VCP Quest

Just wanted to place a random status update on my VCP quest.

Background –
I have about 4 years of virtualization experience so I think that is helping a lot. I’d done the official basics courses for VI 3.5, 4.0 and now 5.0. Oh, and XenServer. I did the full Train Signal series on VCAP for vSphere 4. (not very good, but helpful) and have done a few minor App and desktop virtualization projects. I have also about a year of experience now in performance baselining for a major eCom.

Progress so far –
I recently retook the core VCP course at a community college and my job brought in a trainer for a few days. I just completed reading Mastering vSphere 5 book and started reading vSphere Design from Sybex.

Clearly my biggest weaknesses are in storage. I keep getting hung up on some terminology. Most of my experience in the SMB so normally I am using a basic iSCSI setup with nothing fancy. And since I started working for this eCom last year I have not given storage another thought.
Not that I don’t understand that good storage strategy is important. But I am shocked how much it’s contents are on here given the exam is on vSphere’s product. You would think they would leave all that to the storage company.

A few questions I am looking for general feedback on
1) What can I find good bulk questions (no ****!)?
2) How would you recommend getting more Fiber Channel experience? I really can’t out of pocket afford $5-$10,000 worth of NetApp classes and the job won’t pay for them and we don’t have a lab? Does NetApp or a competitor have Users groups or anything? Remote labs?
3) Am I over studying for the VCP at this point? I have heard the exam is esoteric and doesn’t actually map to their learning plans so I am nervous about this.

Anyhow, I was dreaming of completion on the VCP August. Is that reasonable based on the above? (I already have my voucher)

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Comments

Essendon

My weakness is/was storage too and I cannot afford any classes just like you. Not the best way to go about things, but I read, read and re-read the storage guides till the stuff on FC and NAS became clearer. I just had a Starwind iSCSI SAN to play with it, does OpenFiler do a FC SAN? Maybe look at that if they do.

You can find decent exam quality questions on mwpreston.net. They are almost the real thing, if you can ace them you'll own the exam. Simon Long has practice exams, but they are not at the same level.

You'll be fine going into the test, study the Mastering vSphere 5 book and the various guides available from vmware. If you want a more thorough review of the resources I used for my test, check out my thread from a couple of days ago.

Good luck and dont worry, you'll do just fine.

MentholMoose

You don't need hands-on experience with FC to pass the VCP. Memorizing some of the FC-specific terms is enough, e.g. zoning and masking. I think they recognize that a lot of people use only NFS or iSCSI so they don't penalize you for this on the exam.

dave330i

You're over studying. If you understand most of the topics covered in Mastering, you should be good for VCP. If you know how to do things in vSphere via GUI, you should be fine.

blargoe

I agree with the others... and I would say the VCP is more about how to perform administrative tasks and knowing how features work. I wouldn't worry about not having FC experience.

What didn't you like about the TrainSignal VCAP videos? I was thinking about doing those.

dave330i

blargoe wrote: »

What didn't you like about the TrainSignal VCAP videos? I was thinking about doing those.

Overall I thought VCAP4-DCA series from Trainsignal was pretty good. Powercli series is very lacking.

odysseyelite

The design book is based on ESXI 4. I'm waiting for Scott Lowe to create the updated copy.

The Train Signal videos for 5 were pretty good. They cover 60% of the material, just like the class. The Mastering book covers it all. I did the CBT nuggets videos and thought they were lacking too much content.