Might I be ready for the VCP550-DCV exam in two months?

metalone4

My goal is to have my VCP certification by June 1st of this year. Here is what I've done to prepare so far, and what I'm planning to do next.

1. I just completed the Stanly CC course. It's not "over" until May 10th, but I've completed all objectives.

2. I'm nearly finished going through Keith Barker's CBT Nuggets videos and I'm building the lab, as per the videos. Seems like good experience. I'll probably go through it a second time prior to test day.

3. I purchased the MeasureUp VCP550 practice questions, but I've heard conflicting reports as to whether they help prepare you for the exam. I'm going to study with them anyway.

4. Purchased the Mastering VMware vSphere 5.5 by Scott Lowe. I have yet to read it, but I plan to before June.

5. Last but certainly not least, I have downloaded the exam blueprint and will be going through each and every point listed. I think I have the latest version...it's 3.8 from Sept. 2015...seems like that would be out of date by now though.

I think I have my time planned out pretty well and will use all of these resources to their fullest prior to test day. I'm asking if this is enough though because I've heard of people who are supposedly very experienced with vSphere fail...numerous times. They always complain about the ambiguous nature of the questions or that the questions don't cover real world scenarios.

So what's your take....should I feel confident about passing using the study methods I've described?

UncleB

You make no mention of setting up a lab to get hands on experience of the subjects covered in the objectives - that is one of the few other avenues you could pursue.

You can pick up a server from aBay for not a lot (I picked up an HP Proliant with 4 drives and 32Gb memory for about $70) so you can use the evaluation period of the software to practice until you feel confident.

There are quite a lot of other practice exam questions out there - all free if you know where to look of course - so if you want to run through these then that is about as much as I have seen that is available to do.

Good luck
Iain

metalone4

UncleB wrote: »

You make no mention of setting up a lab to get hands on experience of the subjects covered in the objectives - that is one of the few other avenues you could pursue.

You can pick up a server from aBay for not a lot (I picked up an HP Proliant with 4 drives and 32Gb memory for about $70) so you can use the evaluation period of the software to practice until you feel confident.

There are quite a lot of other practice exam questions out there - all free if you know where to look of course - so if you want to run through these then that is about as much as I have seen that is available to do.

Good luck
Iain

Thanks, but I've already built a lab. I mentioned it in bullet point #2 regarding the CBT Nuggets videos, but I worded it poorly. I've built the lab that Keith has there (Windows 2012 vCenter Server, 2 ESXi hosts, OpenFiler iSCSI SAN, etc. all running in VMware Workstation). I hope it's sufficient...it certainly seems like good training...Keith is the man.

OctalDump

UncleB wrote: »

You make no mention of setting up a lab to get hands on experience of the subjects covered in the objectives - that is one of the few other avenues you could pursue.

You missed a bit, Uncle B:

2. I'm nearly finished going through Keith Barker's CBT Nuggets videos and I'm building the lab, as per the videos. Seems like good experience. I'll probably go through it a second time prior to test day.

If you really want to get dirty with VMware, then at least two instances of ESXi, and a SAN (or iSCSI or NFS), and practice Vmotion in all its glory along with instant failover and the rest.

metalone4

OctalDump wrote: »

If you really want to get dirty with VMware, then at least two instances of ESXi, and a SAN (or iSCSI or NFS), and practice Vmotion in all its glory along with instant failover and the rest.

Thanks for the tip! It's funny you should mention vMotion, I set that up in my lab yesterday (2 ESXi hosts, and Openfiler iSCSI/NFS SAN). Today I played around with DRS and Affinity/Anti-Affinity rules.

The CBT Nugget videos seem rather extensive and in-depth, but still I've seen people complain that they "don't go deep enough". I've also seen people complain that knowing all the blueprint topics isn't sufficient either. If neither of those cover the exam topics fully (CBT Nuggets + exam blueprint), I can't imagine what kind of curve balls the actual exam throws at you, and that's what I'm worried about.

scott28tt

Read up on each objective, and do each objective in your lab.

metalone4

scott28tt wrote: »

Read up on each objective, and do each objective in your lab.

Ok, will do. Thank you!