Over the last 18 months I have spent most of my time at work on a vCloud project in some form or another. I have worked on both consumer application migrations and provider installations. I recently took and passed the VCP5-iaas exam (Thanks to Dirk Rathfelder at VMware for a free exam voucher).
Although the first in the line of new vCloud director certifications it’s not to be underestimated.
The mixture of terminology and real life type questions were fair, but you really do need to have some good knowledge of working with the tools.
Knowing the principles and installing a few times won’t really cut it. I was happy the long nights at work paid off in some of the exam questions.
What I used.
- Lab , Lab, Lab – I spent quite of bit of time going through the installs. In my opinion, the installation isnt simple. You have to get your hands dirty with various scripts, linux builds and so on. The exam test a lot of the vCD gui too – know how the screens relate to the topology.
- The vCloud director admin guide – Get to know this doco – I used this extensively with my lab. The exam tests you knowledge to get a vCloud up and running.
- The vCAT toolkit – this is a great collection of docs and checklists – especially if you are actually going to do this in real life.
- The blueprint – Normal VMware exam prep- cover the blueprint
Hints for the exam
- Know the topology, how do the components relate to each other. This diagram is a must
- Lots of labs. Ensure you understand what the GUI is representing – it’s not always obvious (in my opinion) the admin guide is helpful for this.
- Understand what is configured in vSphere. Some aspects are misleading if you are pure vSphere admin picking this up.
- Check out my practice tests.