VCP 5 – The Final Push

For those VCP 4's who are looking to upgrade to a VCP 5 there is only a little over a month now to book and pass your exam.  February 29th is the last day that VMware is waiving the course requirements that normally are attached to the VCP certifications and it's starting to come down to the wire for a lot of people.   I myself and in the middle of my studying for the exam and let me tell you there is a lot of information to cover on the exam blueprint.  Of course all of it might not be on the test, but the fact of the matter is that any of it could be, so you best know it inside out.  From what I've heard and read about exam experiences is that the VCP 5 is a bit more difficult than the VCP 4 and that real-world experiences and knowing how to do is certainly giving people a huge advantage when it comes to the exam.  Below you will find a bunch of resources that I'm using to prepare for my exam…

Study Notes

• My own VCP 5 page – I'm in the process of creating my own study notes for each initiative and section on the blueprint.  I should hopefully be completely finished in the next couple of weeks.
• Jason Langer and Josh Coen have done an AWESOME JOB at doing the same thing on their respective blogs Virtual Langer and Valco Labs – of course, theirs is complete 🙂
• Forbes Guthrie's vSphere 5 documentation notes. – AWESOME AGAIN!
• There are countless other resources that I've used, but these are the main ones.  I will try to add all of them to my VCP 5 page (Time is of the essence right now)

Brownbags

• Damien Karlson and Cody Bunch have done an awesome and timely job at lining up some great speakers to go over a section of the blue print each week.  Sections 1 and 3 have already been covered, with Scott Lowe covering Section 2 this week.  This is an awesome complement to your own studying.  It's always nice to hear someone else's take on the items included on the section.  Don't miss these!  All the info can be found here.

Books/Training

• Scott Lowe's Mastering VMware vSphere 5 is an awesome source not only for VCP preparation, but for general administration in your day to day job.  I wrote a full review on the book here and would certainly recommend it to anyone!
• Trainsignals VMware vSphere 5 Training also covers everything on the blueprint.  This is also a huge complement to your studies.  Along with the slides and information the tasks are actually carried out before your eyes which is certainly as close as you can get to  the 'real-world experiences' without actually doing.