VMware Certified Professional (VCP) on Virtual Infrastructure 3

Two in one week. Following the VTSP earlier this week, I've now passed the proper VCP exam as well with a score of 86%.




The exam seemed similar to the Cisco exams in terms of difficulty. I thought the questions were pretty good and probably do a good job weeding out those with only a passing knowledge of VI3.

I did the course back in June, so I've largely relied on self study to get me though. Top resources (IMO) are:

• The official VMware documentation library at http://www.vmware.com/support/pubs/vi_pages/vi_pubs_35u2.html (very accessible and readible document sets)
• Rob's flash cards at: http://www.petri.co.il/forums/showthread.php?t=15947 (this is for ESX3.0 rather than 3.5, but the differences are easy to spot)
• A fleeting glance at the course handbook
• VCP blueprint and mock exams
• http://www.ozvms.com/component/option,com_quiz/Itemid,34/
• http://www.markwilson.co.uk/blog/data/vcpcram.pdf
• And many VMware forum/community discussions...

I didn't need much hands on - indeed the only hands on was during the course. I'd like to think my years of experience selling and architecting VMware based solutions was quite helpful though - especially for things like VMotion, VCB, etc.

Things that caught me out were:

• Guided consolidation (e.g. limits like 100 systems at a time)
• Roles (VC roles versus ESX host roles)
• The new round robin feature
• Nothing on 10GigE, TSO or JumboFrames
• Not much on 3i versus 3.5