VCAP Design 2020-study list and VCIX!
I recently completed my VCAP-DCV Design 2020 exam- here are the study materials I used, my exam experience, and some overall thoughts on the program and my next steps.
Study Materials
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The OLD Exam Guide:
The v6 Exam Guide contains significantly more detail, and more guidance, than the current version of the blueprint. The current guide lists what is on the exam, but if the topics between the current version and v6 are the same, refer to the guidance in v6 (except for version specific information).
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The current Exam Guide:
This is what you are tested on. I cannot fathom attempting this exam without full comprehension of what is in the guide.
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VCAP5-DCD Official Cert Guide:
Again, the older version of the material was invaluable, and really pushed me on understanding the concepts. Potentially the best $5 you can spend on Amazon. More recent materials are available, but this is the most recent official guide, and as such offers much more insight on the exam methodology than the other guides, which are useful for the practice of design, but less focused on the exam itself. I was able to find a copy with an intact practice test code- which was also quite helpful.
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Hersey Cartwright’s VMware vSphere 6.x Datacenter Design Cookbook:
VCDX-128 Hersey Cartwright’s book, and his blog http://www.vhersey.com/ were both incredibly useful study materials for the VCAP-Design exam.
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The Deep Dive series:
Frank Denneman (https://frankdenneman.nl/), VCDX-007 Duncan Epping, (http://www.yellow-bricks.com/), Cormac Hogan (https://cormachogan.com/), and VCDX-212 Niels Hagoort (https://nielshagoort.com/) have combined to write THE comprehensive material for understanding the vSphere and vSAN technologies. I can honestly say that I learned more about VMware technology in reading this series than any other source. The vSAN deep dive let me move forward in both my Design & Deploy exams, without ever having run vSAN outside of nested labs (with FreeDOS guests), or otherwise incredibly unsupported hardware. The Clustering Deep Dive and Host Resources Deep Dive have expanded my understanding of vSphere, and honestly, spoiled me with technical details to the point where I find certain other vendors’ available documentation incredibly lacking. Also- they all have fantastic blogs, where they cover some of these topics in depth, and I highly recommend you subscribe to them in your RSS reader or other news aggregator so you can keep up with their posts.
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VCDX-39 Scott Lowe’s book was incredibly useful, and was both accessible and in-depth..
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VCDX-001 John Arrasjid, VCDX-023 Mark Gabryjelski, and VCDX-079 Chris McCain have written IT Architect Series:Foundation in the Art of Infrastructure Design As it says in the title, this IS the foundational book for IT architecture. This book was great, and had hands on exercises, but is a more thorough overview of IT design as a practice, rather than the VCAP-Design exam. This book helped me think like an architect, the v5 official cert guide is how I figured out how VMware wanted me to think for the exam. I have already started VCDX-236 Melissa Palmer’s installment in the series, The Journey and am anxiously awaiting the next announced title in the series. Melissa’s blog- http://vmiss.net is also full of study materials.
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Rene Van Den Bedem’s blog https://vcdx133.com/category/vcdx
VCDX-133 Rene is the only quad-VCDX. He has a broad depth of study materials, guides, recommendations, and thoughts on the IT landscape, particularly certifications. I may be wrong, but I do not think there is anyone in the IT industry who has passed more certifications than Rene, who apparently has 92 badges on Acclaim right now.
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VCAP-DCV Design Series on Youtube
These were good- but there are gaps in some objectives, and honestly, I felt that the objectives they skipped were the ones I struggled with.
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Scott Lowe’s Pluralsight Course: Designing VMware Infrastructure
This was helpful review towards the later stages of my study, and I took advantage of the Pluralsight CoVID promotion.
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VMware Learning Zone’s Free 6 month subscription:
VMware are currently offering a free 6 month learning zone subscription, which includes a VCAP 6.5 DCV Design Exam Prep series. It was definitely useful at finding last minute gaps in my study that needed to be shored up.
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This is what started it all- After earning my VCAP-Deploy, I was able to use my achievements up to that point on my own initiative and dime to convince my employer to pay for the Design Workshop. My class was taught by VCDX-256 Brett Guarino, and honestly, more than the rest of the materials, my notes from the class are what I kept coming back to. Brett kept reiterating the importance of meeting business objectives, and that RAMPS & RCARs were much more important to this aspect of IT than the shiny nerd knobs. He also suggested simplifying every design as much as possible- every fancy feature or advanced setting needs to be justified. Keep designs simple and other things fall into place. Honestly, a review of this class could be a whole blog post. Thanks Brett.
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ITQ Consultancy Youtube Channel:
ITQ employs a sizeable number of VCDXes, and they have published several very helpful lightboard videos covering design concepts and VMware technologies.
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Community Practice Tests:
http://vmusketeers.com/vcap6-dcv-design-quiz/ and http://virtualtiers.net/ These are free practice tests from the community. Honestly, the official Pearson v5 practice test is superior, but as these are community provided, they are fantastic resources. Both of those sites also provide additional study materials.
So here is where it might be controversial: The BEST way to study for exams, especially the VCAP Design & to a lesser extent the VCP, is to read. There are some fantastic video training materials out there, but in my opinion, while they may help you understand concepts or review, if you do not read the material you are doing yourself a disservice. The reason is simple: the exam is written. The questions are often difficult to comprehend. Many exam experience posts go into painful detail about having to read a question 3,4,5 times to make sure you understand it, and the difference between the right and wrong answer can hinge on skimming past a word in either the question or answer options. To quote Munchkin:
Decide who goes first by rolling the dice and arguing about the results and the meaning of this sentence and whether the fact that a word seems to be missing any effect.
So my #1 exam prep tip for the VCAP Design is this: Read. Read EVERYTHING. Read IT books, read blog posts, read fiction to go to sleep at night, read KB articles and White Papers and anything else you can get your hands on and especially the Exam Guide and the articles it links. If reading comprehension is not a strong suit for you, work on that- push yourself in that area, and then go back and read the technical material again. The Deep Dive series, for example, often goes much deeper than is needed for VCAP-Design, but by reading through the dense technical material you can be assured that there is no technical detail you might miss. The exam is comfortably timed if you can quickly read and comprehend the question, the design scenarios, and the answer choices. If you struggle at that stage, you will absolutely struggle to complete and pass the exam.
Exam Experience:
I almost did not take this exam- I initially earned my VCP on v6 in October 2018- as that is what Stanly CC was offering at the time and there was a class/exam version match requirement. Due to that, and a same-version requirement for going from VCP to VCAP, my VCAP-Deploy exam was on v6 as well. This was… challenging, as in my production environments I had skipped straight from 5.5 to 6.5, but I managed a pass, even after getting stupidly stuck on the very first question and missing an obvious step. This left me in a predicament when VMware rolled out the new Year Makes it Clear policy, followed shortly thereafter by a policy of requiring no more than 1 version hop between exam types. The combined announced policies, and the documentation on the VCAP & VCIX pages, made it clear: I was effectively back at square one. I was further from my goal of a VCIX/VCDX than my colleague who passed the VCP6 exam in early 2019, and thus had a shiny year based certificate. Several calls with Education services seemed to confirm this, and that the new policy was that from initial Foundations Exam to VCDX all had to be completed within one year, EVEN though, for example, the VCAP exams have not changed even as the names keep incrementing. Finally, I decided just to take the exam anyway, and if it didn’t pan out argue with Education Services until they caved or I passed out, whichever happened first. This being part of the new wave of covid remote exams, my proctor failed to show up, and I was left sitting there, watching myself in my webcam for an hour hoping that MAYBE somebody would pop into chat and tell me to go ahead and start my test. Eventually I gave up and spent the next 4 hours on hold or geting the same very harrassed sounding Pearson agent with a broken computer who finally consented to submit a ticket for a failed exam the 4th time I ended up in her queue. 7 days later I received the automated email informing me that yes, Pearson had received a ticket that I might have had a problem. I honestly cannot fathom why a ticket notification email takes 7 days to generate. Eventually, Pearson informed me that yes, they owed me an exam, and sent me a link to reschedule. Honestly, the additional time let me use the Exam Prep series and do some final refreshers that were really helpful, so it worked out. About a day or 2 after my exam, I noticed something MAGICAL- an email from Acclaim, informing me I had achieved VCIX-DCV-2020 AND VCIX-DCV 6.5. I was thrilled and shocked, as after multiple conversations with multiple Education Services reps, they had all made it clear that I had fallen through a policy gap between the old same-version VCP>VCAP policy and the current VCAP versioning policy and there was absolutely nothing they could do to help me. Thank you VMware for not leaving me stranded on my certification journey.
Next Steps
I am currently in Stanly’s AWS course, hoping to knock out a few AWS certs and potentially CKA in between the VCAP Design and pursuing my VCDX. Rumors on forum posts and my own reading of the current certification policies make it sound like VCDX may become impossible due to the extremely compressed time and versioning requirements. I hope VMware clarifies these policies, and their certification pages to be as clearly written as the exams themselves.