I passed the VCP5-DCV exam at the start of the week.

Why take it now?

Having worked with VMware for many years, I’ve never actually taken a VCP exam, this was due to not realising many years ago you could sit an exam and the course was not mandatory. When I finally looked into taking a VCP exam, VMware had just changed the rules, so that the course requirement was mandatory.

So I spat my dummy out and didn’t bother, as my employer at the time would not send me on a course, and I couldn’t afford it myself.

Fast forward, VMware released the VCP-NV exam, where the course requirement was waived if you had a CCNA or CCNP certification. Brilliant, I jumped onto the VCP-NV and hammered all the material out there I could find, as I was also looking at moving companies to work with NSX full time.

Having passed the VCP-NV, it then allowed me to sit any other VCP exam without sitting the appropriate course.  So I finally got around to sitting the VCP5-DCV

The exam itself

135 questions in 2 hours. Which is just under a question a minute.

There was a mix of short questions, and longer questions that described a particular deployment and then asked you a question based around that.

I managed to take the exam in 50 minutes, I can’t second guess myself once I’ve selected an answer, I move on and power through.

As the exam has so many questions, I found it basically covered all the feature set of vSphere 5.5, and the blueprint. No stone was left unturned, but there was also a heavy weight on the higher licence features.

I used the official study guide and did all the chapter and review questions a few days before the exam, as well as the mock exam which you can find on the mylearn page. I spent some time going through the troubleshooting guide for vSphere 5.5 as well, and making sure I understood each part.

Finally I googled for other peoples study guides, looking for prompts and notes for each part of the blueprint.

Whats next?

I’m not sure is the truth, I need to look at why my employer requires for partner status with certain vendors. I am really interested in the following though;

• Cisco CCDA / CCDP
• VCP6-DCV
• VCP6-DT
• CISSP (longer term planes)
• TOGAF

At the moment I have a few books to finish off reading, which include Mastering vSphere 6, Mastering Horizon 6 and the art of network architecture.

I also need to finish off that Learn PowerShell in a month of lunches book.

Regards

Dean
Follow @saintdle