My VCAP-DCD experience

It’s been a long time since my last post here, as you’re probably already aware I’m involved in another blog called Juku, but that’s another story

In the middle of my tight schedule I decided to book the VCAP-DCD exam to upgrade my VCDX up to version 4 and, as is usual for me, I didn’t had the time to study until the day before the exam.

By the way, on Thursday February 17th I set my alarm clock at 4.30am, drove to Bologna and picked up a semi-empty flight to London Gatwick, my exam was scheduled at 10.45am but as usual I arrived early and stopped by the local Starbucks to get my coffee fix (a quad shot americano, just to warm up my brain a little bit) and to review a couple of VMware documents that I was less sure about, at 10.30 I showed up at the Holborn Pearson center, filled the paperwork and started the exam.

Obviously there are countless NDAs on the exam itself, so I’m not going to disclose anything, I will try to explain my feelings toward the exam that in my opinion is a big step in the right direction.

Let’s start with a quick PROs vs. CONs list:

PROs:

- The Visio-like design portion is actually doable, a quantum leap for those who experienced the infamous VCD310.

- Questions span on every design aspect, this is definitely an Exam that you can pass only if you have a real experience in the field, braindumps are worth nothing here.

- The balance between traditional multiple choice, drag&drop and design questions is great, much better when compared to the old Design Exam.

- Scoring is immediate (this is a GREAT plus to me ).

CONs:

- Exam is waaaay too long: sitting for 4 hours straight in an exam room answering questions is alienating in my opinion.

- Some questions are either too simple or too complex, a better balance would be appreciated.

- There’s no calculator available (neither in physical form or on-screen) and there are many questions that require some math skills.

So, besides the cons listed above, this exam is definitely a big step forward in the right direction, and on top of that I had a feeling that the VCAP-DCD blueprint was covered at almost 100%, instead of the older Design Exam blueprint that, in my opinion, was less focused on the VMware side of things (this also means that you need to study everything listed on the blueprint .

Another pain point for many could be the so-called “VMware terminology” in the design questions, like: constraint, assumptions, upstream and downstream dependencies. They’re clearly meaningful words and if you can wrap your head around these concepts it’s fairly easy to understand and answer the questions, but if you’re not accustomed to design using this terminology you should probably attend the VMware Design course that gives a great overview of the “VMware way” of doing designs.

In the end I passed the exam with a decent 413 (out of 500), upgraded my VCDX certification to VCDX4 and got back home at 11.30pm the same day (with a nice bag of macaroons bought at Laduree), not a bad day after all

Technorati Tags: vcdx, vcap, vcap-dcd, vcdx4, vmware