VCAP5-DCD Beta is on

The eagled eyed will have spotted a rash of excitement over the virtualisation twitterverse.  The VCAP5-DCD exam enters it’s beta phase this month. Current VCAP4-DCD holders who have also completed the VCP5 certification have been invited to take part.  Since I fall in that category I have an invitation, so I’ve been reading through the exam blueprint.  Usually the first rule of Beta club is don’t talk about Beta club but I didn’t notice an NDA attached to the beta exam invite.  Even so I won’t be linking the blueprint although I do have some comments.

There is a lot of interest in the differences between VCAP4-DCD and VCAP5-DCD so I compared the Blueprints.  The v5 blueprint has a stronger emphasis on the stages of design, Conceptual – Logical – Physical.  The links in the blueprint don’t work for me, so I searched for “Conceptual, Logical, Physical: It is Simple” and found a document on the communities web sitethat I plan on reading carefully.

I also noticed that the Logical design section is now about abilities; availability, Manageability and so on, rather than functional areas.  This I think more closely follows what the aim is of a Logical design: it should lay out what we’re trying to achieve with the design and then the Physical design has more about how to achieve these things. The physical design is still functionally aligned with Network, Storage, Compute and so on.  I guess this also speaks to the greater re-usability of the Logical design elements and the more customer specific nature of the Physical design.

I did notice the reduced emphasis of Current State Analysis from the new blueprint, it was a section of the old blueprint and a critical part of any migration project.  I think it deserves it’s own section rather than being a single line in the business requirements section.

I’m also glad that the content from last weeks VCAP BrownBag was front and centre for the blueprint as are the areas for the upcoming sessions.  If you’re planning on doing VCAP5-DCD and haven’t signed up for the VCAP Brownbags then you’d better head to the signup page.

Another study resource, if you don’t have access to the blueprint is Ray Heffer’s Study Guide and notes

I don’t know whether I’ll get to do the VCAP5-DCD beta exam, they aren’t often bookable in New Zealand and I’m due to be teaching every day during the Beta.  Not sitting the beta helps with the BrownBags as I won’t know things about the exam that I can’t say.

© 2012, Alastair. All rights reserved.