VCP5 Exam

Today I sat and passed the VCP5 exam. 

This is the fourth version of VCP I’ve taken in the five years since I started teaching VMware courses and the fifth VMware certification I’ve sat this year.  Consequently I didn’t do a lot of study for this exam.  I didn’t even wait my customary couple of months of teaching the new version. 

I did read some more of Frank and Duncan’s clustering book and I would have read Scott Lowe’s V5 book if I’d bought it, I may yet buy.  Of course the answers to the questions are all in the documentation if you can read through the 25 documents linked from the blueprint.

The exam is tough, the hardest yet of the VCP exams.  As we’ve come to expect you need detailed knowledge of every area of the exam blueprint, which covers a huge range.  I liked that questions are being written more as a problem faced by an administrator rather than directly asking about a feature.  I also liked that I had plenty of time, maybe if I’d taken a bit more time I would have scored better.  Definitely different from the VCAP level exams where there’s too much to do and not enough time.

I also enjoyed the 400 KM of driving to and from the testing centre, mostly as I’d found the feed of the Professional VMware Brown Bags.  Good to listen to people I met at VMworld and learn some more about vSphere.

© 2011, Alastair. All rights reserved.