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VCAP5-DCD

0

0V3RC10CK3D

Gawd
Joined
Sep 14, 2005
Messages
751
Hey guys. Got the DCA last month, time to start on the DCD. Any tips or material youd reccomend i look at?

Currently im watching scott lowes design train signal course as reccomended to me by netjunkie while at vmworld. i plan to finish reading through the second edition of the vsphere design book as well. Anything else?
 
Look at the blueprint and at least be familiar with all the documents referenced. Not much else you can do really. It's an odd exam to study for.
 
Yes, it's odd. You have to be familiar with design concepts and terminology and, most importantly, have experience designing VMware infrastructures. You'll get asked about certain features or settings and if they fit in particular scenarios.

Like the DCA, time is a factor. You get 30 minutes over what the DCA gave you but on the DCD you can't go back to a question. So give each question your best shot and then move on to the next.
 
I took a stab at the exam while I was at VMworld, and passed. I went in 100% sure I would fail it, but wanted the experience... for 100$ why not? The entire time I was taking the exam I was thinking back to the thread where NetJunkie said that if I were to fail I wouldn't have any idea what to study for. Accurate, but I didn't get why until I was knee deep in the exam. I didn't study for it or anything, and it was definitely challenging. Managing the time wasn't easy... the visio type questions I probably spent way too long on, and the drag and drop multiple answer questions I debated with myself more than I should have. Had I failed it, I would have made a note the second time around to just do my best quickly and move on.

As mentioned, you'll want to understand the difference between logical and physical design, and what several acronyms stand for. I hear these all the time, and you probably do too. RPO, RTO, SLA, and a few others.

Another good tip is probably to understand in capacity planning scenarios how you could, given a situation, try and make an apples to apples performance comparisons from your physical starting point to the virtual destination.
 
What was your score at the end if you dont mind me asking? I've been studying for about a week. I'm thinking I'm going to move it up and take it this Wednesday.
 
Failed my first attempt yesterday with a 280, the tool wasnt working for me very well. When i would add objects to the design it would move everything around and half of it off the screen. Pretty lame. Going to try again in a couple weeks. As it was stated though....no idea how to study for it
 
0V3RC10CK3D said:
Failed my first attempt yesterday with a 280, the tool wasnt working for me very well. When i would add objects to the design it would move everything around and half of it off the screen. Pretty lame. Going to try again in a couple weeks. As it was stated though....no idea how to study for it
Click to expand...

Well it sucks to fail, I hope you were prepared for that outcome both mentally and financially... I had prepared myself a hundred times over to fail -- I was sure I was going to, and I know it still would have bugged me regardless of the reasons that I thought I failed. That said, you're probably going to pass it the second time and you have the best advantage possible. It isn't like you don't know the concepts or technology, but now its obvious how it is so "mushy" when you have the multiple drop items, and it leaves you baffled what to study for. I mean where do you find the "right" answers exactly for a given scenario; you don't. Experience only I guess. I fought myself endlessly on those questions.

I kind of fiddled with the first visio diagram to see how it would react, and I realized very quickly that if you don't know where to put the objects and you try and rearrange them later -- it's a giant joke. It doesn't work right as you experienced. I spent a bunch of time figuring out where to put my bottom objects and conceptualizing the above layered objects like vms, hbas, vmnics, or whatever have to sit on top of a container object. Lastly, I drew the connectors. That strategy kind of paid off for me I think.
 
Yea that sounds much better for the visio style questions. I'll have to lay it all out before i start connecting things together. I expected to fail as i only studied for three days. But it sucks to be so close to passing and not do so, anything could have tipped it in the right direction. D'oh
 
Keep this in mind. Those diagrams aren't complex because they are computer graded. So it's basically connecting the right things to the other things. Should be fine as long as you connect what you need. Don't over complicate them.
 
Thanks, Another thing i noticed is for diagrams where you need to place one object on top of another, if you move the underlying object the one you've placed on top if it wont come with sometimes, how do i know I get credit for placing it in the right spot if it doesnt latch on? (as it's automatically graded)
 
Nice....I just scheduled the DCA for Dec 5 and going through NetJunkie's Trainsignal Course.
 
Congrats! GL on the VCDX and GL to the others doing DCA/DCD next month.
 
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