Monday 5 July 2010

New 5-day Install Configure Manage course for vSphere 4

The vSphere: Install Configure Manage (ICM) course was released in the middle of 2009, and is by far the most popular official course on vSphere 4 - those attending the course qualify for the VCP4 certification, and the content covers all the foundation-level skills and knowledge needed to deploy and administer a vSphere 4 environment.

Towards the end of August 2010, VMware will be releasing an updated version of the ICM course, and for the first time it will be a 5-day training event. This will give us the opportunity to cover additional material in the lecture and lab sessions, giving you a more well-rounded experience during the course and helping you further in preparation for the VCP4 exam.
The new content in the 5-day ICM will be:
  • vCenter Linked Mode
  • Host Profiles
  • Distributed Power Management
  • Deeper content on High Availability
  • Fault Tolerance

As well as the addition of the new material, VMware have also overhauled and restructured a lot of the content that was previously in the 4-day ICM course. Most of the new material is derived from the content of the current vSphere: Fast Track (FT) course, the 5-day extended-hours FT course will still be available, and will still cover some additional lecture and lab material not found in the new 5-day ICM.

Update on July 13th:
I can confirm that this course will be based on the new 4.1 release of vSphere.

5 comments:

  1. Hopefully the Fast Track course will be updated accordingly. If not, should I consider taking the ICM 40b instead?

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  2. The Fast Track course is not going to be updated for 4.1, it will remain based on 4.0 for as long as it continues to run.

    If you compare the current 4-day 4.0 ICM course to the current 5-day 4.0 Fast Track and the new 5-day 4.1 ICM course, most of what's in the extended-hours Fast Track will actually be in the regular-hours 5-day ICM - I've been attending the Train-The-Trainer (TTT) session for the 5-day ICM today and it looks very good :-)

    Scott.

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  3. Hi LuAr, the VCP certification is a 4.x certification, so you will not have to attend another course. I did also blog about how the VCP exam will be affected by the vSphere 4.1 release:
    http://vmwaretraining.blogspot.com/2010/07/changes-to-vcp-exam-due-to-vsphere-41.html

    I would never say that the course alone is enough to prepare you for everything that could come up in the exam, make sure you get the latest exam blueprint from VMware.

    Scott.

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  4. Hi Scott,

    I have an option to go for ICM v4.1 or Fastrack v4.0. I am more inclined to go for the fastrack because of the extended hours, more material and labs covered. Has the depth of material covered in ICM 4.1 increased. I have a fair amount of experience with VI3.5 and moving onto vsphere. What would you recommend?

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  5. Hi Jeet,

    I'm going to write a blog post about your precise situation, as I've been emailed that question by many people in the last week or so.

    Scott.

    ReplyDelete