Now I am happy to say that I have completed the VCDX Design Exam today - and if you did not know that will probably be because you missed my announcement on Twitter this afternoon.
OK so first what did I use to prepare for this exam?
Duncan Epping's Post has a great list.
Jason Boche's post on his experience.
Joep Piscaer's review as well.
Jon posted a review of the process as well.
I think that the posts above have done a wonderful job of providing the proper resources to prepare and describing the process. I spent the last month going over more than 1,000 pages of manuals, Whitepapers, articles, best practices etc.
You cannot study for the VCDX from a book. There are no brain dumps and no just going over a list of multiple choice questions and memorizing the correct answer.
The VCDX process will test your experience and your knowledge of Enterprise infrastructures. The Admin Exam will test your technical knowledge and the Design Exam will see if you are capable of making the correct design decisions.
If the VCDX was the next level Certification (up until the VCAP was announced - and pulled not so long after that) - then us VMware Admins had no choice but to go for the VCDX as the next Level.
But now that there will be a VCAP intermediate Certification, the full VCDX is not for everyone.
What I can advise is the following:
- The VCDX is a long and time consuming process.
- You cannot really study for this exam, but you will need to rely on your knowledge, and your personal experience.
3. From what I hear, the easy part is over, now starts the real work - submitting a design and the defense.
I would like to thank 2vcps, FrankDenneman, jpiscaer and DuncanYB for all there assistance along the process so far.
Wish me luck!
10 comments:
Congrats hope your happy with the results.
Congratulations on the pass! As far as easy work or hard work, it really depends on what you're comfortable with. Completing the application and submitting the design is where a significant quantity of work will be required in a short period of time, especially if you are recreating design documents from scratch (which is what I did as I didn't have the documents from the actual previous design). Along with the quantity of work, great care must be exercised in quality and completeness of these documents and the application. The risks for a shabby application and design are many, including:
1) Outright rejection, with no chance to fix. You're out $300US
2) Rejection, with a chance to fix
3) Enough points get a defense date and pass mathematically if you do exceptionally well in the defense, however, a lot of points and clarifications to make up during the defense scoring; less chance of passing unless you have a rock star defense panel. This category is the biggest cost risk as you will spend money for the defense plus T&E and have a lot of ground to make up in order to pass.
I cannot stress enough how important it is to submit a quality design and complete application.
Congrats!
Good work Maish, Thanks for the write up.
Simon
Thanks Simon!
Thank you very much
Thanks Jason for your comments and insight. Every extra tip helps
Thank you Brian
Congrats!
Congrats!
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