- "Do I Know This Already?" Quiz
- Foundation Topics
- Exam Preparation Tasks
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
Exam Preparation Tasks
Review All Key Topics
Review the most important topics in the chapter, noted with the key topics icon in the outer margin of the page. Table 1-2 lists these key topics and the page number on which each is found.
Table 1-2. Key Topics
|
Key Topic Element |
Description |
Page |
|
Paragraph |
The Technical Design Process |
7 |
|
Paragraph |
Building a Realistic and Executable Plan of Approach |
11 |
|
List |
General Guidelines for a Good Technical Design |
12 |
Design Scenarios
Create your own standard templates for a high-level design process:
- Write down the components of a design process as headings in a document.
- Think of a project you have worked on as an engineer. Fill in each component area with bullet points to consider. This is the start of your HLD.
- Start to flesh out the HLD. Add more detail, such as what your company’s security policy specifies with regard to encryption, uptime, and so on.
- Use the HLD to create a one-page summary of the project. Construct a diagram of the solution. (Logical and physical designs are discussed in Chapter 4, “Developing a Design on Paper and Delivering It Physically”)
- The skills needed for these tasks are assumed in the VCAP5-DCD exam.
Definitions of Key Terms
Define the following key terms from this chapter and check your answers in the glossary.
Vision, Requirement, Constraint, Risk, Assumption
Read the Technical Material with a Designer’s Hat On
- No specifically defined or examined design process exists for the VCAP5-DCD; you must adapt a suitable one with which to work throughout your exam preparation.
- Study the recommended reading on the VCAP5-DCD blueprint, ensuring that you work to the latest exam version; slight changes in documentation or content often appear without warning.
- Although the VCAP5-DCD exam is a highly technical one, try to look past the technical facts and consider the impact of the settings or functionalities. For example, do not simply memorize the requirements for vMotion but consider the effect of guest virtual machines not meeting those vMotion requirements. Will the cluster become imbalanced? What is the importance of initial guest placement? What affect will DRS have?
- Know the VMware design terminology. Technical knowledge is great, but this exam also requires you to understand business requirements. If you don’t have experience with design work, remember to ask questions such as, “Is this the best way? Is it still simple? Is it required? Does its meet the requirements?”
Review Questions
The answers to these review questions are in Appendix A.
You are working on a hybrid cloud project, where production applications (yet to be fully developed) are to be deployed. Which of the following is a project requirement?
- The production data must be in the UK at all times.
- The hosting partner provides sufficient resources, without overcommitting, to support application load.
- The hosting provider meets uptime expectations.
- The development team provides the software on time.
In the project life cycle, who defines the vision?
- The IT architect
- The software vendor
- The business
Which of the following describes an item that is taken to be true at the design phase but has not been tested prior to execution?
- Requirement
- Constraint
- Assumption
- Risk
You are a virtualization consultant working on a disaster recovery project. You have proposed a solution that uses SAN technology to replicate production virtual machine files. This meets a cold standby requirement. During a design workshop meeting several points are raised. Which of the following could be a design constraint?
- The hardware currently being used in the datacenter is no longer supported.
- The company is undecided about the choice of centralized storage to be used in the enterprise.
- The company is at the end of year one of a three-year contract for the point-to-point link between site A and site B. This link is currently 10MB.
You are a technical consultant designing a solution for a web retail company. The project vision is to deploy a hybrid cloud, where the internal team develops the website on internal infrastructure and migrates production-ready applications to a hosting provider. The project is expected to ease deployment and require less infrastructure capital expenditure without lowering application quality. Which of the following is a risk associated with the project?
- The solution must adhere to ISO27001.
- Change control of the hosting vCloud platform is not under full control of the internal business.
- The hosting provider outsources the platform support to the platform vendor.
- The applications to be deployed are not fully developed, although a beta exists.
A project vision in some cases may not be achieved due to constraints, risks, and other project factors. However, a vision is required to guide the project throughout the life cycle.
- True
- False
When should a software vendor’s best practice be adhered to? (Choose all that apply.)
- Whenever possible, respecting other project requirements
- At all times because the vendor wrote and designed the software
- When there are no other requirements, as a guide to configuration
The following diagrams may be included in project documentation. Which of them shows a system’s components and how they could affect each other?
- Logical
- Entity relationship diagram
- Physical diagram