The VMware Certified Professional – Data Centre Virtualisation 2023 certification
With the advent of VMware vSphere 8, VMware has released a new exam to demonstrate your skills with the VMware vSphere 8 product. This may be a case of challenging yourself, or it may be to improve your current career prospects or even lead to a new job.
Where to Start
There are 3 steps to becoming certified:
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Recommended - Gain experience with VMware vSphere 8, you will be expected to know how to perform various tasks.
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Required - Sit on a qualifying VMware course (I’ll mention my preferred course later in this post).
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Required - Pass the exam, delivered by Pearson Vue testing.
Experience can be gained in a number of ways:
- You could play with your work systems; however, the rest of the IT department may get a bit upset with this.
- Build a test lab, I use VMware workstation and create VMs within the product. It works really well.
- Use VMware Hands on Labs, I also visit this quite a bit, there are lots of labs covering all aspects of vSphere.
The courses I would recommend:
- VMware vSphere: Install, Configure, Manage [V8]
- VMware vSphere: Fast Track [V8]
- VMware vSphere: Operate, Scale and Secure [V8]
No course can possibly cover all aspects of the product in 5 days, so I’d also recommend looking at the VCP-DCV certification exam guide, and if you’re up to it read all the associated documents mentioned, especially the network, storage, security, high availability, and resource management guides.
Now the important bit
The exam consists of 70 multiple choice questions, and you have 135 minutes. The exam is delivered via Pearson VUE and can be sat either in a Pearson VUE testing centre or as a remotely monitored (proctored) exam from home.
300 is a pass - don’t think of a percentage or how many do I need to get right - that’s not the way it works. I’ve sat many VMware exams, actually over 20 so far, and if you’ve put the work in, they’re extremely passable. I would recommend answering all the questions you’re 100% sure of, mark the others, and return back to them. If you run out of time you fail, so try to remove that stress by not sitting for 10 minutes trying to think of an answer.
Finally best wishes for the exam, I never wish good luck, we make our own luck, if you’ve done the work you’ll pass.
Then you will have your Digital Badge.
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Bryan O'Connor
Bryan has been working at QA as one of the principal virtualisation trainers for 13 years and counting, specialising in VMware, but also working with Microsoft Hyper-V, and multiple Cloud technologies.More articles by Bryan
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