Vcap5-dca

The VCAP has recently caught my eye as I am bored with trivial technical exams. Lab exams are much more interesting.
So far I have watched the Trainsignal/Pluralsight videos which have been helpful. My study plan is to lab each section in the blueprint and complete the tasks as many different ways as possible via C#, web, cli, powercli, etc.

I am having a hard time scheduling the exam due to the changes were made to the process recently. I also hope to get some time booked on Josh's Test Track as I have read nothing but good things about it.

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DPG

How was the Optimize and Scale class? I might attend later this year.

Deathmage

DPG wrote: »

How was the Optimize and Scale class? I might attend later this year.

I literally felt like it was a waste of time, to be honest. I learned more just from common sense stuff and tinkering with vCenter deployment and configuration. it's really meant for people that just don't get to deploy VMware from the ground up. I've done that twice in production and countless times in lab, so it really not much I didn't know already, it's just for a much larger scale of thinking. But I guess for some it came be useful.

Glad I didn't shell out the cost of it.

DPG

Hopefully your employer didn't pay much if it was a useless class(perhaps they had some learning credits?). Was it delivered on-site or did they send you to a training center?

blargoe

DPG wrote: »

How was the Optimize and Scale class? I might attend later this year.

It bored me to tears. Not worth it.

Deathmage

DPG wrote: »

Hopefully your employer didn't pay much if it was a useless class(perhaps they had some learning credits?). Was it delivered on-site or did they send you to a training center?

it was a on-demand class, they had training credits for the year.

Some people learned stuff, I learned nothing much.

If your going to the VCAP, you won't be impressed.

tbgree00

Save the money and buy a month of pluralsight/see if the company will spring for it. The Optimize and Scale class there is great. It's designed to the DCA blueprint. It's designed for 5.0 but there are is only one new domain (replication).

He pushes command line and VMA. Heed his wisdom with that.

TheProf

I don't think that any of the VMware courses are geared solely towards passing Certifications, even the ICM course is not enough to pass the VCP exam alone.

Aside from doing the ICM course for VCP, I've done the VMware View Design course and even then, a lot of information was missing or perhaps simply not intended for the course.

I think the purpose of the training is to give you the base you need to expand on, but it's not enough for passing certifications.

DPG

tbgree00 wrote: »

Save the money and buy a month of pluralsight/see if the company will spring for it. The Optimize and Scale class there is great. It's designed to the DCA blueprint. It's designed for 5.0 but there are is only one new domain (replication).

He pushes command line and VMA. Heed his wisdom with that.

I have a Pluralsight subscription and agree that Jason Nash's course is excellent.

UncleB

You could sign up as a Visual Studio developer (it is free) which gives 6 months access to Pluralsight training courses (plus a load of other stuff like free Azure credit).
https://www.visualstudio.com/en-us/p...ntials-vs.aspx

As far as I can see there are no obligations for doing this.
thanks
Iain

DPG

I have been humbled but somehow I passed.

Essendon

Glad you did. What almost tripped ya?

DPG

I started writing numbers down (1-23) when I first sat down and was at the section with instructions and terms which had a 15 minute timer. The test administrator stormed out of her office and proceeded to tell me that I couldn't do that! She said I had to be on the first question before I could write anything down.

I spent about 15 minutes on the first question and then realized I had to hurry things up if I wanted to attempt all 23 of them. About an hour and a half was gone after my first run through and I had only completed 8 questions

. I skipped around some more for another hour and knocked out 5 more. With 30 minutes to go I was almost sure I would fail. I then picked out 3 more questions and manged to complete them with 5 minutes to go. I closed everything out and ended the exam before the timer expired.

The exam was very fair and I only had one question that didn't make any sense ( some typo's maybe?). I didn't touch 5 questions at all. I believe what saved me was the fact that the questions that I did complete had more tasks than some of those that weren't completed. Overall I enjoyed the experience and definitely have to give props to those at VMware who developed this exam.

tbgree00

Congratulations! That is a fun test, I'm glad you passed it.

blargoe

DPG wrote: »

I started writing numbers down (1-23) when I first sat down and was at the section with instructions and terms which had a 15 minute timer. The test administrator stormed out of her office and proceeded to tell me that I couldn't do that! She said I had to be on the first question before I could write anything down.

I spent about 15 minutes on the first question and then realized I had to hurry things up if I wanted to attempt all 23 of them. About an hour and a half was gone after my first run through and I had only completed 8 questions . I skipped around some more for another hour and knocked out 5 more. With 30 minutes to go I was almost sure I would fail. I then picked out 3 more questions and manged to complete them with 5 minutes to go. I closed everything out and ended the exam before the timer expired.

The exam was very fair and I only had one question that didn't make any sense ( some typo's maybe?). I didn't touch 5 questions at all. I believe what saved me was the fact that the questions that I did complete had more tasks than some of those that weren't completed. Overall I enjoyed the experience and definitely have to give props to those at VMware who developed this exam.

Congratulations on the pass.

From my recollection I had a similar experience. I skipped around and wound up not even starting on at least 5 of the items, but did well enough on the rest to pass.

dave330i

As stated before, the goal is to pass the exam. It doesn't matter if you didn't attempt all of them. Congrats on the pass.

DPG

How long does it take for the certification portal to update? I want to order some VCAP shirts to wear to lunch just in case there are some bank owners in my vicinity.

tbgree00

I set my test on March 3rd and the "certification date" on my certificate is March 7th so it took me about 2 business days.

dave330i

DPG wrote: »

How long does it take for the certification portal to update? I want to order some VCAP shirts to wear to lunch just in case there are some bank owners in my vicinity.

Probably won't know what's a VCAP.

DPG

It looks like there may be a public beta of the VCAP6-DCV Deploy exam coming soon. Also, more time available for those that still want to take the version 5 lab.

VCAP5 Exam Retirements Suspended

CChilderhose

That is awesome that they are keeping the V5 ones alive longer. I scheduled the DCA on last day June 2nd but might move it now to get more prepared. Also nice to be able to get the DCD in too.

tbgree00

Is there any idea when the beta will be available for scheduling?

GAB1900

tbgree00 wrote: »

Save the money and buy a month of pluralsight/see if the company will spring for it. The Optimize and Scale class there is great. It's designed to the DCA blueprint. It's designed for 5.0 but there are is only one new domain (replication).

He pushes command line and VMA. Heed his wisdom with that.

To take this class, do you recommend the Plus or Standard? I guess the question is, does it have exercise files so it requires Plus? I might sign up for one month for this class.

tbgree00

Standard is fine. There aren't any exercise files. You only get the slides to download so it's totally not worth plus.

If you want to get the most out of the class have a 5.5 vCenter server, at least one host, the vMA, and powercli installed. You could do this with fusion, workstation, or search Autolab out and use their hosted solution. Also download the 5.5 study sheet from The VCAP-DCA 5 Study Sheet - Wahl Network and print it out. Check it off as you watch videos, read, lab, etc.

CChilderhose

Passed my VCAP55-DCA test today. Woohoo

Big thanks to Josh Andrews his mock test and Paul Grevnick's study guides helped.

tbgree00

Congratulations CChilderhouse! Welcome to the club. The stuff from the DCA will help you in a DCD as long as you're strong on the concepts behind the clicks.

CChilderhose

tbgree00 wrote: »

Congratulations CChilderhouse! Welcome to the club. The stuff from the DCA will help you in a DCD as long as you're strong on the concepts behind the clicks.

Thanks. Yeah I am starting to study for the DCD now and hope to get it schedule prior to retirement. Then on to Version 6

hurricane1091

DPG wrote: »

I wish I could convince some of my customers to implement DMVPN. Much easier than managing dozens of tunnels per site.

I re-designed out DMVPN environment in my spare time at work. It's not actually done right currently in the sense that all of the branch offices really go through the DMVPN hub to talk to other branch offices (this is going to be fixed when I implement the changes). This really came about because it was mentioned while I was on the ROUTE portion of the CCNP, but it was beyond the scope of the book but I had to dig deeper because I knew we were not doing it the best way. It doesn't really solve any problems, but in the process I am moving us to certificate based authentication. I learned a bunch of stuff like VRF, ZBF, etc and hope to implement it soon. Good resume builder.

But really, I have to ask - there has to be a situation where DMVPN is actually extremely useful. In our case, the backup circuits are just broadband circuits with this DMVPN stuff. So, they do not even get used usually (we would like to do iWan but I do not see it happening this year). So really, all sites connect back to HQ through an MPLS connection. But even if they did not, HQ is where most servers are stored + proxy + everything else. Internal phone calls benefit, and users visiting a branch can potentially download files from their home branch faster, but really this was all about learning and resume building for me. Just looking for a solid real world case where it's absolutely the way to go.