VCA-DBT

sephiroth66

Has anyone taken this recently?

It seems pretty straight forward as far as I can tell. I know this isn't necessarily a highly credited certification, but I want something I can print out and put in a frame on my cubicle. - Plus we use VMware products to house our servers so I want to increase my knowledge on them as much as possible. This seems like a good start. 

I ran through the exam prep videos on VMware's learning zone, and I'm taking a look at the study guide now and composing a list of terms, etc. to study on. Most of these I'm familiar with in actual production use, but I didn't play a hand in the initial installation of our VMware environment, and we don't spin up new servers often so I need some review for sure.

Just thought I poke around to see if anyone had taken the exam recently. 

I believe the going rate is $125 for this exam, and $250 for the VCP exam. If anyone knows of a way to get some credits or discounts that info would be greatly appreciated!  

EANx

VCA used to be more of a sales-level exam. What return do you expect for spending $125 beyond a cert in a frame? 

cochi78

I took that one for fun in January. It's still having sales topics in it, but got more technical content compared to the VCA5-DCA from back in my day. If you're not required to have a VCA (e.g. via partner requirements), I think it's more of a collector's item for technicians.

For preparation and refreshing my knowledge I used Rick Crisci's VCA-DBT course on Udemy for like $10 and read through VMware pages. The exam was then open books and online, so no real challenge.

If you want to go deeper into technical topics, the vSphere Foundations exam is a good stepping stone towards VCP. It's just a Badge though, no certification to print out

Jon_Cisco

I took the Foundations exam recently.  I took the Stanley CC course and for the cost it is a great value.

For now it's just a badge on my LinkedIn profile but I hope to finish the VCP eventually.

sephiroth66

EANx said:

VCA used to be more of a sales-level exam. What return do you expect for spending $125 beyond a cert in a frame? 

Well I'm hoping this will show my boss I'm taking some initiative on a learning path to better assist with our VMware environment. I have an annual review coming up in about a month so I wanted something before then to show I'm working towards a goal. 

I've been studying for the ICND1, but wasn't planning on taking it until October.

sephiroth66

*Update

I just passed the exam this morning. Thankfully it was open book, but because the learning videos that VMware provided in their learning zone didn't cover at least 60% of the questions. I spent quite a bit of time dissecting and taking notes with the training material, but it seems only a handful of questions were derived from a few slideshows they displayed in the training videos. 

Even though it was open book- it was my first certification, so I'm still celebrating.