VCAP5-DCA - Exam Experience & Study Tips!

I am happy to share that I have successfully upgraded my VCAP4-DCA to VCAP5-DCA. I wrote about my VCAP4-DCA exam experience back in 2012. Here is the link - My VCAP 4 - DCA Exam Experience - Better late than NEVER!!

With this article, I just wanted to add to what I had to do in addition to prepare for this version of the exam. 

Needless to say that you would need a lot of LAB TIME with the topics which are described in the Blue print, the link to which can be found on the official VMware Certification Page for this exam.

Some quick pointers about the exam format & things which I learned from my experience, keeping in mind the NDA which I signed :-)

• 26 Questions with 225 minutes to complete them. Approx 30 minutes extra for Non-English speaking countries.

• All the questions are Practical Only. You would have to do everything in the LAB.

• Each question might have One or More Tasks to complete so never think that you only have to do 26 tasks.

• Their might be TASKS which are dependent on a previous task so be careful.

• You CAN go BACK & FORTH between questions as you like, UNLIKE VCAP-DCD so feel free to do that.

• Official vSphere documentation in PDF format is available for you to access during examination, although it is not a great idea since the access to these files can be painfully slow and result in a waste of time.

• You have the choice to access things via RDP or vSphere Client. Avoid RDP as much as possible especially if you have a slow access to the environment which you need to work on.

• Give yourself enough time to study for this exam. You need a lot of time with each topic to master it. This is not the exam where you could study a night before and pass with flying colors. NaaDa.. Not going to happen!!

• One last thing, the biggest challenge would be time, hence it is important to pace your self appropriately. Another thing which I would worry about is the slowness of some of the centers who host this exam. It might be a good idea to take a feedback from people on which is the best center to take this exam in your city or a city near you. 

While you have endless options on the study material, I would highly recommend that you go through the Pluralsight's (formerly Train-signal) VMware vSphere Optimize and Scale (VCAP-DCA). Jason Nash (the instructor for this course) has covered each and every section on the blueprint in detail and this helped me a lot during my preparation. 

With this I am all set for my VCDX certification. I hope these tips will help you.

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VMware Certified Associate - Your Gateway to learn about the disruptive world of VMware!

This blog post is for those who are looking for an entry point in the world of Virtualization. As technologists most of us know that Server Virtualization is not a new concept. The approach of creating logical partitions of physical hardware to create virtual compute units has been around since Mainframe days.

VMware however changed the game by bringing Virtualization to x86 servers which are considered to as commodity servers today. This was the most disruptive change which happened to the data center landscape. Today we all know that VMware is a leader in x86 Virtualization and with its latest announcements at VMworld 2013, VMware clearly lays down the path on Virtualization of the other critical components of the data center such as Storage and Network. This concept of bringing Virtualization to all the layers of data-center was named as Software Defined Datacenter by VMware. This term soon became an industry standard  and now there are several market research companies working towards forecasting the market opportunity for SDDC which runs into billions of dollars in the coming decade.

Coming back to where I opened this article. We as IT professionals, students and technology enthusiasts should look to participate and benefit from this next wave of technology disruption. This is a great opportunity and one should invest time and efforts to learn the technology and prepare ourselves to to be a part of this paradigm shift.

I was lucky to be introduced to VMware technology 6 years back. In the past 6 years, I have met numerous individuals who want a start point to learn this technology and make a career out of it. Today if I look back at the success of VMware and look forward at its vision, it is easy to predict that investing time in VMware technology would give massive returns. If you are not on this express train already, then let's see how you can jump on and begin your journey.

Before VMworld 2013, the only way to get started with VMware was by self study, VMware Install, Configure and Manage Classroom Training and then a VMware Certification such as VCP-DV (VMware Certified Professional - Datacenter Virtualization. 

The biggest issue with this approach was that in order to get the VMware VCP certification, you need to attend the official VCP Training. Although this training is completely worth every penny spent, this might be a substantial amount of money for a beginner. VMware has been innovative not only with its solutions, but with the learning paths and certifications as well. VMware at VMworld 2013 announced some exciting changes in their learning paths and certifications which will make it inexpensive for beginners to step in the world of VMware. Without further ado lets see how you can get started:-

STEP 1 - Read this article and all the links embedded :-) This will give you a 10,000 feet overview of the great opportunity in front of you.

STEP 2 - Create a free e-learning account with by visiting VMware MyLearn Portal

STEP 3 - Register & attend VMware Data Center Virtualization Fundamentals training for free. This is a self paced training and you can register for this using the My Learn Account created in step 2.

STEP 4 - If you want to get your hands dirty (recommended), then create a home lab on your laptop with evaluation licenses which are good for 60 days. To make it easier for you, there are a number of forums on the internet which can tell you how do you make this lab. Here is one such website which has automated the entire process for creating the home lab - LabGuides.com

STEP 5 - Now comes the interesting part of getting certified. Although a certificate not always represents one's expertise on that subject, I believe it is a good way to keep yourself updated and engulfed with the basics of a technology. VMware has now make this affordable for beginners with the introduction of the VCA-DCV certification. 

As quoted by VMware - "With the VCA-Data Center Virtualization certification, you’ll have greater credibility when discussing data center virtualization, the business challenges that vSphere is designed to address, and how virtualizing the data center with vSphere addresses those challenges. You'll be able to define data center virtualization and provide use case scenarios of how vSphere and data center virtualization can provide cost and operational benefits."

The great news is that the certificate cost as quoted by PearsonVue is just $95.00. Here is the path which is laid down by VMware for VCA-DCV:

To know more about this exam refer to the following link.

The LAST STEP would be to take the first step in this amazing world. So go ahead, start right now and invest in your future. 

You are welcome to share your comments, thoughts, opinions and ideas which might help others to take their first step and be successful. Also, feel free to reach out if you have any questions and I would be happy to help!!

Share and Spread the Knowledge.