VCAP-DCA4 Exam experience

[umairsuri]

Hello,

Today i went for my VCAP -DCA exam and unfortunately had a bad experience becuase of some strange reasons .

- I started my exam and second question becime disaster for , I misunderstood the question and treid removng a nic from vSwitch and suddenly whole lab goes down.I thought there si network outage happen network disconnecitvity for some reason

I raised my concern to the Administrator pearson VUE and she immediately called vmware and theninformed that something happen due to candidate change settings.

I kept on telling them chnaign some thing on ESX host , can in what way results dosconnectivity on the Desktop , Vcenter both.

I tried trouble shooted the problem and revert alls settings back, later i fing out that sionce vcneter is one of the VM and and adding woring Pnic to the [port group resulted ion this issue

My question is :

Although for some reason its my mistake but should it not only resultas false  task  failing on that particular taskrather it has almost ruined my exam because  it  waisted more than 35 mins.

- Should VMware not have to explain the environemnt to the candidate prior the exam to just have the exact knwolwedge of what can affect what. I mean test environemnt dependencies this should make very clear to the cnadidate prior to the exam instead of this useless survey.

I mean do you see usually if you mistakenly assign a nic to the portgorup and yuor vcenter - desktop machine verything got disconnected , Is this the right testing environment

- And how cnadidate know that adding a prticular nic or removing it  can result in disaster and will take whole exam. okay i agree even its may fault it should keep t that task, and showuld not affect the rest fo the exam .

-Am i sounding okay here , or i shoudl put all blame on my self for this mistake and most likely the whole exam.

- I was able o finish nearly 20 tasks in what ever time was left avaialble for me after the chaos and frustation, any one who has given exam would understand the importanc eof each minute , and I ws ther reparing the VMware test lab. I am thinking over and couldnt justify it that this only my mistake.

- I am should I be tested like this, I have worked quite hard on my preparation for couple of  months but was not even expexting  this to happen

Its really very upsetting although VUE admin has triggered the Incident and also provide me with the IR number to follow up with VMware.

Please comment your opinion and let me know. Will be greatly appreciated. Thanks

Umair..

[weinstein5]

Welcome to the Community - I am sorry you had issues - I am assuming you had issues with the Lab portion of the exam - Prior to going to the exam did you run through the VCAP4-DCA Exam UI Demo on the VMware VCAP DCA site to get a feel for how the labs work?

If there was an issue with the facililty conectivity or equipment VMware will handle it and will be able to deal with the issue -

[scott28tt]

Unfortunately for you, I think VMware would expect that an administrator who is at the level of VCAP-DCA should appreciate the potential implications of removing uplinks from virtual switches. Yes mistakes can happen, and yes it was not a lab environment you were fully familiar with, but you are presented with the same lab and tasks as every other person who attempts the DCA exam.

Hopefully for you, you were still able to complete enough tasks to gain enough points to pass. Best of luck!

Scott.

[AndreTheGiant]

I'm quite sure to remember that in the instruction there were some notes about potential mistake, like shut-down a host.

IMHO, a reset function could be interesting to be implemented, but it require several time, and time is a big constrain in this kind of exam.

The only way is double think what you are doing and be sure to do not block your-self.

[firestartah]

I've brought this up before as I made a mistake very much like yours and VMware replied stating they warn you at the beginning that certain mistakes can mean you are impacted throughout . Also as Andrea said this is a test for advanced administrators and therefore it is to test you where one mistake can cause loss of connectivity like you experienced. I felt that you should be given the ability to fix your mistake as this is on the blueprint as a skill rather than an easy reset which won't test your troubleshooting skills

Good luck with the test but from my personal experience of making a similar mistake VMware won't change it for you as it is your mistake.

Gregg

[umairsuri]

Hi,

Thanks all of you for your comments and suggestions. Greatly Appreciated.

I fully understand the level of this exam and its partially my mistake, though I have few things bothering me

- how many time  Vmware Administrator see removing a vmnic from vSwitch  can leads disconnection on vcenter server , desktop mahcine and specially when its not been removed rom vSwif or virtual machine network. ( which confuses me and initially i thought its something wrong with the system, however I fixed the issue as it was confirmed that t happen becuase of the changes I made which later i fixed and finishes the rest fo the tasks as much as I could) it results in waste of precious time

- as a candidate one doesnt know about service dependencies, which should be made aware to the candidate and if then some thing happen candidate should be made  sole repsonsible, but if some one even dont know that dependencies at first how one can avoid to block him or herself?

- And with out prior knowledge of the  dependencies and infrstratucture do any consultant can fix the issue , Does it mean Lab infrastructure is standard and every one should know it by default.I mean who will judge thats this happen due to lack of knowledge or lack of awarenes in regards of the lab infrastructure.

Thanks again.

[scott28tt]

I stand by my previous response, a VCAP-DCA should understand the correct course of action in the environment in which they are working, regardless of whether it's the lab setup in the exam or the environments they encounter as part of their job role. You can see from the desktop of the lab environment what admin tools you have available, and explore the lab infrastructure and the vSphere setup to familiarise yourself with it.

Scott.

[JohnHenry201110]

Hi man,

Can you please share the question or scenario of your VCAP exam here or privately via email ?

I need to know as I cannot find practice exam question in the web so far.

Thanks

[firestartah]

Hi

If he told you the questions from the exam then that's cheating and against the NDA he agreed to when he did the test. Sharing of exam questions is cheating. I'm glad you and other people cant find out anything on the web about questions from the exam as it means people have to pass it by knowing the information and completing the tasks honestly.

If you do the blueprint and all the legitimate resources out there you can pass it.

Gregg

[scott28tt]

If you're asking for a dump of the admin tasks that you may be asked to perform in the VCAP-DCA exam you are undermining the hard work of every single person who holds the certification, including me. It is a very tough exam that takes weeks if not months of preparation for most people.

The official VCAP4-DCA page has links to the blueprint which will give you an idea of what you may be asked to do: http://mylearn.vmware.com/mgrReg/plan.cfm?plan=16657&ui=www_cert

I have a number of posts on my blog, my review of the exam and some resources I used (but nothing like a dump): http://vmwaretraining.blogspot.com

Scott.

[umairsuri]

Hello,

Don't owrry guys thats not going to happen, anyone wants to pass this exam has to do equal amount of efforts as others are doing, which will keep this certification its worth in the Job market and can assure competency level.

BTW, I unfortunately got 255 marks in my exam but considering the fact that I lost more than 30 minutes of my exam is atleast satisfying for me.

Thanks all of you for your kind suggestions.

Regards,

Umair.

[firestartah]

Hi

sorry to hear you didn't make it. Don't feel too bad though as many people failed the exam and it is extremely difficult to make sure that the people who pass it are highly skilled

Are you planning on trying again?

Gregg

[NickEvans]

Sorry to hijack your posting, but I really like what I'm reading that this person is unable to find any brain dumps.

This is the beauty of the VCAP exams at the moment, they are difficult and you can't memorise questions from a dump, and you truely have no idea what questions they will ask you. You need to know the whole blueprint to a level greater than just reciting maximum configs.

It gives real cred to the people who have done the hard work and passed.

I spent 3 months studying for both the DCA and DCD and really proud of my achievement, lots of hard work, sacrifice, but best of all I learnt a truck load of new knowledge...which I use daily at work.

There is a real comradery and respect amoung the folk who have done the VCAP (either passed the exam or not). So I can't see anyone publishing a braindump soon.

Cheers,

Nick.

[mickys19]

Oh what a shame, he cant find the answers. This is what sets this exam from the rest, I myself am studying for this exam at the moment and actually enjoy studying tasks I rarely perform as i'm quite pigeon holed with the environment I work on everyday, so learning the new things and tasks I'd only do once!.

If you can't do it, don't sit it, and having that attitude (ie dumps, cheat sheets etc...) with exams will catch up with you eventually (sorry I get passioned about these things)

[crawfordm]

Were the servers 4.1 or are they still using 4.0 ?