What study material did you use for your VCP exam?

So far I've only been using the following:

1) Completed the Stanly 5.1 ICM class
2) Completely read VMware vSphere 5.1 Administration
3) Re-reading Scott Lowe's 5.5 book finishing up chapter 5 now
4) used a near replica home-lab of a production network with SAN fabric (not going into detail most of you know it)

I'm curious what others have used or recommend - at what point will my studies be overkill?

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Essendon

What just happened to your reply to tstrip's post?!

Your study is never overkill, period. Make your primary goal - learn the material. The secondary goal - get the cert, then comes on its own. For reading material you have it all that's needed for the VCP. I used the above listed resources and the practice tests on mwpreston.net and simonlong.co.uk. Friendly advice about storage, this thing's a black hole, when I think I know a fair bit of storage something always happens that makes me feel like a n00b.

tstrip007

I must have broken NDA by posting topics that I struggled with? Let me try this again. Add the blueprint and documentation to your mix I would say...

Deathmage

Essendon wrote: »

What just happened to your reply to tstrip's post?!

Your study is never overkill, period. Make your primary goal - learn the material. The secondary goal - get the cert, then comes on its own. For reading material you have it all that's needed for the VCP. I used the above listed resources and the practice tests on mwpreston.net and simonlong.co.uk. Friendly advice about storage, this thing's a black hole, when I think I know a fair bit of storage something always happens that makes me feel like a n00b.

@Essendon - I think storage is pretty much good to know, I mean I think with the QNAP NAS I have at home that's about all I'll need for storage related questions. I mean I do a ton of Equalogic stuff at work... - I thank you for your continued support, your feedback has been noticed.

tstrip007 wrote: »

I must have broken NDA by posting topics that I struggled with? Let me try this again. Add the blueprint and documentation to your mix I would say...

@strip007 - I'll defiantly review the blueprints this evening and go over what else I should review. The Scott Lowe book I'm actually reading it this time fully is a bear of a book, chapters are so long!

Deathmage

Anyone else got suggestions?

like I'm looking for some practice sims, any good ones out there?

Deathmage

Essendon wrote: »

Friendly advice about storage, this thing's a black hole, when I think I know a fair bit of storage something always happens that makes me feel like a n00b.

this is so true!

Verities

Good luck Deathmage, when are you taking the test? I'm using the Mastering VMware vSphere book as well and absorbing it like a sponge.

joelsfood

Deathmage

I think that list about covers it. And of course, as much hands on work as possible with your home lab (or even real environments)

JasminLandry

I agree with what joelsfood said, a real environment will help. It helped me in a huge way. I was able to look and "play" around a bit more since it has more clusters, hosts, vDS, etc and we even have iSCSI, NAS and FC storage so that helped me alot understand the storage topics.

emerald_octane

My real production setup with much beefier hardware helped me with the topics regarding performance, bcp and how that related to the real world. All the other stuff was done on a nested lab. The material use was the same, but the labbing and experience were the most important aspect.

Some of the questions on the exam are WILD. That's all I can say about it. One cannot BS this test.

Deathmage

Thanks for the pointers, everyone. Sometimes having others root you on for something you know the outcome of is more helpful if you hear it from others than just saying it in your mind....

I took the VMware practice test of 30 questions and I got a 94%; 1st practice test thus far for this study topic. Going to retake it when I get home and try out the practice exams that Essendon mentioned.

But I'm really contemplating going for the 5.1 since my whole home-lab is 5.1 or go from the 5.5 exam with only the Scott Lowe 5.5 book and the 5.1 lab knowledge or just take the 5.1 test and then go for the Stanly 5.5 ICM class that starts up in January. also I could just upgrade the whole cluster and vCenter to 5.5 too but that might be a like a whole Saturday afternoon upgrading everything, the fabric and hardware are fast, just seems like a time-consuming task solo to do....

I really don't truly see how much has changed in 5.5 over 5.1 it really seems like basic stuff. However if I was going from VCP4 to VCP5.5 I might have said otherwise, just makes the choice all the more hard....

is the exam mainly multiple choice or is it a bunch of sim labs plus multiple choice? - can anyone tell me the exam format without breaking the non-disclosure, PM works too

Asif Dasl

The exam is multiple choice only.

What did you make of the Career Academy material, or have you gone through that stuff yet?

Deathmage

Asif Dasl wrote: »

The exam is multiple choice only.

What did you make of the Career Academy material, or have you gone through that stuff yet?

haven't even started it yet, been reading the Scott Lowe book 1st.

Essendon

That 94% on the VMware test is very misleading, that's for sure. I got similar scores and buoyed by them I took my first shot at the VCP and failed miserably. Then someone suggested mwpreston.net for exam quality questions and it was a much better representation of the exam.

Deathmage

However I may just watch these videos from Career Academy since I can watch them on my Kindle perfectly fine....

I may just upgrade my cluster to 5.5 this weekend, would be good practice to upgrade the cluster too from 5.1 to 5.5.

Deathmage

positive note: my job just got a few of those 'deals' from the Cisco and Microsoft Bundles.... it's really good for all of our techs to use so we can all get certified.

Deathmage

I'm finding reading Scott's book on the kindle is super easy to review with bookmarks and highlighting. I keep reading chapters in different orders. Little by little more highlighting after watching the career academy videos. The videos are a nice addition to the book studying.

I think tomorrow I'm going to upgrade the cluster to 5.5 so the material is on par.... then slam back into chapter 5 and 6 and get them down pat....

If I keep devoting 10 hours a week to reading, watching videos, and labbing could I be ok to take the exam in a months time? ...ideally how much studying should I do?

Deathmage

So I've been reading along with the 5.5 book from scott lowe and re-producing as much as I can in my home lab, but I go and take the VMware practice tests and they throw me for a loop.

Anyone know of some good 5.1 or 5.5 practice exams. The practice exams linked above are for VMware 5.1 and I'm going for the 5.1 or the 5.5 exam haven't decided. All I can find really is the VMware hosted ones... I mean they are good practice tests but some of the questions in them I've gotten them wrong because in 5.5 they have different functions.

I wonder if any of the other 5.5 study books have some good practice tests, i kind of just want to get a feel for what to expect. I find myself spending 3 hours a night during the week reading and studying and at-least a whole day on weekends labbing. I use VMware at work so I guess that counts as labbing too.

I can do all of this pretty well:

1) I got all of the physical configuration stuff down to a science like switching and storage fabric setup IE cisco switch configs (not limited to just Cisco though, HP/Dell I'm good with too for networking) with vlans, trunks, and Jumbo-frames along with port-fast, with storage I'm solid with CHAP and NFS/iSCSI creation with iSCSI initiator connectors; etc.

2) I'm also good with making the cluster from scratch like installing esxi and/or installing/upgrading.

3) assigning the vmotion, iscsi, management groups with the VM groups/kernels and the active/passive/standby nics.

4) permissions and local permissions that tie into AD.

5) using vmotion and vstorage vmotion between hosts.

6) making VM's and changing settings as-well as VM tools, using/managing snapshots.

7) setting up vCenter with proper storage, networking, licensing, cluster-design, resource pools configurations consistently as-well as installing vCenter on a 2008 R2/2012 host installation with SQL Express/ SSO/ Inventory/ etc.

working with plugins and installing them.

However like stated above when I take the practice tests I'm missing the tiny tiny details and I get the questions wrong. If any of you have read the Scott Lowe book you know its jam packing with so much information its nutso, how did you guys remember all the little things? - like I can setup a ESXi host and vCenter with all the bells and whistles but when I got to reading the questions on some of them I'm like

when it saying incorrect answer....Am I suppose to struggle this much?

scott28tt

You'll be fine with 5.0 practice exams so long as you take the VCP510 exam - that exam is generic across 5.0/5.1. The VCP550 exam is based specifically on 5.5.

Passing either exam gains you the same certification.

Deathmage

scott28tt wrote: »

You'll be fine with 5.0 practice exams so long as you take the VCP510 exam - that exam is generic across 5.0/5.1. The VCP550 exam is based specifically on 5.5.

Passing either exam gains you the same certification.

So would going for the 5.1 exam be more doable for me since it will be my 1st dive into VMware testing. Seems there is more mobile app's and/or practice tests on the web for 5.1 than 5.5.