In June 2017 I joined the company ITQ Consultancy in the Netherlands. A VMware knowledge POWERHOUSE! Back then I only held a VCP5-DCV certification which was almost expiring, and up to that point, I mainly worked with compute and storage infrastructures.

When I joined ITQ  my primary goal for the first year was getting more knowledge on the networking part within IT and especially getting familiar with the Software-Defined Network solution of VMware; NSX for vSphere.  My secondary goal was achieving a double VCIX status (DCV and NV) within one year after I started at ITQ.

In the first month as an ITQ-er I passed my VCP6-DCV and started studying and attending courses to get CCNA certified. On the 17th of August that year, I passed my second ICND exam and became a CCNA.  After successfully finished the first and maybe biggest hurdle of my first-year objectives. I also passed the exams below which made me achieve my first-year goal; Double-VCIX on the 23rd of April 2018.

• Gained the VCP-NV 6 certification at VMworld Barcelona (13th of September 2017).
• Gained the VCIX-NV 6 certification by passing on the VCAP-NV 6.2 Deploy exam (13th of November 2017). Everybody knows already that there is ‘still’ no design exam yet of the NV track. That’s why it made me a VCIX-NV by passing just one exam. I wrote about it in this blog post.
• Gained the VCAP-DCV 6 certification by passing on the deployment exam (21st of December 2017).
• I passed the VCAP-DCV65 Design exam and gained the Double VCIX status (20th of April 2018).

During that first year, I gained a lot of knowledge. Thanks to many ITQ colleagues and the VMware community helping to achieve my goals during my first year as ITQ-er. Within that year I became more familiar with the VCDX certification and at the end of my first year I knew it for sure; this is going to be a future goal; become VCDX certified.

In the period after I achieved all of the certifications, I gained a lot of experience with creating designs for solutions out of the SDDC stack. Until I came on that point that I thought I was ready, I only need to proper project now to build my VCDX design on.

Initially, I was aiming for VCDX-DCV certification because I just thought this is going to be the easiest for me since I have far more knowledge of this section compared to NV.  Until last December (2019). I started a really cool design engagement on NSX-T at a customer and thought; yeah! this could be a proper customer case for a VCDX design. And so here I am, starting at ITQ lacking a lot of network knowledge now aiming to pass my VCDX-NV in 2020.

The first step in January was creating a planning, and since I like challenges it has become a very ambitious planning. But I like it!!!

My VCDX goal for 2020 is to do my defense on the 18th of September.  Which have created the following planning;

• 29th of February – Finish Conceptual Design
• 31st of March – Finish Logical Design
• 30th of April – Finish Physical Design
• 19th of June – Finish supporting documents like; Implementation/Test plan, Installation guide, Operations guide.
• 26th of June – SUBMIT MY DOCUMENT SET

After I have successfully submitted my document set in June I have enough time to prepare myself for the defense and create my presentation.

Today is the 23rd of February and I finished my Conceptual Design today and started with the Logical part of my design. This is a milestone for me in this Journey, and that why I thought; let’s create a blog-post about my Journey. In the coming months, I will create more content about my VCDX journey and my preparations and my progress.

Thanks for reading and until the next one!