5.5 Exam attempt and finally passed!

So I wrote my DCD for the third time yesterday and finally passed it.  My first two attempts where on 5.1, this attempt was on the 5.5 so I would know how it feels and to get a better idea of how to tweak the simulator in the future.

I found the DCD 5.5 exam a little better for a number of reasons

-  It seems more streamlined

-  I could get partial marks all the way through (Assuming I was getting at least half it right)  This is due to the drag-n-drop questions replacing the multiple choice

-  No multiple choice.  My brain has an issue with skipping a question without giving it a valid effort, even if it knows its a waste of time for 1 point.  So this helped a lot of myself at least.

The things that I found helped me a lot on this exam where the things I'm currently trying to build into a Study pack.  So hopefully I will get that done in the next little while.  Till then here is a short version:

-  Know Assumptions, Risks, Constraints, Requirements, Functional Requirements, and Non-Functional Requirements.  Know how to take a situation and break down items into these categories

-  Conceptual, Logical,  and Physical Design, know these well and how to take a situation and break down items into these categories

-  Compute, Sizing, and Calculations

-  Admission control and sizing(Calculate slot size and % based control)

-  Monster VM's and NUMA (Microsoft SQL, SAP, Exchange, ect)

-  Storage Best Practices, Fibre, iSCSI, NFS, PSP

-  Storage features,  Storage DRS, IO control ,ect.

-  Resource Pools, Child Pools

-  Networking best practices

-  NIOC

-  Autodeploy

-  Implementation steps / Implementation Plan

Overall my experience with this exam has been a great learning experience and also exhausting.  I'm glad I have finally accomplished this and look forward to finishing up my DCX track and then working towards my VCAP-DTD

Thank you all for the support and I look forward to continuing to supply content and assistant to those challenging the DCD

If anyone has any questions please let me know.