How the *bleep* am I going to pass the test?!

Deathmage

scott28tt wrote: »

With over 15 years as an instructor I know very well about different learning styles.

I've coached hundreds of VCPs, and seen people fail time and time again cos of the same mistakes - I'd never claim to be an authority of the topic of passing a VCP exam, but I can help...

You've done a great job in the face of challenges that others don't have to face

Thanks Scott. Life has been a challenge for me since I can remember but IT is the one thing I understand. I was born 5 months pre-mature with 45% brain damage (1st preme to be placed in a incubator in the US @ Yale in 1985 - I was 8 ounces, 4 grams) now my IQ is 132 but I lack social skills and fast learning.

However I don't like frowning upon my disabilities as a crutch just means I have to work harder than others and why I normally devote 60 hours a week to study.

But back to the OP. Everyone struggles in there own ways, I find that someone willing to open a book is on the right track to learning. My philosophy is never stop learning not matter how hard it is. Eventually it will click and that triumph will be amazing! Keep at it..

Fine example, I learned how to speak Chinese but it took me 2 years to learn it.

GAB1900

scott28tt wrote: »

The blueprint, the software, the documentation - I've never used anything else to help me pass a VCP exam.

scott28tt:
Is this what you mean with the documentation? I know it's a silly question but if I am going to spend a lot of time on it I want to make sure I am reading the right thing! I downloaded the indicated zip file.

STANLY_CC

Don't forget, you can still contact your instructors. They are a great source of information and help.

mguernsey wrote: »

So I took the Stanly class about a year ago, and about 8 months ago attempted the exam and failed with a score of 286. I tried to continue to study and prep, but I changed jobs during that time and had to figure out how to do my job rather than spend that time studying. And after I got home, the last thing I wanted to do was crack open a book and do more studying or labbing.

Anyways, for the last couple weeks I've been getting back into the habit of studying and doing some labs, but no matter how much I try I keep messing up on the networking portions - I just can't seem to keep the concepts, use cases, configurations, versions, connections, policies, etc. straight in my head.

It's driving me nuts! And it was networking and storage that doomed me the last time I took the test.

scott28tt

There are numerous documentation links in the blueprint, grab that first then click away...

kj0

This year I have changed my approach, none of my previous ways were working, but it seems to be working much better. Getting a study partner is well worth it, Throwing questions back to each other everyday. Works very well.

Oakparktech

Great idea. Please PM me if anyone is interested in study partner for VCP5.

KJ0- do you have a list of all the labs you done? example: templates and clones, migrate vm etc.
I plan on creating an excel spreadsheet and keeping track of what i have done.

kj0

Just need to follow the Documentation and there are some good ones in the Mastering vSphere 5.5 and 6.0 books.

I do a lot at work, but then I go home and just make some different environmental changes and run the same thing. Eg. misconfigure a port and then run vMotion.

kj0

Also, Hands on Labs are also a great resource. Here are the documents for the labs http://docs.hol.vmware.com/catalog

Head over to VMware Learning Platform

mguernsey

Sat for the exam today - AND I PASSED!!!

The advice given was very helpful, but I would like to emphasize that you definitely need to lab lab lab, and lab some more. Build the lab, break the lab, fix the lab. Rinse. Repeat. Get to know what types of errors are possible for a wide-range of configurations and how to not only recognize, but fix them too. There weren't many min max questions, but you should be familiar with clusters, what those alerts mean, what performance metrics mean, and the importance, use and configuration of resource pools. vSphere with Operations Management is also a thing, specifically the badges and sub-badges, what they represent and how to interpret them. Networking, vSS and vDS, security policies, and errors of the same. vSAN, iSCSI, VMFS (upgrading, adding to, extents, as well as a couple max's).

I appreciate all the help people gave me, and as for the study resources I used I had Scott Lowe's "Mastering vSphere 5.5" as my primer, the Sybex "VCP5-DCV Study Guide" by Brian Atkinson, Bill Ferguson's "The Official VCP5 Certification Guide", as well as the VMware Knowledge Base articles.

Thanks again everyone!

Oakparktech

Congrats!!!

Just curious. What kind of vSphere lab setup did you setup to practice?

mguernsey

Oakparktech wrote: »

Congrats!!!

Just curious. What kind of vSphere lab setup did you setup to practice?

I actually had two different setups - the first one was just my "production" ESXi box paired with a FreeNAS server. This gave me the opportunity to work on troubleshooting networking and storage. The second lab I had was a full fledged AutoLab 2.0 setup on my desktop running in Workstation. I upgraded my system to 32GB of RAM, went through all the steps to configure AutoLab, then added in Veeam, Operations Management, vSAN, vMA, and Veeam Backup and Recovery. My desktop never got over 60% RAM utilization, and it was real easy to go in and break something and see what kind of chaos I could cause. Fixing it was a matter of just undoing what I had done, of course. I think the error messages and problem codes that came up were more useful for the exam than anything else. Also recommend downloading Iometer and using it to cause contention issues.

Oakparktech

Nice, that's exactly what I been trying to setup. I setup nested ESXi on an HP server and always seems to run into issues. and need to apply workarounds.

Oakparktech

DO you know if auto lab supports vSphere5.5 and can it be added to an HP Proliant DL380G6 server?

mguernsey wrote: »

I actually had two different setups - the first one was just my "production" ESXi box paired with a FreeNAS server. This gave me the opportunity to work on troubleshooting networking and storage. The second lab I had was a full fledged AutoLab 2.0 setup on my desktop running in Workstation. I upgraded my system to 32GB of RAM, went through all the steps to configure AutoLab, then added in Veeam, Operations Management, vSAN, vMA, and Veeam Backup and Recovery. My desktop never got over 60% RAM utilization, and it was real easy to go in and break something and see what kind of chaos I could cause. Fixing it was a matter of just undoing what I had done, of course. I think the error messages and problem codes that came up were more useful for the exam than anything else. Also recommend downloading Iometer and using it to cause contention issues.

mguernsey

Oakparktech wrote: »

DO you know if auto lab supports vSphere5.5 and can it be added to an HP Proliant DL380G6 server?

AutoLab should work just fine - there are a couple tutorials on Youtube on installing it, although the one I used was by Hersey Cartwright and covered installing it in Workstation. If your server is on the HCL for 5.5 (or if you managed to get all the drivers injected to get 5.5 running on your server) then you're golden.

AutoLab is basically a vApp that you're deploying, and you just have to populate the OSes once you have the infrastructure in place. You'll need to get hold of Windows Server 2003 and 2008 iso's, as well as the vSphere 5.5 installer, vCenter installer, vMA installer, and the Operations Management installer.

The first time I tried to deploy AutoLab I was lost, and watching Hersey's videos cleared up a lot of the confusion and got my lab going in under 3 hours. Highly recommend you watch them if you haven't already.

Here's the link to the AutoLab download and guide - you just need to register an account (they won't spam you).

http://www.labguides.com/autolab/

Essendon

Congrats on the pass! See, it wasnt that hard! If one puts in the required effort, with a stroke of luck, this test is easily gettable.

mguernsey

Trying to figure out if I need to take the new class in order to complete the requirements for my VCP5 cert - I took the class back in Dec '13, and I see in my transcript that it's recorded by VMware, but I'm not sure if I need to take the class again with the 5.5 content, since the class I took then was for 5.0 and 5.1. Anyone know the answer?

**EDIT**

OK, just checked out the VMware website and from what I can tell yes, the class still counts and I should hear from VMware in the next 2 business days. Whew! Was panicking a bit there - didn't want to wait 6 months for another class or have to fork over $4k for the privilege of sitting in a classroom for a week.

scott28tt

You don't need to take any more training, it's a 5.x cert you have so any 5.x version of training will do.

Even if you had needed to do a What's New for 5.5, it's 2 days and around $2k.