I sat the VCAP5 DCA exam back on the 8th of April and got my results back today…. good news is I passed.
Lets start with the exam location, I had the worst experience I have ever had while taking an exam, I had to travel to Sydney from Canberra as the test wasn’t available locally, this wasn’t too bad as its not really that far away just a bit tired after driving. I arrived and waited to sit my exam,
I was called in and did the usual handing over all belongings and taking a photo and signing some papers. I was then led into what can only be described as a walk in closet with 5 very small desks in it. It was so small that when I was fully tucked up against the desk my back was touching the back of the person behind me, and my arm was touching the guys arm next to me. This was a joke I was going to have to sit in this space for nearly 4 hours, there was more room in my car seat.
Anyway ive paid 400 for this exam 71 for parking and 3 hours to drive there I was going to sit it. The computer I was working at was at least 10 years old, and the screen was some strange 15″ wide screen Chinese special that was falling apart, went to start the survey at the beginning and the bottom is cut off I cant hit next or continue in anyway.
So I disturb the guy behind me and next to me(doing other exams) to go out and inform the staff, after about 30 min of back and forward I was told just hit the space bar to go next.. WTF you do realize this is a live exam I need to see the whole screen. so they get tech support up. 1 hour later I was at the ancient computer again and can actually see the whole screen.
Now your thinking it should be all good from here, well wrong I think in total i must have spent 20 + minutes in waiting for the screen to refresh all the time, and on top of losing valuable time there, I had about 20 minutes to go, the people at this testing place obviously wanted to go home and they come in “So you should be done by now, why is it taking so long” again WTF!!!! im currently in the middle of an exam how about you fuck off.
Anyway I finished and got out of there as soon as I could what an absolute joke.
Now Ive had a bitch onto the exam. Having done the VCAP 4 previously i knew what to expect, and in my experience the VCAP 4 was the harder of the 2 but both had allot of overlapping tasks which were the same skills but different scenario.
Time, Time, Time. you have seen it from other places, don’t get hung up on questions. I am the worst for this, if something doesn’t work and I know it should I start troubleshooting like I would at work, but this wastes time and I know this but still did it going in, Being a live environment there is occasionally things that should be there that arnt, this has happened to me twice now. but just use your head and do what you can with whats been provided.
Concentrate on the main technologies the big selling points of VMware, I find it tends to lean towards the main techs. but there is some obscure things in there which is why the blue print need to be gone through so you know it like the back of your hand, you don’t have time to view documentation even tho its available.
If you find yourself running out of time and know your not going to complete it, look through the remain questions, the exam allows you to go back and forward through the questions, and use common sense you know what your capable of doing and weigh it up in your head is it worth spending the last 30 minutes doing these 2 questions or skip them and do the next 6. being a weighted score system you will need to weigh it up weather those 2 questions would be worth more than the 6 after it. I had to do this, and I had 1 question which I knew I could do but i know it would take me 20 minutes, looking at the 4 after it i knew I could do those in the same time. I chose to skip the harder one and do the others. And it paid off.
Cheers