I’m very proud to announce that I’ve finally achieved VCP6-DCV certification. It was a long path (more than half a year).
If you are interested in certification, there are some required steps that you have to pass to successfully achieve VCP.
What’s needed
Step 1: You MUST complete one of the official training courses (Microsoft does not require anything of the kind). I finished vSphere: Install, Configure, Manage [V6]
Step 2: self-study (3 –6 months as a minimum, beer included)
Step 3: As a true Hyper-V fan 
, I have never been certified for vSphere, so for completely new candidates you must pass the following exams:
- vSphere 6 Foundation exam (online , non-proctored). Basic. 65 questions.
- VMware Certified Professional 6 – Data Center Virtualization Exam (proctored, must be taken at testing center).
85 questions. No case studies or something like that. Just single and multiple choice. More advanced than Foundation.
How to Prepare
1) In my case, training course was very ordinary . It I could change it I’d prefer Optimize&Scale . So, If you are have some experience with virtualization and clustering, your choice is definitely “Optimize & Scale” or “Designing vSphere”
2) Hundreds/thousands hours of diving into VMware Documentation Center , Hands-On Labs and your demo. My demo is built on 3 nested ESXi hosts, vCenter Appliance, Replication , Update Manager and vRealize Operations Manager + remote station with PowerCLI/CLI and vSphere C# client (by the way, it’s going to be deprecated with the next major release).
vCloud Air is perfectly covered in hands-on lab which provided by VMware. If you don’t have enough resources you can, for instance, do not deploy vRealize Operations (In my lab it is a reason of overconsumption and sometimes it’s very sloooow..unfortunately, my little datacenter is also limited by RAM/Storage) and learn one @vlabs as well
3) If you have CBTNuggets or Pluralsight subscriptions, I recommend to watch their training courses (search for vSphere 5/vSphere 6/designing VMware infrastructure)
4) Free unofficial study guide
5) Official guides and practice tests
What’s next
Wanna free polo shirt or own profile page? Get VCDX certification .
VCDX is the highest certification level provided by VMware. I‘m not sure that I will ever get one / dreams..dreams (sometimes they come true).
Let’s back to the real life..If you plan to be more recognized you need to prove your “certified” knowledge in real world (~complex projects). I hope I will have some.
Until then,
have a great weekend!
UseIT | Roman Levchenko 