Like many of my fellow virtualization brothers and sisters, I am preparing for the VCAP-DCA exam. Everything I’ve read about this exam says that it is not to be taken lightly. I want to pass. And to ensure that I pass, I need to prepare. To assist with the prep, I’ll be publishing my notes and resources here.
Some quick exam info:
- The items covered can be found in the exam blueprint.
- The cost is $400 USD.
- The exams are administered by Pearson Vue.
- The exam consists of 40 live lab simulation questions and you have about 225 minutes to complete them.
- You have full access to all of the VMware documentation if you need to look something up. But if you need to constantly go back to read documentation, you won’t have enough time to complete the exam. The best thing to do is get yourself a lab and learn this stuff, even if it is Fusion or Workstation.
- It’s based on vSphere 4.0 (still trying to confirm).
- And probably the weirdest thing of all: You need to wait 10 days before you find out if you pass or fail. Seriously VMware, what’s with the waiting 10 days?
VMware has recently published some demos of the exam UI for both VCAP Data Center Administration and Design exams. Follow the link above to check them out.
My exam is scheduled for January 22nd at 8AM. I was originally planning to take it on November 18th, but I needed to reschedule. On a positive note: this allows me extra time to prepare and focus on the areas where I need more experience; namely performance and security. My job affords me the opportunity to spend a great deal of time with installation, storage, and network configuration of a VMware virtual environment. Since I’m not in an operational support role, I don’t often get to flex the esxtop and vscsiStats muscles.
I’m also going to be creating some of my own test scenarios and adding time limits to each one. This will help simulate working under more pressure and will give me a good idea how well I know the content. Here’s an example:
Requirements
Maintain isolation between Service Console, VMkernel, and VM traffic. Each VM needs to connect to a separate management network for monitoring and backups. VMs must not be allowed to communicate with each other on this separate management network.
Solution
Configure your physical switch ports as trunk ports and connect your ESX hosts. Implement a dvSwitch and create separate port profiles for each interface. Enable PVLANs on the management interfaces and create ACLs for the VMs to communicate with the monitoring and backup servers.
Time to complete: 15 minutes.
I’m not taking into account the time it takes to configure the external switch. The time only applies to tasks related to the ESX host and related management tools (vSphere Client, vMA, vCenter). I don’t think that there will be any portion of the exam/labs that require you to configure external devices but it doesn’t hurt to know how.
I’m open to suggestions, comments, and feedback. I also encourage working together to help better prepare anyone who is currently studying or is considering taking this exam. Feel free to ping me on twitter [at] eprich or at epaulrichards [at] gmail dot com.
