Access Suite 4.0 Build/Test Workshop and telling them what they can expect to gain from the courses. Over the past 14 days I've attended both of these courses and found both of these very useful courses as long as you are fit into the target audience which I will discuss below.
VI3: Installing and Configuring
The fact that you have played with VMWare Server and you thought it was a cool product is not enough to warrant spending the money to attend this course. The target audience for this course is IT Professionals who are interested in implementing VI3 at their workplace. Management who would like to gain some knowledge about the product should not attend this course as it tends to go in depth into the workings of VMWare and the various components that make VMWare VI3 the market leader in terms of Virtualization. Management should rather attend the VI3: Whats new course to find out more information about the features of VMWare.
The course is broken up into 2 sections. Theory and Practical Labs. The theory is pretty in depth covering most of the components in enough detail that when you are speaking to your management you can complete bamboozle them with acronyms like HA, DRS, iSCSI, etc. The time span for the theory is limited and as a result the instructor is required to get through the content fairly quickly. Each module is completed with a series of labs which are designed to show you how to implement the theory you have just learned.
The practical part of the course is fairly easy. Its starts off with the attendee installing ESX Server onto a server, then running through some basic ESX configuration moving along to installing Virtual Center, creating data centers, Adding ESX Hosts, creating templates, etc.
Another reason to take this course is if you are looking for the all important VCP certification. VMWare went with a certification model that requires you to attend a VMWare course from a VMWare Authorised Learning Center in order to write the exam and qualify as a VCP. If you are looking at become a VMWare Trainer you need to sit the course 3 times, write the VCP exam and score over 85% and then give the course twice to a series of VMWare Trainers. If you are not looking at being a VMWare Trainer you would simply need to obtain higher than 75% for the exam.
My feelings on the course, definately worthwhile. I've been a huge VMWare fan since beta releases of GSX Server and have used every version of VMWare Server, Workstation and now ESX Server only I had never been fortunately enough to have it running on a server with VC, HA, DRS, etc licenses to use the features. I've now been able to do that and by attending the course I know I have the knowledge to build a thorough VMWare environment. I was very happy with the course and would most definately recommend this to someone serious about the product. CTX1456: Citrix Access Suite 4.0 Build/Test Workshop
The build test workshop as the name suggests is not a training course but a lab environment which gives you the opportunity and the facilities to install and configure all aspects of the Citrix Access Suite. How many people have the facilities and time to setup a comprehensive Lab environment at home or at work to sit down and play with the various aspects of Citrix Access Suite? This is the perfect opportunity!
The workshop is a 2 day session which has a 135 odd pages of lab exercises prepared by Citrix which gives the attendee an overall knowledge of Presentation Server, Password Manager and Access Gateway. The most interesting thing from the course is the few number of people who use password manager! My workshop had 9 delegates in total only myself and 1 other had touched password manager before.
The course is run on 6 VMWare machines. Unfortunately there are no physical gateways for each student as this would cause the costs to be higher. You start with presentation server and run through published applications, policies, virtual ip addressing, etc. You then move on to Password Manager where you start by extending the ad schema, which is really cool to do as most people don't get the opportunity to do this due to company policies, etc. Then installing the PM service, console and eventually the agent. You configure various policies, user configurations, questions, etc and in the end feel like a PM genius! Following this you move on to access gateway. This for me was the most valuable session as we have recently purchased 4 access gateway appliances and my team is responsible for configuring these. You start by configuring resources, then policies, filters and ending with end point scans and how the various filters, etc link back into your presentation server farm.
The target audience for this course is IT professionals looking at obtaining CCEA certification and are serious about Citrix. You should definately review the pre-requisites by using the related link below and be comfortable with the Presentation Server Console and Citrix Access Suite console.
All in all I felt the Build/Test workshop extremely beneficial and would recommend this to the target audience over any other current Citrix course offered. CTX1456: Citrix Access Suite 4.0 Build/Test Workshop Information
http://www.citrix.com/English/SS/education/course.asp?contentID=23747&ntref=qf_coursename
VMWare: Installing and Configuring Information
http://mylearn1.vmware.com/mgrreg/courses.cfm?ui=www&a=one&id_subject=215
Please note that the opinions expressed in the above review is my own and not the opionion of the Datacrash team nor its members. |
