My VMware VCAP5-DCA exam advice: lab it up!

I passed the VCAP5-DCA back in May when it was in beta. I forgot how many questions are on the VCAP5-DCA but come to think of it, it doesn't really matter. What matters is your ability to perform administrative tasks quickly, and how quickly you can use Ctrl+F to find out how to perform administrative tasks from the VMware (the official VMware documentation is provided). With this exam, there is no way you’ll know how to do every task on the exam (unless you’re some sort of VMware robot from Palo Alto sent to destroy our dignity by scoring 100%). The good news is, you don’t need to know how to do everything, because the official VMware PDFs are made available!

 

I passed the VCAP4-DCA and VCAP5-DCA. Check back next year for my VCAP6-DCA advice.

Rote memorisation will help you pass the VCP5, design acumen will help you pass the VCAP5-DCD, but only practice will get you through the VCAP5-DCA. My advice for the VCAP5-DCA exam is to practice until you get sick of it.

  

How do you know you’re ready?

If you've been living in fluffy architect land drawing on whiteboards, you’ll definitely need to study before taking the exam. If you've spent the last weeks setting up a new vSphere environment from scratch or troubleshooting, you’re ready to go.

Here’s an example task (I guarantee it’s not on any exam I did!): Add the Cisco Nexus 1000V VIB to a VMware install bundle. Can you do it? If so, congratulations: stop reading this blog post and book the exam before you accidentally watch television and forget the knowledge. If you’re not sure how to add a VIB, find the VMware documentation PDF that explains how to do it. Do you understand the steps? Could you do it in under 6-8 minutes? If so, you’re probably ready. If it takes you 10-15 minutes, do a bit more practice: time is limited you’ll only be able to refer to the documentation 3-4 times before you start running out.

Here are some suggestions to improve your administration skills.

• Lab it up! Your lab doesn’t need to be representative of the exam lab, just the features you’re unfamiliar with. Unfamiliar with storage? One ESXi host and Openfiler will do! Unfamiliar with virtual distributed switches? Sounds like you’ll need at least two ESX hosts.
• Watch the vBrownbags: if it has VCAP-DCA in the title, watch it!
• Sit the VMware official training: the Install, Configure, Manage along with Fast Track will cover everything you need in the exam. I prefer classroom training because you get to make friends in your local VMware community and share experiences.

If you do the VMware courses, you'll get binders full of slides and exercises. BINDERS FULL.
To be honest, I'd rather have the videos from TrainSignal handy.

• TrainSignal VMware vSphere 5 training: This is the cheaper alternative to the courses. If you have the will to self-study, this is good. If not, don’t bother. The relevant courses are VMware vSphere 5 Training and vSphere Advanced Networking Training. There’s over 24 hours of videos, but you should be able to study it all in a week. Skip over what you’re familiar with (you’re already a VCP: do you really need to watch a video on how to create a resource pool?) and cover your weak points.
• Read the blueprint with the mindset of the test writer: while reading it, ask yourself “If I was writing the exam, how would I test if somebody knew this?” about each point. If you were writing an exam question to test someone's competence with resource pools, how would you test it? Perhaps you'd create a resource pool hierarchy and VM reservations such that a VM wouldn't be able to power on. Then you'd ask the student to make a single change to the hierarchy that would allow it to power on.

As with most technical training, you’ll start to forget knowledge as soon as you walk out of the training room and you'll lose the test mindset within a week. I suggest you book the exam no more than 3-5 days after finishing whatever study path you've set yourself. There's a lot of administrative tasks covered on the exam, and you won't have done them all before, but that's no reason for a professional like you (who has already achieved VCP5) to be scared.

My VMware VCAP5-DCD exam advice: don't study for the exam

I passed the VCAP5-DCD (that's an acronym for VMware Certified Advanced Professional - Data Center Design)! To be honest I didn't study and had no sleep, which makes it similar to my first year of college. At college, I even got the Dean's Commendation for High Achievement! The achievement was for my high marks, not for my sleeping. Anyway, I've never been worried about whether I would fail an exam. Like most college exams, the result was determined before I walked in. The exam just showed me the result.

And that result was a PASS!

Everyone's learning style is different, so what works for me may not be relevant to your style of learning. But my advice is, don't study for the exam. Instead, focus on becoming a better designer. The VCAP5-DCD tests your application of knowledge, and you won't learn that from memorizing the content on the exam blueprint. The blueprint isn't a list of topics to study, it's a list of skills and abilities you should have. Rote memorization will help you pass the VCP5, practicing administration tasks will help you pass the VCAP5-DCA, but only design ability will help you pass the DCD exam.

What are these abilities?

You need to be able to ask why and understand why. Let me give you an example.

Objective 3.5 states that you should be able to "Design a vApp catalog of appropriate VM offerings (e.g., templates, OVFs, vCO)." Anybody can open the vCenter client, make a new vApp, add some VMs and set the startup order. But have you developed an opinion on vApps? Do you understand their advantages, disadvantages and their limitations? Which limitations have stopped VMware from packaging their own applications as vApps? Would any of these limitations apply to an application your company is developing? What application would you most like to see as a vApp? What application can't you believe isn't already a vApp? Instead of learning about vApps, the more helpful skill to learn is to ask why something is the case.

Pick any skill listed on the blueprint, say, storage design. You probably know what the different types of multi-pathing are. Why would you use one or the other? If there are Microsoft clusters in your environment, how does that affect which method of multi-pathing you use?

Being ready

If you can whiteboard a VMware design and explain the why behind every box and line you draw, you're probably ready. Try whiteboarding the following scenarios.

• A small customer wants the cheapest implementation required to support high-availability
• A large customer wants a solution that has no single point of failure.
• That large customer just acquired the small customer. Design the migration strategy.
• Remove one of the lines between storage and compute. What is the implication of this?

Probably a little too simple. But give it a go: explain what the red double-headed arrow
between the public cloud and private cloud is. How does it work?

(Note: Any similarity to an exam question living or dead is purely coincidental. I agreed to an NDA so I'm not disclosing anything other than the fact I signed an NDA, which isn't covered by my NDA!)

You don't even need to have experience whiteboarding in front of a client. Try whiteboarding in front of somebody who knows nothing about VMware, or even enterprise IT! I've found that some of the trickiest questions I've got have been from beginners.

Exam quirks

With most other IT exams, you can skip between questions. In the VCAP5-DCD, you can only go forward. There's no ability to flag questions and return to them later. Consider this a blessing: once you've answered the question, you're locked in! You'll only need to focus on the question at hand. Control the things you can control and don't worry about the rest.

Resources

I can't recommend you anything that will help pass the exam, because I didn't revise or study for it. However, I can recommend some resources that can help you become a better designer.

• vBrownbags are free regular online meetings run by experienced VMware architects. If you want to know how experienced designers and architects think, watch some of these.
• The Feynmann technique involves pretending to teach the idea to a new student. This forces you to understand the concept which should make you a better designer (and consultant).
• Download the products and use them. Don't just do the usual VCP style labs: go off the rails! What happens to a VM when you power the destination host off during a VMotion? Do you understand what happened? If not, read up on VMotion! When should you stop reading? When you can explain it to someone who doesn't know anything about VMotion! Don't be afraid to go off-topic.

Anyway, I thought that would be the last VMware exam for me, but VMware have just VCP-Cloud and VCAP-CID. Time to book some more exams. The certification treadmill never ends!

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You'll have to complete the exams before the 12th of March 2012, so get those home labs cranking!