Took the VCAP5-DTA exam today

.. and am totally spent ..

Lets talk about the good bits first..

- I think I'll pass. Always a good feeling eh?! I had 23 questions, of which I completely answered 18, 4 mostly and 1 I took a punt at.
- Great exam and dare I say easier than the other VCAP's I have done, though that may be due to the experience I have with vSphere (not VMware View though, of which I have zero professional experience) and the other VCAP's I have already passed.
- The exam has much better flow than the DCA exam. Each item nicely builds on the preceding one and there are multiple instances of things that makes accidental screw-ups less likely.
- The exam nicely lists things you should NOT do. For example, if they say dont delete a desktop, you dont do it because it's used later.
- The Pearson Professional Center was awesome, it was the first time I went there. Noise-cancelling headphones, really effective, though 2 hours into the test I was the only one still there..

The bad bits..

- The lag was ATROCIOUS!!! The rendering over the RDP connection was just shocking. I reckon I probably lost about an hour over the 3 hour period. At question 5, the clock had already ticked over 1 hour. Within my rights, I complained to the wonderful proctor lady about the problem and she got on the phone right away and somehow got the person on the other end to give me an additional 60 minutes. So I sat there, glued to the machine for more than 4 hours. Almost impossible to keep the urge to wee at bay, I was bursting at the end of it all.
- The documentation is impossible to scroll through, the best you can do is do a Ctrl + F if you know what you are looking for. The do a next > next to hopefully get to where you want.
- There was one thing missing from a sub-question. Not that big a deal if I pass the test.

I'll do a longer writeup over on my blog when I have some downtime. For now, the wait begins.. Some folks have got their results back overnight, while others have waited weeks on end though of late, VMware have picked up their game. Just wish they did something about the lag though, impossible to believe how bad it was. What makes it worse is you cannot do another task while the first one's in progress because the damned screen just freezes.

Thanks for reading!

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Comments

dave330i

Essendon wrote: »

So yeah, the DTA's been achieved within 80 days.

80 days?! Slacker!

Congrats on the pass.

Essendon

Thanks again guys! I can see the DX on the horizon, distant, but visible.

As for the DTA, yeah I did slack off a little bit Dave, but you've slacked off more than I have - have you resubmitted your design yet?!

jibbajabba

What a vBeast

dave330i

Essendon wrote: »

As for the DTA, yeah I did slack off a little bit Dave, but you've slacked off more than I have - have you resubmitted your design yet?!

I decided to do a new design. vs. resubmitting the old one. Should have the new design done by end of the year.

Essendon

God-speed to you Dave! Lemme know if you need a review before submission, will be glad to do so.

kj0

dave330i wrote: »

I decided to do a new design.

Fully fictitious, right?

Would be happy to review too.