Temperfield Blog

For those not familiar with VMware certification paths take a look here.

In short, for those in a hurry … wooowwww I don’t have my results yet. I will have them in 10 business days starting today. Hopefully I will not need to visit the testing centre for this exam again. My heart will tremble every time I will see *VMware* in my Inbox

UPDATE 27.04.2011 I got my exam score report. PASSED. yeiiii!

Very well done VMware education – this was the most demanding exam that I’ve been through so far. Very well prepared, it’s clear that there is a lot of effort involved to prepare & to deliver it like you did.

Now, back to my exam experience.

Preparation time

I have invested about 40 hours during last 1 week and a half to prepare this exam. At the end of exam I was far from happy with what I’ve did (see bellow). Of course, this evaluation is in line with my high satisfaction standards

Will it be enough for you? Maybe more or less – depending on your knowledge and experience.

In order to have a clear picture from where I have started from, let me tell in a few words about my background:  I have more than 15 years of experience in IT field, mostly Linux/UNIX, IT architecture & design, planning, performance troubleshooting. During these years I’ve been through different roles Technical Project Manager, IT Systems Specialist, IT consultant, IT trainer and software developer in early days. Since a few years ago I am teaching several IBM classes  – *NIX (Linux & AIX), any storage system sold by IBM from entry-level to enterprise, SAN classes. I am also a VCI (VMware Certified Instructor). I have used vSphere since it was called VMware Infrastructure so a few years of experiece behind.

What have I used to prepare?

• Exam blueprint
• several VMware classes documentation – mainly ICM & Troubleshooting class
• online resources – mainly Sean Crookston’s guide, Kendrick Coleman‘s guide,Duncan Epping’s and Eric Sloof’s blogs. Thank you guys. Your efforts helped me a lot.
• official documentation (‘course )
• a lot of other resources linked from the guides above

What I have sincerely missed the most these days? A tablet. This kind of exam could be  your justification (if you need any) to buy a tablet at last

The exam. How is it? How was it for me?

If you didn’t already see the UI demo for this exam take a short peek. Now you know – this exam evaluates you only for your ability to do stuff around VMware vSphere products family. You are given a live & living remote lab where you should perform several tasks. No multiple choices, no questions asked. Just do your job on a live remote lab considering the task requirements.

Regarding my challenges during the exam:

lab  passwords In my study lab I am using several passwords and I have get used to them. This seemed to be a drawback during the exam. Even though VMware made significant efforts to make credentials easily accessible for me the home-lab routine played a more important role

time-time-time Even if I will put it 10 times in a row I will not be able to stress it enough. One might assume there is a plenty time for anything (stretching & a short nap included). WRONG. You will get around 40 task which you need to complete in around 5 minutes each. How long does it take for you now to complete one task? 30min, 1hour? Maybe you’re just going again through the documentation, reading some VMware communities post… Well, come down to earth. If you didn’t go through a specific task back at home please consider that you will have low chances to get it done when you will be required to complete it at exam time. If not prepared so well, you’ll better have some spells & magic in your backpack or reschedule your exam a few weeks later

click inside When you switch from task description to live lab you need to click inside, similar to consoles opened though vSphere Client. It took me some time to get accustomed to that

I got disconnected for about 5 minutes You get more and more pressure on your shoulders while the remaining time to complete the exam decreases. About 30 minutes before my scheduled ending time I got disconnected from remote lab. This lasted for about 5 minutes and maybe another 5 minutes to re-establish connections and everything at remote lab. Ten minutes in the last exam hour are different than 10 minutes at the begging of the exam. Very-very annoying

No nothing inside the testing room During the exam you are not allowed to bring anything inside. A scheduled break for a smoke, a snack, a glass of water you name it would have been a God sent angel for me.

Testing centre mouse & keyboard Well, when everything counts towards you being successful or not I think you have the right to be picky. Even though the monitor was great, the mouse & keyboard were somehow impacting the exam experience. During the exam I have used an old ball mouse (maybe uncleaned ), it was a challenge to point to anything. Add on top the fact that the lab is remote, it takes some time to redraw your screen. Any failure to click on something, drag&drop something could mean precious lost seconds. The keyboard was better, but awkwardly placed under the desk  because it was not enough space to push my chair backwards to slide the keyboard outside

Tips & Tricks

You will need a practice lab. That’s for sure. Even if you have a job which brings you in front of vSphere client daily I am sure you didn’t perform each and every task from the stated objectives in the blueprint.

Consider that you will not be able to google stuff around during the exam and you will not have access to your bookmarks which you may be using while at home/work. There is a huge impact in productivity when you need to know stuff by heart – for instance the difference between das.failuredetectiontime and das.failuredetectioninterval. You will not  have access to your usual sources of information.

Keep in mind that you need to have experience with both ESX & ESXi.

Even though you are warned before starting the exam I think it worth mentioning: your entire work will be evaluated only once, after the exam has ended. Take care for the steps you are performing not to affect the previous completed tasks.

You might have tasks dependencies. Task 3 not completed? Maybe you cannot perform task 25 without it.

Can you perform the same tasks from GUI and command line? Or vCLI, PowerCLI, vMA are the perfect strangers for you?

How does it ended for me?

I did not complete all tasks and I didn’t approach the last one. Once exited the exam room I was puzzled like when you step down from a montagne russe. I was hungry, thirsty and under some physical pressure which made be to hurry into a rest room

But the most important thing – I was surprised by the exam intensity and not happy at all with how well I did. Let’s hope for the best now, waiting for VMware to send me the results.

Thoughts

I think it is a very good experience for every VCP to prepare for this exam. You will for sure learn more, you will experiment things never tried into production environment. You will see it for yourself once you’ve read the objectives from the blueprint what stuff you’ve never had the chance to experiment with. For instance vCenter Heartbeat? Orchestrator?

For sure there is a significant difference in what’s required between VCP & VCAP-DCA. I see great value in owning this certification as nobody could argue your guru abilities and experience with vSphere, further more there is a different level – you will be an Advanced Professional after all.