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captainmarvel
Contributor
Contributor

Passed the VCP! - Want to share some thoughts

My first post, and I'm happy to day that as of yesterday, I passed the VCP410 exam (woot!)

I wanted to share some tips that I typed up shortly after completing the test that I thought some future test takers might find helpful.

● Use the "flag for review" button in the top right hand corner.  My approach was to flag the questions that didn't quite seem right to me, or questions that required an answer that just didn't seem to fit.  Once I was done and to the end of the test, I still had about 20 minutes remaining which means I was able to go back through the 15 or so questions with a fine tooth comb. This saved me from answering at least 5 questions wrong simply by re-reading the questions multiple times and realizing that I had missed something in the question itself.

  • If your making good time through the test, dont be affraid to stop for 60 seconds for a breather. It helps to refresh the mind

● Look for key words like "And" or "But not". An example would be a question that might look like: What is the function of HA and DRS?, or What is a Function of HA but not DRS? - Looking for these keys words often means the difference between right and wrong answers

● Study as many practice tests as you can. This helped put my mind into test mode. Be careful though as you really do want to avoid "brain dumps" and poorly executed test questions as you will usually end up just thinking the wrong answer is right.

● Figure out rhymes to remember the really tricky numbers.  An example of just a few (of many) I came up with (they don't make sense, which made them easier to remember oddly enough)

"My dog temporally loaned me 1024 dollars"  - This helped me remember that the /tmp partition's default size is 1024mb

"I logged 2000 hours of overtime this year" - This helped me remember that /var/log is 2000mb

"I want to visit my home 512 times" - /home is 512mb


● You will be given a scratch paper and a pencil. When I sat down (as I waited for the test to load) I wrote out as many maxims as I could remember so I would have them on quick look up so I could not waste minutes thinking and to also allow my memory to free up a bit

● Use the paper to perform math. I found this easier to do than trying to remember numbers.
"A cluster has 5 hosts with 2 qaud core CPUs per host" - Instead of wasting brain processing power and time, write it out like:
5 x 2 = 10 x 4 = 40 cores
It ends up being quicker (at least for me) than to sit and re-read the same numbers 7 times.

Let me know if you find any of these helpful, or if you have your own tips.

Thats all. . . .

Thanks!

VCP-4, VCP-5, VCP-Cloud
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5 Replies
admin
Immortal
Immortal

Congrats on Passing VCP!!!

Thanks for sharing this.

Anand

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AnthonyChow
Hot Shot
Hot Shot

Congratulations and thanks for sharing the tips especially on writing down the max numbers before the exam.

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AndreTheGiant
Immortal
Immortal

Congrats for the pass and thanks for sharing this information.

Andrew | http://about.me/amauro | http://vinfrastructure.it/ | @Andrea_Mauro
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orthohin
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

                        

Congrats. Thanks for shearing this information.

Regards,
Milton

Never trust a computer you can't throw out a window
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vBlockJFK
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Well done! Great ideas too.

I just passed the VCP-5. I noticed that many of the questions (maybe 60%) seem to apply to both vSphere 4 and 5. Just my observation.

Also, I noticed a question about workloads found in a cloud (public or private, I can't recall which). This info comes not from the vSphere docs, but from the vCAT (http://www.vmware.com/cloud-computing/cloud-architecture/vcat-toolkit.html)

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