The Oracle Exadata 11g Essentials (1Z0-536)

Mr. Larry Elison said in one of his recent appearance when launching Exadata X3-2, "SAP Hana is kinda small... about 0.5TB small. It is indeed small. Mine is bigger." and something like that, although I can't remember his exact words.

Too bad, Mr. Bill Gates' Microsoft ain't jump on the bandwagon yet on a totally Microsoft based appliance. Microsoft is working with alliance partners like HP or so in current appliance wave.

So what's the big deal about appliance based solution?

Yeah? What's the big deal?

Appliance is not something new. Seriously.

Early days of computing solution actually were appliance-based! Computer engineers assembled a dedicated computing machine using their own proprietary hardware, software, networking devices, storage and components with performance centric mentality to maximize utilization of available resources. Use some marketing catch words from principals like IBM and Oracle: Balanced Configuration.

Then computing components became commoditized, leveraging economic of scale, drastically lower down prices, improve adoption and innovations. Too bad, the commoditization happened individually for each component. Solutioning process nowadays spends a hell of time and efforts to assemble these "unbalanced" components together and it requires a hell of group of specialized people like systems engineer, storage expert, network specialist and so on together to make sure the end result can somehow meet the real customer needs.

Change is inevitable. Complexity sucks.

Appliance based deployment lowers complexity.

Wait! Oracle actually try to differentiate appliance and appliance-like platform. Exadata is actually a appliance-like platform. What it really means is that Exadata provides almost full flexibility in operating the Oracle database software as if it is in a non-Exadata environment. A true appliance is more limited in terms of configuration. Emm, the characteristics of these two kinds are usually overlapping and we shouldn't waste too much time to try to identify the idiosyncrasy of both since they shall eventually converge into single definition.

So, there are Netezza, Exadata, SAP HANA, Greenplum, HP Vertica, SmartAnalytics and the list goes longer with many smaller players in the market. Gartner Magic Quadrant paper should be able to point out few names in this area.

Anyway, enough of the gibberish speech about appliance.

I think appliance is great as it will cut down my time in assembling a BOM for proposals, although sometimes the price tag is hard to fit into the budget unless Oracle or any appliance vendor is kindly to give out GREAT bid price for us.

I took and passed 1Z0-536 The Oracle Exadata 11g Essentials. Scored 84% . To me, 84% is a score that has plenty of rooms for improvements. I would attribute this below-than-my-average score to the lack of literature about Exadata in the circulation. This is an area for enhancement. Oracle, please take note.

My preparation materials basically include OPN learning materials about Exadata under the specialization track, "Achieving Extreme Performance with Oracle Exadata (Oracle Press)" and many whitepapers/articles.

Some major subject areas tested in the examination are IORM, Database Machine specs and best practices. I got ambushed by some questions about ASM attribute and state of the disks. OUCH! No idea at all what the hell they are and I can only count on my common sense. Non-Exadata Oracle specific knowledge would be a great use here.

MCTS 70-178 Microsoft Project 2010, Managing Projects

Suddenly I became nostalgic.

You know, Microsoft Project is one of some early batch of software that I used during tertiary education time besides the obvious DOS, Windows operating system, VB (Not .NET you young people!) and et cetera.

I remembered times when being instructed to present my project schedules which ended up with printing of few ten pages of "partial" gantt charts and stitched them together using double sided tapes or glues. Guess not easy to be a project manager during those times. :D

Anyway, transition from the yawning old version of Microsoft Project to the state of the art version of 2010 (2013 on its way) is phenomenal. Number of users grow into millions and with some quarter of them with a chartered PMP qualification. Still, more projects failed in this decade than the total of few previous decades added up. Microsoft Project is just a tool, and it really can't help if you don't understand the essential of managing a project.

Anyway, back to the story of 70-178.

You see, to me, this examination is nothing but just a milestome to tell people that I'm more proficient in using this tool than others. Technically, it's not a tough one either. I have passed various other exams, which I personally think at a different playing field than this exam.

So, don't worry too much if you are taking this exam anytime soon.

What you really need to prepare are:

• Download the trial version/buy the licensed copy of Microsoft Project 2010
• Use the software alot, and explore various of its features
• Understand the basics of project management (If you are a PMP, congrats that you are on a faster track to pass this)
• Read one or more books on Microsoft Project 2010. I scanned through most of them and I think "Microsoft Project" title from Sybex is short and concise (about 400 pages) whereby "Microsoft Project In Depth" from QuantumPM is indeed, in depth (about 1000 pages).

Well, my passing rate of 962/1000 should indicate to you that the preparation materials above are sufficient. Right?

Can't get the damned "Gangnam style" out from my head. Geez.

COG-622: IBM Cognos 10 BI Administrator

This is a pretty simple test, perhaps due to the simplicity of Cognos 10 BI administration? Not really, I think the exam is out-of-sync to the actual administration needs of Cognos 10. Too many theoretical questions and the test misses the more essential adminitrative aspects and not reflective of a milestone that only a seasoned administrator will achieve. OR, most likely, I'm just too over qualified for it ;-)

My study materials are:

Cognos 10 Hand Book
Cognos 10 Architecture and Deployment Guide
Cognos 10 Installation and Configuration Guide
Cognos 10 Administration and Security Guide
Few VMs to play with

I have also developed a 3 days Cognos 10 Administration Boot Camp training course with tons of learning slides and hands-on labs.

TOGAF 9.0 CERTIFIED

After I passed my TOGAF foundation two months back and with additional two months of preparation and extensive study of TOGAF 9.0 specification, I finally settled my TOGAF Certified certification.

The exam was a tough one, depending on how you perceive it. It is questionably easy to pass without a thorough understanding of the topics as many exam takers commented that you just need to pick the longest answer or the most TOGAFish answer. However when you really spend time to delve into each of the scenarios' questions and relate it to available answers, it demands serious understanding and application of the knowledge in TOGAF in order to figure out the best possible answer. The open book nature of the examination allows candidate to cross examine their answer, however only useful if only the candidate knows where to find related information in the book efficiently since TOGAF covers lots of topical grounds in the book.

My score was 85% which means for 2 out of the 8 questions, I had chosen the suboptimal answer. Too bad I don't know which one I screwed up. Too bad.

This is just the start of a wonderful journey with TOGAF certified title. Well done!

TOGAF Foundation

A long awaited first architect level certification of mine, though foundational level, serves as a catalyst to boost value for my employer and clients. It is not a tough paper to pass, comparing to its Part 2 brother. I listed the materials that I used for examination preparation below:

• TOGAF Version 9.0 documentation (Optional but recommended, especially if you are like me going for Part 2 soon)


• TOGAF 9.0 Foundation Study Guide (Sufficient to pass part 1 but hardly flying color)


• Misc. TOGAF 9.0 Summary documents (For understanding only)


• Few years of architecting experiences (Optional but useful for really understand TOGAF values)

My score was 93% which is aligned with my usual passing standard. I think preparation works for Part 2 would be more interesting because it requires drilling deep into in-and-out of TOGAF 9 specification. Sounds fun!

83-640 TS Windows Server 2008 Active Directory, Configuring

This test is the first virtual lab based certification exam from Microsoft, therefore Nerdy Eddy must go and try it out. That's reason #1. Reason #2 is the demand for me to acquire the proper overall understanding about Active Directory and its configuration thingy and thus to be able to talk to those nasty IT Administrators, especially those bank customers of ours. You might be a vendor like us and if you're dealing with enough customers with relatively large directory-based network infrastructure, you do understand the fact that without a knowledge of the standard operating procedures and configurations (hardening and stuffs) of IT systems, your project might get into troubles, well "preferably" at the end of the testing phase and the start of migration phase. Surprises such as services suddenly went down, network became inaccessible and some weird blockage of program execution can turn your world upside down and when you found out the root of cause, most of the time it's all about subtle policy settings. Lolx. If you're telling me that all these hassles form the experiences of a seasoned technical person, well, wake up and tell yourself that it is all caused by your incapability, insufficient knowledge, unwillingness to learn formally and unable to read a book from cover to index. LOLX.

About 83-640. It's quite a fun testing experience. The test program started one or more virtual machines for you and ask you to perform a series of tasks within timed duration. I guess the step by step process is not important but the end result. You can do the entire tasks in command prompt if you're well verse in it than GUI based tools. Of course, some tasks must be perform using GUI tools.

For my case, there were so called performance labs, each one must be completd within 65 minutes and consists of roughly 7 to 9 tasks. Nonetheless, my task scopes are quite limited to the use of ntdsutil, dnsmgmt.msc, dsa.msc, domain.msc and schmmgmt. I didn't use compmgmtlauncher.exe at all. No tasks for me that're related to monitoring and ADCS, ADFS, ADLDS, ADRMS.

Then after completed the labs, you need to settle a traditional question-based test (30 questions).

I've passed the test with 933 score, not sure it is a good score or not because this is my first MS certification exposure :p

My preparation materials were:


Que MCTS: 70-640 Exam Cram (As main study material)
Windows 2008 Bible (As ad-hoc reference book)
Microsoft Site and TechNet
Some Windows 2008 VM to play with

I'm not sure I want to proceed now to complete MCITP track, unless my work desires more knowledge on network and more MS environment stuffs.

IBM MQ Solution Designer Certification

O ya. I almost forgot to post my status on the IBM MQ certification test number 996.

Compared to the SOA certification I previously taken, which I commented most of the questions are very subjective to different minds, MQ exam is straighforward and technical indeed. Maybe one or two questions are abit gray because of the way they phrased the statements, the rest are the kind either you know or you don't know because you didn't study.



I think this paper is not a big problem for professionals who got extensive designing and solutioning experience (like me!). Another certification paper on MQ administration should provide more comprehensive coverages on how MQ really in action operationally.

IBM SOA Fundamentals (2008) - 000-669

I went to take this SOA entry level certification last Tuesday during the IBM SOA Service Management Conference 2009 in Malaysia (The exam is FREE!). Well, the thing is I don't really have the luxury of abundant time to prepare for this one, partly because I was prep-ing for MQ 996 Solution Designer exam the day before (Will post details on this later) and I only managed to cover the following reading materials.

*Best Practices for SOA Management (Chapters 1 - 3)
Publication number: REDP-4233-00

*Propagating Identity in SOA with Tivoli Federated Identity Manager
Publication number: REDP-4354-00

*Understanding SOA Security Design and Implementation (Chapter 1)
Publication number: SG24-7310-01

*WebSphere Service Registry and Repository Handbook (Chapter 1)
Publication number: SG24-7386-00

*Implementing Technology to Support SOA Governance and Management (SKIPPED)

*SOA fundamentals in a nutshell (Quite a number of questions from this, thought might not in a direct way)


Publication number: SG24-7538-00

More:
IBM Recommandations for Test Preparation


I find most of the questions in the paper very subjective and open ended to the background and experiences of one person. Giving an analogy, the question can be:

13. Please select 2 out of the following that best describes the way to die peacefully.

a. Died when sleeping (Pretty obvious huh)
b. Jumping down from 100 storeys tall building
c. Jumping down from 50 storeys tall building
d. Use a knife
e. Use a gun

When I saw some of the questions similar to the above style, I was like "HUH", then "EMM", then "SHIT"... Well, at the end I need to resort to 2 of my most effective strategy:

A. Use Common Sense in The Context
B. Choose either the shortest or longest answer (!)


By the way, there's another candidate in the same room with me that can't even tell the test number (000-669) when the proctor asked him. What's the whole point of taking the test without even understand the details of the test, its' objectives and structures.

Result receipt

83.3%..... Answered 9 questions wrongly. Darn.

The bottomline is this test is just merely testing your knowledge and common sense on SOA at a very introductory level and yet term "Fundamentals".

I guess product specific certification is more interesting... I like the logo though.

IBM Websphere Application Server (WAS) V6.1 Network Deployment Certification 253

Preparation for this examination (253) was kinda harsh. I only managed to cram 2.5 of the related IBM Red Books and struggled to get the other questions right using my project experiences.

Study Materials:

WebSphere Application Server 6.1 Planning and Design (SG24-7305-00)
WebSphere Application Server 6.1 System Management and Configuration (SG24-7304-00)
WebSphere Application Server 6.1 Security Handbook (SG24-7304) - Part 1

I really want to read up another one about Performance, Scalability and HA but my schedule was extremely tight, well, maybe will do the reading if going for the advanced certification.

Score: 89%

Flashback on the days in BrainBench

I like BrainBench. To be precise I like the FREE tests from BrainBench. It's free and everyone loves free stuffs. So I decided to log into the system and review what I had done during the past with BrainBench.

Some logos I'm allowed to use from BrainBench.











Some nice spots I'm still holding in BrainBench. Cool huh.

IBM Exam 704 - Advanced DB2 DBA Certification

Taking advantage of IBM certification promotion offered to their business partners in Malaysia, I enrolled into the test 000-704 advanced DB2 DBA about less than one month ago. The test only costs me USD30. Primary study material is the "Advanced DBA Certification Guide and Reference for DB2(R) Universal Database v8 for Linux, UNIX, and Windows", ISBN #0130463884. Overall the study experience was a pleasant one because you get to dive into the rich technical details of IBM DB2 database engine and start to be amazed by this world class RDBMS.

Anyway I think that it is too naive to declare someone as certified Advanced DB2 DBA just for the sake of passing 56% out of 57 questions. Yes, the questions are breadth and tricky but it would be better if the number of questions in the test increased to let say 300, :), testing every nuances of DB2.

For me, even passing the exam with flying colors as usual, I think I'm only conquered maybe 35% to 50% of the total universe of DB2 version 8 LUW, not to mention my lack of exposures in DB2 for i5/zOS and version 9 universes.

I will work harder. :-)