I am not sure how the results of where you missed a question are pulled from, like with Cisco exams it gives you percentages and brief descriptions of the question type, but my output for the VCP510 said I missed questions in 24 separate categories of answers which I assume means they are tagging questions with multiple categories.
My worst enemy was the clock, as I got to question 36 and looked at my time, I had 44 minutes left. That meant I had 49 questions left, including the current one I hadn't read yet, with about 45 seconds per question from that point forward. A lot of the questions I received were very real world, I think this test was developed specifically for people with industry experience, and not just those with zero experience but steadfast studying and labbing dedication. After sitting the exam, I really don't believe that anyone without experience can pass it without previously seeing the actual test questions, be it by dumping or sitting the exam and failing - and even with experience I think passing this one on the first try would be one hell of a feat.
One of the biggest mistakes I made throughout my studies was labbing individual tasks independently of each other, from a root admin account, so I could not see what restrictions might come from building an entire environment from different levels of management levels - This will not give you the experience you need to pass this exam.
So to expand upon why my enemy was the clock, traditionally in my Cisco exams I can look at either the question or the set of answers independently and have a good idea of what the correct answer will be before I read the other, but with VMware that was not the case. A lot of questions were intricate real world scenarios, where there was definitely a correct answer, but you really need to weigh the context of the answer against the context of the question. This is where my balls were clenched tightly in the vice grip was re-reading the question, and re-reading the answers, which were both as intricate and context-based as the other.
My suggestion for labbing would be to build an entire domain through both the client and web interface, intergrate it with LDAP authentication, and create users in LDAP with different levels of management to perform management tasks within the environment. I would run through everything once in all platforms of administration (DCUI, Web, Client, CLI) at least once, just so you have at least one instance of exposure to the environment.
I will rebook if VMware will allow me another attempt with the class waiver, if they don't I won't bother again and walk away with the knowledge I've obtained to this point, but I have to say this test was a lot fairer than I have read before. One thing I would have to stress is to watch the clock on this exam, especially for people who are comfortable with Cisco exams, as there are no questions I got that I read the question and immediately knew the answer to even out spending more time on another question - Be VERY aware of the time you are allocating to certain questions.
My best advice is to watch the clock during the exam, reading is not anywhere near enough to pass, and labbing needs to be done from the perspective of deploying from a hierarchical vSphere management infrastructure. From booting hosts, to deploying VM's via templates, to exporting logs from vSphere - Lab your friggin ass off.
Will report back if I get the green light for attempt 2
