A few months ago, I had the privilege of being allowed to take an early shot at the VMware’s new advanced qualification that they had bought in. The VMware Certified Advanced Professional, specifically the Datacentre Administration qualification (VCAP-DCA). I had previously been invited to take the qualification’s predecessor for the VMware Infrastructure 3 system, that didn’t produce a qualification, which meant that I had an idea of what I was going to be expected to do during this exam.

Due to the nature of the NDA and agreements that you accept before you take the exam, there isn’t a lot I can talk about the actual content itself. Needless to say that I was very impressed at how the system has evolved from its original format.

The main difference between the VCAP-DCA exam and its original incarnation, is that they have done away with all the multiple choice questions which you had to answer. This time you are presented with a remote controlled desktop of a fully working, very much live system, for you to work on a number of scenarios. You are repeatedly reminded that this is a live system, so if you make any sort of changes which breaks your connection, there isn’t any magic reset button! So say you decided to log onto an ESX server and change its IP, well you are pretty much stuffed! The remote system had changed since I last used it, this time you are presented with a small tool bar of the specific software items you would be required to use, and access to a limited amount of documentation. You are then presented with a number of these scenarios, which are there to test different aspects of your knowledge and skills. They can range from anything from changing passwords, all the way up to configuring virtual switches and virtual machines.

VMware also recently introduced a VCAP-DCD, Datacentre Design Qualification, which I will be going into on a later date, however moving all the questions to this exam, and having all the practical tasks to do in this exam I think was a very good move by VMware. Design is very much a theory based part of the planning and administration of virtual infrastructures, while the administration side is a lot more hands on, and on the fly, making this layout appropriate for the qualifications in question.

All exams are not without their issues though, and some of these are not always the fault of VMware.

The exam was taken in a Pearson Vue Professional Centre, these buildings have a little more security on it compared to some of the other buildings I have taken computing exams in. This I feel for this sort of exam is appropriate, as they are designed to be for the best of the IT industry out there, not for anyone just to walk in pass and have a random set of letters after their name. The computers in the centre had recently had some changes made to them, so my resolution on the monitor wasn’t up to scratch. This caused me a major problem during my exam. The very first part of the exam, just after you fill out a short survey, is that it asks you to select a resolution for the remote desktop client to connect to. The lowest setting was actually larger than the screen I had on, so I was constantly moving the vSphere Client and Putty windows about, just so I could see what I was doing. Additionally, there was a slight problem, in that sometimes the connection would freeze up, this could just be due to the number of people taking exams that day, however your remote desktop client is connected externally somewhere on the planet Earth, so it could have been congestion as well.

Finally the major part of the exam… how they score you. Unlike other multiple choice question exams, where you can get your result the moment you answer your last question, or in the simulation based exams which other companies have started to bring in, which test your result, and not how you got there, this exam is recorded. All your actions, mouse clicks, keyboard shortcuts, the lot, are recorded and then reviewed by the VMware Certification Team. They review all the actions you take during the course of the exam and score you appropriately. A few weeks after you take the exam, they will email you the result. I am from the time where getting your exam results from a computing exam straight away was always the best part of the exam, as there was no waiting, but this time the wait was painful! Just shy of one month after I took the exam, I finally got the result…

I passed! Which means I am now a VCAP-DCA! (Certificate number VCAPDCA-32, yes that is #32, in the world! :P )