VCP - VI3 - Practice Test

[thickclouds]

Does anyone know of a practice exam?

[jasonboche]

1) A few monhts of hands on experience with the products

2) Good familiarity with iSCSI, NAS, and VCB

3) Good familiarity with permissions for both VC and ESX, including default permissions

4) Read the ESX SAN guide. It's a fairly short document but a good amount of questions I had on the exam were covered in that document (brushing up on boot from SAN would be a good idea also)

5) If you have the time, read the Administrators guide or at least brush up in the areas you are weak in so you have gap coverage in the exam.

[bonesy]

Hello All,

I just wanted to add my 2cents for what it is worth.

I sat the exam today and passed with 85. I had only attended the training and before that had only heard of virtualization and not worked with any sort of v-product.

While the advantage of hands on practice with the product cannot be stressed enough (as with anything) it is not impossible to pass with out it (as my only experience was the course). Granted I have a strong technical back ground, academic and professional, but I think based on the information available and the course, you have the tools required to pass with that alone. (Also get you hands dirty if possible nothing beats the hands on exp, as the more senior people here have said. I personally would have loved to have the time to do so, but my company is pushing to become a partner)

I put this down to a well structured training course and above average documentation on the products and concepts.

My advice if you would like it is: Read an understand the course material, use the blue print as a study guide, subliment the study guild with the VMware product documentation etc.

THis was a good thread and IMO alot of it helped focus my attentions.

Anyway, thank you and good luck to the rest of you guys going for your VCP.

All IMO.

Thanks and Cheers

Jason

[specialk]

Hi there! I passed on Monday with 84. Used this post as a guide as to what to study so it obviously worked. Thank you to all those who posted helpful advice!

Would say that subject matter is not totally finite so be prepared for questions involving stuff like SQL.

Now to get a decent job. Does anyone have any suggestions of London based companies looking for VCPs?

[aleph0]

Hi there,

passed yesterday with 84.

prepare yourselves on:

Virtual center installation

firewall / ports

iScsi

I've studied also on http://www.lulu.com/content/712361 (donloaded the 9.99$ version) and have a lot of hands on project ongoing ...

Very simple respect to VCP101!

Cheers

aleph0

[fl57]

I bought this book.

It is complete

It misses just a content table ...

[vheff]

Ok, I know this thread is getting REAL long but it's in Google so I figured it's the best place to continue discussion on the exam!

I've booked my exam for next Friday (one week tomorrow!). I took the course in November 06, but shortly afterwards found a new job so since then I've not had the time to take the exam / study. I've worked for around 1 year on ESX 2.5x (single server only) and 2 months on VI3 (four servers, VC, HA, DRS).

I read the RapidApp Quickstart everyday on the train on my way to work and I'm now studying the PDF's from the VMWare site. I'm a W2K MCSE, but feel that this is going to be my biggest challenge yet. I think my past ESX experience is only going to count for 10% of the exam, but I may be wrong.

I really hope I pass of course, but even better if I can get 85 or more so I can investigate down the path of becoming an instructor!

ONE QUESTION: I'm dying to find out if you're allowed a pencil / blank paper during the exam? I had this during all of my MCSE exams, and wondered if this would be any different?

Thanks,

Ray.

P.S. Wish me luck for next week!

[jasonboche]

Yes, VUE testing centers allow you two dry erase boards (front and back sides so you really have 4 sheets) and a dry erase marker. For this exam you won't need all 4 sides. You'll be lucky if you fill up one side.

Our background and study methods are somewhat similar. I mostly used the RapidApp book to study from plus I looked at some key areas in the VMware .PDFs. Do yourself a huge favor and brush up on iSCSI, NAS, and SAN. You will do well for yourself to read the SAN config guides. I'd say the above 3 subjects will net you 25-40% of the exam coverage depending on what questions you get out of the pool.

I missed the 85 mark just barely. If I had brushed up on NAS basics instead of not knowing anything about it when I took the exam, I would have a 90 or better. I knew iSCSI very well.

Good luck!!!

Jas

[vheff]

Thanks Jas.

Are there any questions of NUMA support? I notice that this is mentioned in the blueprint guide but it's not exactly an important topic in my opinion. I'll certainly be reading more on NAS, iSCSI and SAN!!!

Ray

[jasonboche]

Anything on the blueprint is fair game on the exam. That is the purpose of the blueprint.

I don't think you need to study the complete architecture of NUMA and node interleaving, just understand its purpose and where it can be used and why you'd want to use it.

Good luck on your exam.

[Henry_T_]

passed this morning with 85!

the hints in this post are very helpful.

get the admin and san guide pdf from vmware...

they help a lot

regards

Henry

[dbrenton]

Good Morning all,

My first post I finished the VI3 course a week ago. I am writing the exam on May 14th. Thanks for all the info here in the forum. Does anyone know if VMware has any official sample exams? I know HP has one somewhere, can't find it either. I have 1 year on 2.5, about 1 month on 301. I will post with results when available. wish me luck!

Dave

[vheff]

Dave,

I have 1 year experience with 2.5 and 3 months with ESX 3 (DRS & HA), but I failed my exam last week. I'm taking it again next week, and it's not to be under estimated.

Some people say it's easy, and whilst experience is a MUST, it's just as important to read up on storage (iSCSI, NFS, Fibre), SCSI Bus sharing, DRS, HA, etc. No really.... you need this knowledge as I found out!

Also, know the in's and out's of VMotion, why it can fail. Not just the fact it has incompatible CPU's for example, but extended features etc.

[EndureKona]

I have to say you guys Rock. The pointers here are helpful. I read the San guide three times this week, read VCB, and the section about Networking in the Server Config guide all week. Passed today with an 88.

Thanks.

[dbrenton]

l9nux

Thanks for the information. I always take cert exams seriously. I will be sure to cover all the info and know it inside out. Since I enjoy working with ESX/VMware, I hope that will help in the study portion. As long as it's not a Microsoft "the sky is blue, the grass is orange, what cpu do you have installed" type of question exam, I think I will survive. I heard it is just multiple choice, is that correct?

Dave

[EndureKona]

Yes that is correct. Nothing like Microsoft long paragraph attempting to throw you off. Yes if you read the PDF's from VMware you should be in good shape, but they told us this in the class.

[dbrenton]

the instructor told us about 90% can come from the course book, but the other 10% from the white papers, install guide, ect. is this a fair assumption? Still looking for test exam 😎

[EndureKona]

Not sure. I didn't open up my course books to study. I took the class and have been hammering out the PDF's for the past month.

[itcpa]

NOT true. I passed a few months ago and I did not even look at the student manual. Got an 87!

It's all in the PDF's

[vheff]

This is obviously a BIG topic. A colleague of mine just completed the VI3 course (I took mine last year), and the tutor even said that you only need the course material to pass the exam. I then asked him a few questions such as about partitions when installing using local storage, DRS affinity settings, and VMotion processor requirements. He didn't know all of the answers as this wasn't covered in any detail. I think it's probably more like 68% course material and 32% from other sources (PDF's, whitepapers, etc).

When I did my course, I certainly didn't come away with detailed knowledge of SAN zoning, LUN masking, and stuff like what the VMKCore partition is for wasn't even mentioned.

I wonder what the advanced VCP exam will be like when it's finally released?

[dbrenton]

thanks all for the extra informatin. I hope it all helps come next Monday. Nice to see an effective info system Have a good weekend all.

Dave