Passed VCP510

Essendon

...this afternoon. This was my second attempt at it. I missed out on the first one by 10 points, bettered it this time by over 100 points and got a 407. The testing centre was unusually quiet which the proctor attributed to the afternoon slot. Here's my review:

1. Straightforward exam mostly, either you know it or you dont.

2. Read the questions very carefully. Just one different word changes the answer. Example, you are connected to vCenter or to the host. Either you are connected via DCUI or via SSH. Take note of the word - any. This changes the answer too. Bloody VMware trip want to trip you at every opportunity.

3. Both my attempts focused on storage, networking and virtual machines. This is fair enough, an admin will spend most of their time on them.

4. Time management. Manage your time well, dont dwell on a question. Mark it for review and come back to it if you have time. I managed my time much better during this attempt. I had more than a few minutes left over.

5. Make sure you go over everything even if it's something you do every day. Such as building a VM, know all the options available. Know what's available where, which tabs do what and which two hyperlinks do the same thing. Pay attention to all the charts and figures you see. For example, (this wasnt on my exam, so no NDA violation) know how why the Storage Views tab aint available, why Hardware Acceleration is showing up as unsupported, which Scheduled tasks can be configured for a host. Stuff like this, something I just glossed over in my first attempt.

They REALLY expect you to know how to use the product.

Resources I used:

1. Read the Scott Lowe book three times over. Primary resource and a very good one at that. I supplemented it with stuff in the next point.

2. Read all the guides available from VMware, read the storage, vm administration and networking guides twice cover to cover. Read innumerable whitepapers, blogs and websites (yellow-bricks.com and longwhiteclouds.com were especially useful). The VMware guides helped reinforce what I learnt from Scott Lowe's book. Must read, IMO.

3. Did the practice exams on Simon Long's site and mwpreston.net. Simon's questions were on the easier side, the ones on mwpreston.net were very close to the real thing. Believe it or not, there were a 2-3 questions word for word!! Preston's study guide was especially useful over the last few days and his practice questions were very close to the real thing, like I just said. The guy's a vExpert.

What's next for me? Onwards and upwards to the VCAP-DCA. Even if I dont end up getting the cert, the knowledge gained would surely be invaluable. But I must stray a little from the path to the DCA and get myself the EMCISA cert first.

ChooseLife

Congrats on this achievement! Well done!

Nice write-up on your experience, too