Introduction

Welcome to the CCNA Cloud CLDADM 210-455 Official Cert Guide. The CCNA Cloud certification is designed to validate associate-level knowledge of successful deployment and operation of cloud technologies. Cloud administration represents the operational aspect of cloud, which is one of the most challenging components of realizing the promise of cloud for your business. While technology is a crucial building block, how you use it, and ultimately how you map your company’s business needs, processes, and workflows to those cloud technologies, is the difference between success and failure in a cloud deployment. Utilizing various cloud product suites from Cisco, along with ruthless standardization and workflow optimization, can enable a company to achieve substantial operational efficiencies, agility, and a level of flexibility never thought possible. A CCNA Cloud Administrator can be that “guiding light” for their organization as they embark on their cloud journey.

The CCNA Cloud CLDADM 210-455 Official Cert Guide is a self-study guide covering all of the topics from the corresponding Cisco exam blueprint. This book delves into the many operational and administrative processes and tasks that would be required to successfully operate a Cisco cloud environment.

This book is broken up into four parts. Part I starts with foundational topics that present the key concepts and background necessary to provide context on why cloud is important to transform an organization into an agile, flexible, and operationally efficient business. Part II provides an overview of the Cisco technology and software suites relevant to the exam. Part III delves into cloud administration and operations concepts such as deploying virtual machines and application containers, managing role-based access control, services catalogs, and reporting and chargeback systems. Part IV closes out the book by exploring cloud monitoring, capacity planning, and remediation methodologies.

We hope you enjoy this book and find it a useful exam preparation resource. Good luck on your test!

With the intention of giving you a holistic view of cloud computing and a more rewarding learning experience, the order in which we present the material is designed to provide a logical progression of explanations from basic concepts to complex architectures. Notwithstanding, if you are interested in covering specific gaps in your preparation for the exam, you can also read the chapters out of the proposed sequence.

Each chapter roughly follows this structure:

A description of the business and technological context of the explained technology, approach, or architecture

An explanation of the challenges addressed by such technology, approach, or architecture

A detailed analysis that immerses you in the main topic of the chapter, including its characteristics, possibilities, results, and consequences

A thorough explanation of how this technology, approach, or architecture is applicable to real-world cloud computing environments

Answer the “Do I Know This Already?” quiz questions to assess your expertise in the chapter topic.

Check the results in Appendix A, “Answers to the ‘Do I Know This Already?’ Quizzes.”

Based on your results, read the Foundation Topics sections, giving special attention to the sections corresponding to the questions you have not answered correctly.

After the first reading, try to complete the memory tables (where applicable) and define the key terms from the chapter, and verify the results in the appendixes. If you make a mistake in a table entry or the definition of a key term, review the related section.

Remember: Discovering gaps in your preparation for the exam is as important as addressing them.

For such purpose, Chapters 1 through 14 cover the following topics:

Chapter 1, “An Introduction to Cloud”—The term cloud is used so readily in the industry that it’s often difficult to nail down a solid definition. Is cloud a place? Is cloud something I swipe a credit card and purchase? Is it a managed service with a slew of four-letter acronyms? This chapter introduces the three primary cloud models, public, private, and hybrid, and also introduces you to a bit of history and the players in this space. The intent is to show you that the true value of cloud is in enabling a new paradigm for managing and consuming IT services.

Chapter 2, “Cloud: A New Operations Model for IT”—Traditional IT operating models are very expensive and resource intensive. Cloud provides a way to reduce much of the operating expense, duplication of efforts, and redundancy through automation. To take advantage of automation, it’s important to understand how IT organization structures fit into this new model. No longer can groups within IT work alone in their silos; cloud busts down those silos and provides a common set of tools and technologies through which standards and templates can drive new levels of efficiency and speed in deploying new applications and services.

Chapter 3, “The Cloud Operation Journey”—You are buying into all of the “cloud talk”? Awesome! Now, where do you start? Not every business is ready to jump into cloud with both feet. For those that want to dip their toe in, or maybe wade in a bit, it helps to think of cloud as a journey. There are numerous things that have to be in place for a cloud operating model to be successful. This chapter provides a roadmap for the operational side of cloud and describes the many lessons learned along the way.

Chapter 4, “Cisco Cloud Automation/Orchestration Suites”—Cloud orchestration and automation suites provide the framework that enables the logical abstraction of the underlying hardware and software that make up network, compute, and storage in the data center. For the Cisco CLDADM exam, UCS Director and Cisco Intelligent Automation for Cloud (CIAC) are the two platforms that are tested. This chapter will dive into both platforms and describe their architecture, components, and functionality.

Chapter 5, “Cisco Prime Service Catalog”—Prime Service Catalog is a platform that provides an easy-to-use portal that enables anyone within an organization to access and request applications and services from their cloud environment. This product takes standardized application packages and serves them up in a shopping cart–like format that automates the delivery of new services and applications to a company’s lines of business. What used to take weeks and hundreds of phone calls and emails can now be accomplished in minutes!

Chapter 6, “Cisco Cloud Infrastructure”—The underlying physical and virtual infrastructure is the “pool of resources” controlled by a cloud automation and orchestration suite. It is important to understand how these pieces fit together and the types of services they can offer. This chapter covers Cisco Virtual Application Cloud Segmentation (VACS), Nexus 1000V, Virtual Security Gateway (VSG), Cloud Services Router (CSR), and Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI) specifically from a cloud management and orchestration perspective.

Chapter 7, “Managing Users and Groups”—Role-based access control is the foundation for both security and segmentation of operational responsibilities. This chapter covers the aspects of creating multiple user types, privileges, and profiles for cloud users and administrators.

Chapter 8, “Virtual Machine Management”—The care and feeding of virtual machines in a cloud environment is covered in this chapter, with emphasis on the most common tasks that a typical cloud administrator needs to know how to perform. Editing VM parameters, migrating VMs from host to host, and managing VM snapshots are all tasks described in detail in this chapter.

Chapter 9, “Automating Cloud Infrastructure with UCS Director”—At the foundation of any cloud is a layer of infrastructure that needs to be managed and configured through automation. UCS Director provides an infrastructure automation platform for rapidly developing policies for deploying storage, network, compute, and virtualization resources.

Chapter 10, “Building a Service Catalog and User Portal with UCS Director and Prime Service Catalog”—After you provision a service in Prime Service Catalog, you must ensure that everything works as expected. This chapter covers how to prepare and test a user portal and service catalog in PSC and UCS Director, and how your users will place orders, verify that the orders were provisioned successfully, and access the VMs and applications provisioned.

Chapter 11, “Deploying Virtual Application Containers”—Application containers logically separate different tenants from each other and enable each tenant to specify their own security and application services (like load balancers and firewalls). This chapter covers the deployment of the different virtual container options within UCS Director, including the VACS product.

Chapter 12: “Chargeback, Billing, and Reporting”—A chargeback system is often put in place to “pay for” IT services consumed by the company’s lines of business. Implementing a cost structure and chargeback policy is a crucial mechanism to assign a value to the utilization of a shared resource. This chapter covers these aspects of cloud administration and provides an overview of the reporting system that shows cloud utilization and the billing records associated with each tenant.

Chapter 13, “Cloud Performance and Capacity Management”—When do I add capacity? How healthy is my cloud environment? These are questions that cloud administrators better be able to answer! This chapter shows you how to utilize various serviceability options to get visibility into the underlying hardware and components of the cloud infrastructure. In addition, this chapter demonstrates how to use UCS Performance Manager for capacity management and bandwidth monitoring.

Chapter 14: “Monitoring and Maintaining the Health of Your Cloud”—Looking at the cloud stack as a whole, this chapter shows how to leverage Prime Service Catalog and UCS Director to manage the cloud environment from the top down through custom monitoring and health dashboards.

Chapter 15: “Final Preparation”—This chapter lists a series of tasks that you can use for your final preparation before taking the exam.

Table I-1 lists each exam topic in the blueprint along with a reference to the book chapter that covers the topic.

Table I-1 CLDADM Exam 210-455 Topics and Chapter Cross References

The CCNA Cloud CLDADM 210-455 exam may have topics that emphasize different functions or features, and some topics may be rather broad and generalized. The goal of this book is to provide the most comprehensive coverage to ensure that you are well prepared for the exam. Although some chapters might not address specific exam topics, they provide a foundation that is necessary for a clear understanding of important topics. Your short-term goal might be to pass this exam, but your long-term goal should be to become a qualified cloud professional.

It is also important to understand that this book is a “static” reference, whereas the exam topics are dynamic. Cisco can and does change the topics covered on certification exams often.

This exam guide should not be your only reference when preparing for the certification exam. You can find a wealth of information available at Cisco.com that covers each topic in great detail. If you think that you need more detailed information on a specific topic, read the Cisco documentation that focuses on that topic.

The best place to find out about the latest available Cisco training and certifications is under the Training & Events section at Cisco.com.

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