VCP410

[Josh26]

Hey guys,

I just (barely) completed VCP410 and wanted to convey my thoughts.

The first thing that comes to mind is this is in no way an exam that you pass based on "in the field" experience. I've been building and managing VMWare datacenters since ESX 3.0. The Troubleshoot course came with all sorts of warnings about being for advanced users only and I found it quite easy - but practical and therefore fun.

All that got me through this exam was a large amount of memorising of configuration maximums and a tonne of "this action is done on this menu" flash cards I made up. I could never imagine "512 port groups per standard switch" being a limit I ran into in the real world (example deliberately not in the exam so as not to breach NDA).

What killed me is - VMWare Guided Consolidation. I think there was enough questions about this product - which I had never used before studying this exam - that you could get 100% in all other areas and still probably fail.

I had a one question around "which of these pieces of hardware is not compatible with VMWare". Sorry but show me where in the Blueprint I was supposed to memorise the HCL.

Finally, the most common question on these forums is "which version do I study". I did actually have several questions which stated "On an ESX 4.0 server" but the answer would have been consistent with 4.1 also. I really don't think you have anything to gain by studying an older version.

[AndreTheGiant]

Several exams (not only VMware) maybe be not related with experience.

It's not perfect, but it's a limit of exam with multi-choice option that must delivered to a lots of people (and changed with the right frequency).

VCAP exams are quite different, and in this case experience will be more important.

Andre

[jonhall]

Hello all,

Just wanted to comment quickly. This exam is indeed challenging, please be sure you are thoroughly prepared. The exam consists of 85 questions, less than 5% of the exam is based on configuration maximums. So on an 85 question exam we are talking about 4 exam items. This, like everything on the exam, is driven by a process where we determine the importance of exam topics by surveying a large group of external vSphere administrators (in this case, we surveyed over 1000 individuals!). If you see a topic like Guided Consolidation on the exam and wonder why it is there, your peers in the field told us needed to be on the exam and also indicated how important the topic should be compare to other topics on the exam.

Mostly want to let the community know that we don’t arbitrarily choose topics or determine the importance of those topics. We ask folks in the actual job role. While I am sure no method is perfect, we believe this method comes closest to giving you an exam that contains real-world topics.

Regards,

Jon C. Hall

Sr. Technical Certification Developer

<mailto:your.email@vmware.com> jonh@vmware.com

2077 Loma Linda Way N., Clearwater, FL 33763

727-446-8430 Office

727-460-8448 Mobile

702-554-3727 Fax

<http://www.vmware.com/> vmware

[dquintana]

Hello Josh, i always say this for the VCP, read with full attention the Study manual, and max\min  and you should approve the exam, maybe not with 100% but sure with 80%. The most common answers are in the manual. But people don't want to read all with full attention.

Diego

[sgyaragal]

Hi, dquintana

Which study manual u r talking about ??

could you pls mention it here ??

since i have failed in VCP exam,,, exam was tricky,,,like in multiple choice questions,,,i know one answer but other one not sure,,,

so may be helpful to review once more clearly,,