Passed VCAP5-DCD (VDCD550) - Done and Dusted
@All,
Last Monday (6th April), I appeared for VCAP5-DCD (VDCD550) and passed the exam. Even though I din't score high, but relieved with a passing score, anyway pass is a pass.
Thanks for all esp Jason (virtualtiers) who pointed me in right direction.
How I Prepared:-
1. Know your Risks, Constraints and Assumption
2. Know your Conceptual, Logical and Physical Design
3. Functional and Non-Functional Requirements
4. All vSphere Products and vSphere cluster settings.
-sanjai
Congrats! always great to hear success stories
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VCAP5-DCD - VDCD550 - Failed in spectacular fashion and UPSET.
I just sat through every last minute of the VDCD550 and had the exam actually run out of time on me. I finished the VCP with 30 min to spare after reviewing questions.
I'm happy to take blame when I've clearly not studied enough. I'll pay the exam fee and try again. It's not even the fee that makes me so upset. It's that I didn't feel like I even had a chance. I've been administering a 5.5U1 environment since 5.5 shipped. I've designed and installed countless more. I sat through the 3 day vSphere Design Workshop which was suggested prior to the VCAP-DCD exam and had the instructor tell me he thought I was ready. I studied for two weeks up the exam. So why the hell did this test just steam roll me? I think it was a few things.
1. Questions with some or more correct answers. When you ask a question and I can apply multiple possible answers to a given category, you leave that open for interpretation. Are you scoring me negatively or positively if I pick one too many things? Who is to say that I'm not right? What's to say something isn't a risk and a assumption. Maybe it's both, maybe not. Maybe I'm getting docked for it, maybe I'm not.
2. Am I really supposed to draw 30 plus dependency connectors? I know how to take an exam, which is to say, only answer exactly what is being asked. Yes, you asked that I essentially draw that many connectors which makes the workspace basically unusable. Maybe you didn't really want that many. Maybe what you asked for was too vague.
3. Topics not covered in any course ware. Ok VMware, you like Storage I/O control. I get it. Maybe there should have been a section on detailed configuration for it in the 3 day workshop I took. Same goes for storage tiers with storage DRS.
I guess I'm just venting, but good lord am I angry. I guess now I know what to go back and study. FMLHey pcakes,
I had a very simular expereince, I read over all the material I could get my hands on and still felt steam rolled even though I've been doing this stuff since Vmware 2.0/2.5
Here is my quick write up on it:
DCD5.1 or DCD 5.5?
Here is the coles notes of my experience:
1.). I found the test very open ended on many of the questions. For instance when adding a nic into a design on a design question, it doesn't state weather its a single nic or dual nic or quad nic, so your left to guessing. Also when connecting items in the design questions do they assume the switches are stacked or do you need to connect the switches? This was never laided out in the instructions
2.). Building off my first point I found some of the design questions could of used more instructions as to where you want to leave items on the page when your stacking stencils. This wasn't always bad on all questions but some where lacking
3.). There was some questions in the multiple choice section that doesn't test you on your design knowledge but on how much you can cram. Ie stuff you would just look up or find in 1 min on a quick google search. I strongly belive these sort of questions should reserved for different types of exams or just make poor exam questions over all as let's be honest, people just look this stuff up and don't permently memeorize this stuff.
4.). I would of liked to see the exam structured in chunks so you could better time manage it but i suspect it was built this way on purpose, so just my opinion I guess
5.). I think VMware should do a new flash demo of how the design tool works so you have a much better idea of how to
I feel a lot of people don't particularly fail this exam because they don't know the material, I feel its a lack of understanding how everythings works in this exam. For me figuring out how I assume they wanted me to lay out the design questions gobbled up so much time, I ended up missing 10 questions, 1 drag-n-drop, 1 design question. I think had I been able to finish those I would of squeaked by.
None the less I'm working on some photoshops / visio of how the exam is layed out with some practice quetions which I hope to post here soon(Nothing the current tutorial doesn't show, just a better explansion with a section where people could help each other plan out desings). Once I have it finished I will submit it to the people at VMware to make sure its not breaking any NDA's and posted it, if it goes over well I will try and built an interactive piece for it to better prep people for the exam. I feel this is this exams greatest downfall. I don't feel I should have to burn an exam just to "know" how to do it. I feel the blue print was concice don't get me wrong, I just felt the instructions where lacking greatly. You never know if something is connected write in many times, or where to place things. This wasn't always the case but on some of the design questions I just said "I hope this is all in the right place" and moved on.
After writing the VCAP-DCA 5.1 which I felt was extreamly well put together I felt this test really lacking. I think if VMware wrote a new interactive tutorial on the drag-n-drop and design questions this would go a long way in helping people write this. When I was at Vmware World prior to writing the exam I was sitting in the exam area and there was LOTS of people who have failed this exam 2-3 times and was writing again. One guy I talked with said the first time he timed out on the exam, the next time he finished with an hour left. That huge of a time difference simply shows how much time you burn the first time around figuring everything out.
None the less it is what it is, and I will be re-writing shortly as well. I feel now that I know more so what i'm walking into and I should get it next time *hopefully * If you want to bounce some questions off me shoot me a PM and we can bounce some study material off each other and see what we can come up with.
Cheers and good luck!! -
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HI GalaxieMusique,
I'm french too, but I'm going to write this post in english so that everyone may understand it
I have the same problem in Mavericks, but I'd say, more important, with QuickLook.
Indeed Quicklook can't read avi movies anymore. Actually it always been the case, but with Perian we were able to fix it. The problem is that Perian is no longer available for Mac OS 10.9....
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In regards with quicktime, you can download QuickTime 7 here:
http://www.01net.com/telecharger/windows/Multimedia/lecteurs_video_dvd/fiches/10 0.html
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Sorry for the english, we french people can make mistakes sometimes
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Hello,
Last week i passed my VDCD550 exam and got VCAP5-DCD certification, so i guess i have some experience to share.
Last few years i worked at PM/management positions at various integrators but recently decided to go more technical again. So i updated my VCP4 to VCP5 in february and was ready to study for VCAP exams. I decided to go with VCAP-DCD, as, to be honest, i didn't have much hand-on implementation/administration expirience last few years. On other hand, i have pre-saled and designed some environments, so choose design path was obvious decision.
My studing materials were:
VMware Press – Official VCAP5-DCD Certification Guide
VMware vSphere Design by Forbes Guthrie & Scott Lowe
VMware vSphere 5.1 Clustering Deepdive by Duncan Epping & Frank Denneman
Managing and Optimizing VMware vSphere Deployments by Sean Crookston and Harley Stagner
vSphere Design Pocketbook eBook by Frank Dennenman
My notes from VCP5 preparations (lifehack: i use Microsoft OneNote for various work and personal life related notes and it just awesome, it has really nice Windows desktop app, plus it stores data in the cloud, so you can always use mobile apps to check on content and alter it a little bit, if necessary)
Articles and white papers from exam blueprint
Great series of "Architectural Decisions" posts by Josh Odgers http://www.joshodgers.com/architectural-decisions/
It was obviously overkill, as you don't need so much data to pass exam (and to be honest, deep technical knowledge isn't needed to pass it), but as i plan to pursue this field of work futher (and may be even continue to VCDX certification), more knowledge won't hurt.
When studying it's better to pay close attention to definitions of requirements, assumptions, constraints, risks and differences between them. Sometimes they are close to each other and phrasing matters very much. Good thing to do is review design you have previously completed at work and write down requirements, assumptions, constraints and risks.
Another point to pay attention to is how exactly are example designs in VMware documentation drawn, something like that will be expected from you. For example, during my exam there was one design 'visio like' question about storage. I've drawn all the objects and almost all connections and then was stuck with ALUA optimized/unoptimized paths. I mean i knew how it would work in real life but i just couldn't figure out how design tool was expecting me to draw it. Design tool kept on giving me error message that i cannot use this connector this way.
Critical skill for this exam is ability to map customers words and wishes to specific features and configurations. Descriptions might sound very unspecific and sometimes even cryptic, but hey, in real world customer very rarely give you structured and well-thought requirents either.
Apart from reading, it's very useful to complete some designs just to arrange your mind in proper way I used this:
Review of previously completed customer desings. Try to use same approach as Josh Odgers in previously mentioned article series: determine requirements, justify your decision, think about alternatives.
Paul McSharry's practice DCD scenarios: http://www.elasticsky.co.uk/practice-questions/. Use same approach.
On-line practice exam http://www.virtualtiers.net This tool is absolutely fantastic, as it gives you look and feel of actual exam. It considerably lowered my stress level
Prepartions took about 1,5 months and i thought i was ready.
Now to the exam itself. First, there is no test center certified for VCAP exams in my town, so i had to wake up at 4:00 in the morning and drive 5 hours to certified test center. On the bright side i had additional 30 minutes to exam time, as i live in Russia there is time bonus for non-native English speakers.
So, it was 42 questions and 4 hours to go for me. And it's when funny thing happened. I either misread exam description or it was written incorrectly (though i guess it was the first ), but at that point i was sure, that after that 42 questions i will have another 8 design question and exam description strongly recommended to reserve at least 2 hours and 15 minutes for those 8 questions. In fast, those 8 questions was included in total exam question count.
As you see, at the moment it seemed to me i had to complete 42 questions in less than 2 hours and then take hardest part of exam. Luckily i was wrong, but as i've seen clock ticking, i became more and more nervous. Due to that i didn't gave some of the questions much thought (maybe for the better, as overthingking something sometimes worse then underthinking). Anyway, i was done with 42 questions,there was still hour and half left, and, to my (very pleasant!) surprise it was all, i passed with 346 score. Well, it may have been higher, if not my description reading mistake, but a pass is a pass.
To summ it up:
Know requirements, assumptions, constraints and risks. Practice determining them from practice tasks and real world situations.
Know differences between conceptual, logical and physical design
Know how logical and physical design diagrams should be drawn from VMware point of view
Try to think as an architect, always justify your design decisions, think about possible alternatives
Design some enviroments (even completely imaginary), or review designs you did at work. View this as a little mind game for spare time, if you have to sit in the car and wait 15 minutes for your girlfriend - why not design a cluster meanwhile?
Hope it helps.
As for me, i'm now studying NSX and it's definitely amazing piece of tech. When VCIX6-DCV will be available, i'll try to pass implementation exam and yearn this certification.Hi Yak
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Though I'm a little puzzled, the 3.4 blueprint states 46 questions, including 6 using the design tool (Visio like), plus 1 master design item, for which a MINIMUM of 30 minutes should be allocated.
Wasn't it clear which was the master item?
When you mentioned "one" visio that gave you problems, you mean one of the 6 visio type questions I asume -
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I have an application that runs in the JApplet.I have
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