Last week I passed the VCAP6-DCV Deploy exam after failing it the first time some time ago. To be completely honest, I didn’t really prepare for the first exam and obviously, I failed (by 13 points). I am not going to discuss the objectives that are covered by the exam because you can find it in the exam blueprint. I also didn’t use much of the study material that you can find on the web as I work with vSphere products on a daily basis. But just to mention some recommended reads, I found the following resources quite useful:
- VCAP6-DCV Deployment Study Guide on vJenner’s Blog
- die andere
- Additionally, have a look at the VCAP6-DCV Deploy Google+ community.
If you took the VCAP5-DCA exam in the past, you will probably like the new exam interface as it is built on the Hands-On-Labs interface. But again as with VCAP5-DCA, 2 monitor setup at the test center would be very welcome. The exam is divided into 27 questions with one or more sub-tasks. The difficulty of the questions varies from quite easy ones to more challenging and lengthy ones. Either you know the answer or you do not. It is that “easy”. 😉 So, hands-on experience with all vSphere 6 features is crucial if you want to pass. You can roughly assume that if you successfully complete 22 of 27 questions you’ll pass the exam (300/500).
Some tips that I can give you before you take the exam is to ask for a monitor with high resolution at the test center. I worked with quite low resolution and I had to switch between the text and the exam workspace which was very annoying. Time management is also crucial. If you don’t know the answer immediately, try the next question and review the skipped ones later on. Make sure you perform the tasks exactly as stated in the question. Some assignments can kill the environment and if that happens it is game over for you. 😛
Once you finished, you can close the exam interface or the exam engine will close your session if you run out of time. You can expect the results to be emailed to you within one hour. Overall, the VCAP6-DCV Deploy is a fair exam. If you have good hands-on experience with vSphere 6 and its components you should be able to pass this exam successfully.
Good luck!
Cheers!
– Marek.Z