Well, with one day to spare before the "return of the class requirement" I have wrote and passed my VCP 5 exam. I thought, just as many others have, I would share my experience and thoughts around the exam.
First off I have read countless blog posts about how the VCP 5 was much harder and more difficult than the VCP 4. Personally I did not find this to be the case. Now maybe its the fact that I have another year of experience with vSphere under my belt or maybe I was simply better prepped this time around but I didn't see too much of a difference between the exams. No, I don't know when VMware released different revisions of the VCP 4 exam, but I thought the style of questions that i seen on my VCP 4 last summer to be similar to the style that i seen yesterday on my VCP 5. And by style i mean more of a type of questioning revolving around experience with the product than just spitting out configuration maximums, In fact I cant remember one config max question at all!
So that being said my advice for those pursuing the VCP 5 would be to get as much experience with the product as you can, whether that be real world experience or lab experience. Also, use the resources that the community has created. Their is some absolutely awesome material available for free along with some that can be purchased. Aside from all of the official vSphere 5 documentation the resources that I mainly used are listed below…
- My own OMG Study Guide – This was probably the most useful to me, as it kind of forced me to study every aspect of the blueprint. If you are studying, I would recommend using all these resources and creating your own blueprint notes