My first VCP certification — Tips and Tricks for VMware beginner
Some background information about me
(Skip this part if you only want to know how I passed the exam)
I graduated with a Computer Science degree, and started my first full time job at VMware in March.
With almost no infrastructure knowledge and never used VMware products before, my goal was to get my first certification — VCP6.5-DCV (VMware Certified Professional 6.5 — Data Center Virtualization Exam) within 3 months. And I got it in the beginning of July.
I remember what my colleague said to me in the beginning — “It’s definitely going to be a stretch for you if you get it in 3 months”. He was right, from knowing nothing to passed the exam was a huge stretch. I watched about 50 hours of online videos, wrote 80 pages of notes, and read more than 100 vSphere document pages.
But actually, a lot of these were unnecessary, and it’s until I failed the second attempt I realised I should change the way of studying, and I passed after that, from the score of 236 to 400.
So in this blog article, I will share my journey with you on how to study this exam effectively, including the materials I read, courses I attended, where to find practice questions etc.
What you need to do to get certified for VCP6.5-DCV
- You need to attend ONE of the required training courses
Recommend (if you never used vSphere before): “Install, Configure, Manage[V6.5]”, then “Optimise and Scale[V6.5]”. You can choose to attend complete the course in different options. I personally suggest the in-class one as you get to interact with the instructor and you have someone to ask if you get stuck in the lab.
2. You need to pass the Foundation Exam
It’s an online exam, you can do it anytime, and you will find a lot of the questions on Google. Recommend doing it after attending the “Install, Configure, Manage(ICM)” course.
3. You need to pass the VMware Certified Professional 6.5 — Data Center Virtualization exam
This is the hardest part!
- It’s a closed book exam
- You will do it in an exam centre, on a computer.
- You will need to bring your ID to the exam centre.
- Pass mark is 300 out of 500, and the questions are all multiple choice.
- Recommend doing it after ICM and Optimise and Scale course, with sufficient practice through online practice questions.
Exam Preparation Courses
MUST DO
This course will give you a basic understanding of virtualisation and introducing you core vSphere features, including vCenter Server, virtual storage, vSphere Standard Switches, resource pool, content library, High Availability, Fault Tolerance, Data Protection, Distributed Resource Scheduler and Update Manager.
2. VMware Education: Optimise and Scale
This course will dive deeper into some Enterprise features in vSphere, such as vSphere Distributed Switches, Storage APIs, vCenter Converter, Auto Deploy, Host Profiles, CPU and Memory Optimisation, Security etc.
Strongly Recommend
- VMware Learning Zone: VMware Certification Exam Prep: VCP6.5 — Data Center Virtualization v6.5 Exam (2V0–622 / 2V0–622D)
This is an online course. In this course, the instructor will go through the exam blueprint and tell you which article you should read for that particular objective. He will also give you sample questions, which I found some were in my exam. The only downside is that it’s really long, took me 18 hours to finish 90% of the course.
I recommend to go through this after both ICM and Optimise and Scale, if you still aren’t sure about certain objectives, then watch that objective’s video in this course. I will also summarise some vSphere document pages that the instructor mentioned in the course that I found helpful in below section.
Optional
2. CBT Nugget: VMware vSphere 6.5 (VCP6.5-DCV)
These two are good if you already have subscription to the websites and don’t really have a time limit to pass the exam. I went through majority of the Pluralsight one and about half of the CBT Nugget.
It just depends on the way you prefer to learn. I found the CBT Nugget one easier to understand as there are a lot of drawings, but the Plurasight course is more structure.
They also have a lot of content overlapped with the ICM and Optimise and Scale course, so if you already completed those two, you don’t really need to go through the Pluralsight and CBT Nugget courses.
Study Materials
MUST READ
The entire exam is based on the exam blueprint, so you need to prepare the exam by following the 10 objectives in that document. The way I studied was to print it out, and tick the objectives I have completed, and read through vSphere documents for the objectives that I was not familiar with.
2. vSphere 6.5 Troubleshooting Guide
If you look at the exam blueprint, you will notice that Objective 7 — Troubleshoot a vSphere Deployment is the second longest objective. Unlike other objectives, troubleshooting need a lot of experiences. If you don’t have that experience, the Troubleshooting guide gives you plenty of scenarios with the cause of problems and solutions. By reading through that, you will be in a better position than only reading the vSphere documents.
RECOMMEND BLOGS
They have a FREE VCP-DCV6.5 study guide, that includes all objectives in the exam. I found that study guide quite useful as a complementary to vSphere documents, as it has a lot of screenshots and it summarises the important points I need to know for the exam.
Storage is the largest objective in the exam, and sometimes it can be hard to understand all the terms and protocols. In Cormac Hogan’s blog, you can find a lot of storage related information here, including vSAN and VVOLs. He includes screenshots and explanations in his blog articles, so if you don’t have access to a lab, it is good to see what actually happens in the vSphere UI.
3. Yellow Bricks — Duncan Epping’s blog
I found his blog articles easier to understand compare to some vSphere documents. His articles are also not limited in any specific areas, so most concepts in the exam blueprint you will be able to find a related article in his blog.
Sample Questions
- VMware Learning Zone: VMware Certification Exam Prep: VCP6.5 — Data Center Virtualization v6.5 Exam (2V0–622 / 2V0–622D)
This is one of the courses I mentioned earlier. In some objectives, they will give you sample questions and walk you through how to answer them. I found those questions really useful as they tight directly to the objective, so you know what to expect and what to study for.
2. Brief Me Now
They have about 100 sample questions for this exam, and they are really useful. By going through the questions, you know what topics you need to study more and what are the ones you are confident with. Just need to be careful, some answers can be wrong. Make sure you read the comments below the questions to get the correct answers.
3. ExamsDB
There are 150 questions for this exam. Although a lot of the questions are overlapped with Brief Me Now, the good thing about this website is that you can easily search the questions (search functions don’t work properly on Brief Me Now). Just need to be careful with the answers, as they can also be wrong.
So, that is almost the end of my article. The last thing I want to highlight is : use vSphere Docs as much as you can. This is the most comprehensive website for the exam and you can find every single thing you need here. And most importantly, the exam questions are based on the vSphere articles .
You can save your articles to the library and revisit them again. I personally like to save those articles by objectives, that way it is easier to refer to.
Thank you so much for reading to the end of my article. I wish you all successfully passing the exam.
