Passing the VCP550D exam

Last year VMware announced that the VMware Certified Professional (VCP) certification would only be valid for two years, ostensibly to ensure that candidates didn't become out of date. Now, I have no problems with recertifying when the certification isn't version specific (e.g., CCNA), but because the VCP is tied to a release of software (VCP4, VCP5 etc.), forcing a recertification does seem a bit like a cash-grab by VMware Education.

With my VCP scheduled to expire next month, I spent a couple of weeks revising and took the exam today. Fortunately I passed with a score of 340 (the passing score is 300). To be honest, I'm a bit disappointed that I didn't score higher, but a pass is a pass and it got the job done.

The exam I took was the VCP550D "delta", which focuses on the differences between vSphere 5.0/5.1 and 5.5. However, it would be worth revising the standard VCP material too as there are a lot of generic questions. The exam blueprint for the 550D is the same as for the 550, which didn't help much.

For revision, I did the following:

Took the free VMware vSphere What's New Fundamentals [v5.5] course

Took the free VMware VSAN 101 course, which has subsequently been replaced by the VSAN 6.0 course.

Signed up for the Pluralsight 10 day trial subscription and took the VMware vSphere 5.5 New Features course

Built a nested home lab environment to test a bunch of new features. William Lam's OVF template for creating Nested ESXi VSAN clusters was very helpful in getting an environment up and running quickly (as was using the vCenter Server Appliance).

There are a number of features that I specifically focussed on when revising because I don't use them day-to-day, including: vSphere Data Protection (we use Veeam), vSphere Replication (we use Veeam), VSAN (we have a SAN/NAS) and VCOPS. Getting hands on with these features in the lab was extremely helpful, although make sure you're not too rusty of "basic" VCP questions covering network, storage, DRS/HA, update manager etc.

The exam itself is online and open book, but this doesn't make passing it a foregone conclusion. You still need to know your stuff! I found it helpful to have my home lab powered up and logged in, along with the VCOPS dashboard in case I needed to quickly cross-reference something. I made sure I had access to the VMware PDFs (but didn't actually use them). Having access to Google was very useful too(!).

With 65 questions in 75 minutes, there was plenty of time to go through the exam and then have time to review "marked" questions. I did use all my time and didn't finish the review, but, obviously did enough to pass.

If you are a VCP5 holder, you only have until the 10th March 2015 to recertify. Doing the VCP550D is the most efficient and easiest way to stay certified.