Finally, after a prolonged preparation, I took at a shot at and passed VCP410. It feels good, mainly because I started getting burnt out towards the end. I began the preparation in the spring, but had to take time off in the summer due to family commitments and ended up re-studying in the fall...
With vSphere 5 out, VCP4 is "so yesterday" in our high-paced technology world, but I'll share my comments anyway, in the hopes that they will help fellow TE'ers...
Official course
To fulfill the requirement I took the UCSC Extensions online course. They are now offering one on vSphere 5, and I would certainly recommend this type of a course over the standard 5-day track. In case you are not familiar, it is offered in an online, 3-month format by University of California Santa Cruz Extensions, and is accepted by VMware to fulfill the requirement.
The course was okay. I have always been a proponent of self-study, so if it was not a requirement for VCP, I'd never take it. Three things I personally gained from the course:
- well-rounded/structured knowledge of vSphere, with gaps filled
- 3-month access to the lab - this in itself may be the reason to take this longer class and prepare for VCP, if you don't want to build a lab yourself
- familiarity with ALL areas of vCenter/vSphere interface afer finishing all official labs
Study materials- Official ICM courseware - pretty basic, does not help much for VCP, but shows a few things that are apparently "VMware way of doing things", like specific performance counters VMware seems to like. Don't bother (except for getting through the official course).
- Mastering VMware vSphere 4 by Scott Lowe. A great book that explains technology very well. Recommended for gaining solid understanding of the products, but if you want to pass the exam, it needs to be complemented by whitepapers.
- Official VMware whitepapers. Excellent resource, well-written documentation that goes into deep technical details and yet is easy to understand - I actually enjoyed reading them. Must read for VCP.
Lab and hands-on practice
This is one exam where hands-on practice is strongly recommended. Multiple times during testing I had to close eyes and click through the imaginary interface, looking for the right answer.
While preparing, I mostly relied on the previous work experience, but used the class lab to practice a few things I never worked with before, like Distributed Switches and DRS/HA. Also built a 3-node + OpenFiler home lab to play with vStorage stuff, and just to have a system to check random settings on.
Exam
IMO, the exam is well-balanced in terms of both question difficulty and diversity. To give you an idea, I answered ~40% based on real-life experience, another ~40% based on whitepapers, and found last ~20% ambiguous, with either too few/too many answers that seemed correct, or unable to understand what authors of the question were trying to ask.
Random tips- Identify your weak areas and eliminate them by reading corresponding documentation and/or practicing. For example, FC SAN is something I have almost zero experience with, so to fill this gap I read a 94-page whitepaper cover to cover and it paid off on the exam.
- If you don't have good memory for numbers (maximums, minimal requirements), study them in advance, but go over them again minutes before the exam - short-term memory can save the day in this case.
Resources
Besides those listed under study materials, the single most valuable resource for me was the Simon Long's page:
VCP4 vSphere Study Notes - The SLOG – SimonLong/Blog
If you get through all material linked on that page and understand it all, you should pass the exam.
All in all, obtaining VCP4 was a great experience... It rounded up and put a structure to my knowledge of vSphere. Also, after reading hundreds of pages of documentation and studying hard, I now have more respect for the exam and those holding the certification (and even more so, the higher ones).
