VCP5 Assistance, Please!

Mow

Hello, gang. I am currently in a Cisco Voice role at work, but I have convinced my boss to let me pursue VCP-DCV 5. I already took the Stanly course last year, but I never get assigned any projects for virtualization. I am pretty sure that I can get assigned some of these if I can nail this certification. I have the Scott Lowe book, my class books, including the lab one, and I know about VMWare HOL. Can anyone give me some advice on climbing this mountain and maybe how to use HOL while I study? I have a few ESXi hosts at home, but nothing that will run AutoLab comfortably. My goal is to get this in my pocket by the end of the year. I know that's probably a bit optimistic, but I have faith in myself. Thanks for any and all advice!

Mow

I should probably mention that I have other motives, also. Specifically, there is a VMWare-centric job for which I want to apply that is opening up in a month, so I want to refresh my knowledge and be able to walk the walk. Obviously I won't have a ton of production experience, but I will have a good grasp on the underlying tech. Plus it won't hurt if I can be deep into studying/labbing when I talk to the hiring manager.

blargoe

Use the official VCP5 Exam blueprint as your general study guide for the exam. Break up the blueprint into sections and work on a chunk at a time. Step through each section of the blueprint, browsing the relevant PDF documentation and work hands-on with each area. About a week before your exam date, get the PDF documents for and memorize the configuration maximums (max # of VM's per host/vcenter, max memory, cpu, etc). Don't worry about using up brain power on memorizing this stuff until you are more comfortable with the admin/operations types of things you will be asked on the test.

One thing I have done is to step through building a small environment the way you would in real life. I usually start with 5 VMs inside of VMware workstation - a small VM for AD/DNS/DHCP, a VM for vCenter Server, 2 VMs running ESXi, and a VM to use as a "NAS" to use for a shared iSCSI or NFS datastore between the two ESXi hosts. The negative about using VMware Workstation is that it would be time consuming to set up an environment that would support things like AutoDeploy, probably (I don't remember whether this is tested at the VCP level). HOL would probably be great to get some quick and dirty hands-on with some things that would be hard/time-consuming to set up from scratch.

Mow

Thanks, blargoe, that's what I was thinking, as far as the blueprint is concerned. Thanks for the advice on the memorization of the config max #s.

Do you have any advice for the VM I can set up for a NAS? Is there an appliance somewhere or a link to instructions? Thanks again!