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.
