What is the deal with the drag-n-drop and the visio diagram usage on the exam?

[zargonoth]

Short story - failed twice. Did worse than before with many of the questions being dupes from attempt #1,

I'm okay with failing on my own merits, but what I'm not okay with is failing by the hand of the tools that I'm supposed to use.

I even had the exam choke on me when I clicked next to submit my 3rd design question - I'm not even sure it registered before it gave me the next question - GRRRR.

I'm going to suspect that many of the first attempt failures are possibly due to the ambiguity of the correct way to use the tools (drag-n-drop and visio diagramming.)

I've attached a .pdf that has some variants that I'd like some clarification on, preferably by someone from the exam creation/design team.

If my assumptions are correct, there should be some review process to determine why objects don't stick within their containers and how to correctly group multiple DnD answers correctly.

Testers: Please see the .PDF and let me know if you ran into something similar

Devs: Tell us how to use the mechanics correctly. (ie: create a vSwitch first, then drag-n-drop a port group onto a vSwitch, if only one port group sticks, then do XYZ to fix it and move on.)

[JPM300]

Hey Zargonoth,

If I understand your question correctly, when you moved the VDS some of the portgroups that where placed on top of it didn't move with it?  Or how do you know if the items you have inputed on a design question or on a drag and drag is acutally going to be scored?

[Wardy8124]

Did you get any clarification of this as I had a similar experience on my last attempt and wasn't sure how to group items which I felt needed to be at the time? I guess with out the question it will be hard to just what was actually required and where the clues are in the questions or instructions.

[zargonoth]

Nothing "Official" yet.

I think I covered the D-n-D variants fairly well in the pdf attached in the original post:

• Place items in order
• Place items with the correct answer.

The only clues that they give within the actual exam is the phrasing:

• Some item may appear in multiple categories
• Not all items will be used

I'm guessing if someone official did see the question,they probably won't answer for fear of ruining the precious, super secret, integrity of the exam.

If I had to do this a third time (probably won't) I'd do the following for the two types of D-n-D variants:

• Place items in order  -  Just put enough minimal 'crucial' answers and move on.  Example: 6 items and 4 categories = only 4 answers, and move on. My reasoning would be that some answers are better (points) than all of the answers where a single wrong item can mark the entire question invalid (think Scantron bubble test.) if you get the first (top) answer wrong, the rest won't validate.
• Place items with the correct answer: Just place a single item with the question/description. Placing more of the wrong answers may invalidate the whole answer. Example:  6 items and 5 categories = just 5 answers and no stacking/multiple answers.

On those lousy diagram questions, I got so ticked off when I dropped an object (datastores) and I moved the RAID group around until It picked up the datastore, and even then, it only picked up one effing datastore (on both exam attempts) and the same deal happened with the vDS and the port groups.   Ditto on the vApp container too, except when I moved the container, it placed the VMs out of order. I'm sitting there cursing up a storm in my head during the exam and re-reading the instruction hoping there's a monkey flipping clue on how to put this stuff together so I get the points... Nope, nothing.  They only thing they clue you into is the type of connectors to connect certain (upstream/downstream) objects together.

Instead of the hokey survey questions at the beginning, they could have just had us do a quick tutorial, and no i'm not talking about that sacred cow that everyone points to when they refer to that "Exam UI Demonstration" from the VMware DCD exam page, that's just a lousy Captivate 'clicky click through' demo that doesn't even cover the mess that is dragging and dropping objects.,

The way this plays out will determine whether or not I take any future VMware certs or just take the TOGAF Exam and move on with life with other vendor certs instead.

/Venting

[Wardy8124]

Mate I do feel your pain and this Friday will be my third attempt all be it on different exam versions (5.0,5.1 and the 5.5). I must admit some guidance on how they expect groupings of various components should look in a few examples instead of the ridiculous "Survey" at the start would certainly help nerves and stop any ambiguity which I feel is starting to creep in here. I couldn't help but wonder if you answered the survey questions in a manner where you said you hadn't done any complicated designs etc it would fail or stop the exam before you even started!?! Thankfully I have experience but it does make you wonder why bother at all especially at the start so why not do it at the end and give you the opportunity to provide feedback there and then.

I also think that we should have the option to add comments into the designs so that we could perhaps justify why we have done what we did in the design answer so that if there were an objection to the end result there would be some possibility of addressing it by VMware Certification services/Education and clarifying why you were wrong. Yes this could mean that answers could be gleaned if sneaky gits try and do it in a distributed manner but this may have not been necessary in the first place should we have been given guidance as mentioned previously. I myself like a few others have had issues with the answers not being as we left them when we came back to check them at the end of the exam but that was for the exam version 5.1/5.0 so I'm desperately hoping they have resolved this issue in the new version which I presume you did the VCDC550?

As mentioned I'll be taking my 3rd attempt on VCAP this Friday. I'll be feeding back to the forum and on my blog as to my thoughts be it pass or fail. What I will say though is to keep going and try again it will be worth it when you pass it but a piece of advice given to me by a prominent VCDX in the community was that you should draw the design first on the pad and then do the visio drawing. This will mitigate red herrings and also enable you to get the drawing done right first time. That's the theory I'll see how that pans out Friday!

Regards

Ward8124

[JPM300]

Hey Zargonoth,

I'm curious as to how the scoring is done as well, however I would assume as long as the items are stacked correctly it would be scored.  I know for the simualtor i'm building when I get around to monkeying around with the scoring code I figure i'll be using IF & CASE statements to just check if items are stacked properly or connected.  I agree a quick informational demo prior to the exam starting wouldn't hurt as well, this is part of the reason I started to create the simulator to help people just get the feel for the exam prior to sitting it.  Anyhow I hope you get the answers your looking for, if you do please post them on this forums for the rest of the community.

If you have time run through the simulator I've been working on as any feed back would be greatly appricated:

www.virtualtiers.net

The last question has a bunch of bugs i'm currently working on and the answer files will soon have explanations as well.

[jose_maria_gonz]

Hi JPM300

Great stuff

I really appreciated all the stuff you are putting together and sharing it with all of us, much appreciated

Just a quick question out of curiosity, where would you draw the RR connection from? That is, from the ESXi server via SAN switch to the array or just from the SAN switch to array?

Thanking you in advance,

Rgds,

J.

[JPM300]

Hey Jose,

The RR connector would be used from the ESXi host's HBA's to the SAN Switches.  This is because the RR settings is a setting from the VMkerenel of the ESXi host and is initiated by the ESXi hosts when making requests to the SAN.   At the bottom of page 1 on this link you will see a re-due of the answer file for that question based off Vmwares documentation:

Help Create Some New DCD Study material / New Material

Thanks again and any feedback is welcome!

[jose_maria_gonz]

Hi JPM300,

Understood.

Thanks for your prompt reply, much appreciated.

Keep up the good work

Rgds,

J.

[btniko]

Hi zargonoth!

Sharing your frustration. I have the same questions as you have, looking at your PDF.

/Bjørn.

[Bill_Oyler]

I took a look at the simulator, and it is definitely a good practice tool.  However I notice that if I put a port group in a Distributed vSwitch and then move the Distributed vSwitch around, the port groups do not move around with it.  Is this "expected" behavior -- on the real exam -- or do the icons need to "lock" in place so they are grouped together with the switch itself?

[JPM300]

I have found on the exam it kind of goes both ways.  I have found that moving a VDS or a VSS with the port groups on it sometimes go along, while other times it doesn't.  The anchor system I built is different then the one on the exam, so you have to move them separately as the anchor system only cares about the connections in mine.  On the Exam as much of a pain it is, if I have to move the VDS or VSS around I always move each piece individually if anything is out of line.

I'm currently working on dependency questions for the simulator, just been tied up with things and studying so I haven't had as much time to work on it, but will hopefully have it up in the next week or so.

Yeah the tool is just to get people in the right mind set and give them an idea of what the exam will actually function like.  Especially for first time writers.  The first time I wrote the DCD I killed so much time figuring out the mechanics of it.  The simulator is there to help cut down on that time so you have more time to think about the questions

[JPM300]

The icon's don't need to lock, I doubled checked this with the education team.

On the exam you just need to fulfill the requirements.  If an item needs to be connected, connect it, if an item needs to be on top of another item it needs to be there, ect.  As long as everything is setup the way specified in the question you will get scored accordingly.

If you have any questions please let me know.

[Bill_Oyler]

I took my second shot at the VCAP-DCD today, and I improved my score from 259 to 274 but of course this is still a failing grade.  Some of the questions were the same, some were different.  One interesting thing to note is that the Blueprint document says there are only 5 mini-design questions, and each should be given 15 minutes.  I remember more than 5 of the mini-design questions on my first attempt, so this time I kept a tally of how many there "really" are.  There REALLY are seven (7) mini-design questions.  So if you plan your time management for only 5 mini-design questions, you will be unpleasantly surprised when you get two more, especially when they occur after you've spent a half hour on the Master Design question !!!  True story.

Some of the other oddities that may never be explained:

1) On the vApp container, the only icons that would "stick" to the container were DB and App.  The Web icons would never stick to the container no matter what I did.  So when I moved the container around, the DB and App icons move with it, but the Web icons are left behind.  This makes me wonder if there is a bug with the Web icons.

2) There is also ambiguity over when to use "Active/Active" or "Active/Standby" for the 10 Gig port group connections.  On some of the study material (which is rather dated), VMware suggests configuring the Management port group as Active/Standby.  However almost all designs I see use Active/Active.  Also, iSCSI MPIO designs actually should be "Active/Unused" for each of the two iSCSI port groups (alternating NICs) but the design simulator only allowed "Active/Standby" which is technically wrong for iSCSI.

3) Also in that same design question it asks to use connectors to connect all the VMs to their port groups, but the VMs do not exist anywhere on the screen and cannot be added.  How can you connect VMs to port groups without any VMs???

Bill

[Bill_Oyler]

Thanks for clearing up the drag and drop question.  Now maybe we can get the other questions addressed. 

[JPM300]

Hey Bill,

Sorry to hear about your recent re-write

Questions:

1.)  The anchor system doesn't count towards the points.  The fact that the VM's didn't "stick" it doesn't matter when it comes to the score.  The only thing that matters is they are in the vAPP.  This goes for all items, as long as they are where they need to be when clicking next it will get scored appropriately

2.)  When it comes to the Active/Active, Active/Standby question as long as your design doesn't break a requirement aka, single points of failure, or networks need to be isolated ect, it will still score you accordingly.  Keep in mind the pro's and con's of active/active vs active/passive. 

3.)  I will have to look into this one.

Hope this has helped

[btniko]

zargonothzargonoth

Have you got an answer on how to display the Raid Group / data stores in the design tool?

Refering to your PDF question here.

Kind r.

Bjørn.

[contego]

Any updates on this question?