VCAP6.5-DCV Design – Objective 2.1 Map business requirements to a vSphere 6.x logical design
The last few weeks have been quite busy. Time to focus on exam preparation again. Let’s start with the first objective of the second section.
This blog post covers objective 2.1 (Map business requirements to a vSphere 6.x logical design) of the VCAP6.5-DCV Design exam. It is based on the VMware Certified Advanced Professional 6.5 in Data Center Virtualization Design (3V0-624) Exam Preparation Guide (last update August 2017).
The necessary skills and abilities are documented in the exam prep guide for the older VCAP6-DCV Design exam (3V0-622). I think they also apply to the current version of the exam:
- Analyze requirements for functional and non-functional elements
- Build non-functional requirements into a specific logical design
- Translate stated business requirements into a logical design
- Incorporate the current state of a customer environment into a logical design
Let’s start with
Analyze requirements for functional and non-functional elements
Functional and non-functional elements sounds familiar. I wrote about functional and non-functional requirements in the previous objective 1.3 (Determine risks, requirements, constraints, and assumptions). When we talk about requirements, we have to differ between functional (WHAT) and non-functional (HOW) requirements. Some examples:
- Solution must comply with ISO standards
- The uptime must be at a minimum of 99,9%
- Users must be able deploy new virtual machine within 15 minutes after approval
This step is about analyzing the requirements and check if it is a functional or a non-functional element. Check this examples:
| Requirement | functional/ non-functional |
|---|---|
| Solution must comply with ISO standards | functional |
| The uptime must be at a minumum of 99,9% | functional |
| Existing contracts must be used for purchasing server hardware | non-functional |
| PowerShell has to be used for automation tasks | non-functional |
Remember: We have to differ between WHAT (functional) and HOW (non-functional).
Build non-functional requirements into a specific logical design
A logical design is more detailed compared to the conceptual design. A conceptual design is an abstract or high level design. The logical design contains more information, is more low-level than a conceptual design. The purpose of a logical design is refine the conceptual design and add more details and information.
With the determined and categorized requirements we can start to add more details to our design, for example we can define, that server hardware will be purchased from DELL or HPE. Or that we don’t need traditional, dedicated shared storage, because the solution must be hyper-converged.
Pretty important: A requirement is a requirement, regardless how dumb it is. This is pretty important for the exam - and your job. ;)
Translate stated business requirements into a logical design
This is pretty similar to the written above. You have to take the business requirements into account. Similar to the section above, business requirements can also be categorized into functional or non-functional elements.
Incorporate the current state of a customer environment into a logical design
If your customer is not asking for a greenfield deployment, you have to take the current environment of the customer into account. The solution must fit into the current environment. Of course, this results in further requirements that have to be fulfilled.
Summary
The main aspect of this objective is to review all requirements, determine if they are functional or non-functional, and use them to create a logical design. A logical design does not contain IP addresses or VLANs. But it contains all major components and their relationships, like data flows and connections.