Keiran Shelden To kick things off with my series of study notes and progress, I thought I would write a quick post on the resources that I am using and a brief overview of the exams. Back in February 2015 I wrote a post on the changes that were made to the VCP certification track. This included details about the additional pre-requisite exam VCP-Foundations which covers the underlying technology that supports each track.
In the VCP Datacenter Virtualizaation track, the foundations are similar, as networking, storage and compute are presented in the same way. This makes it a little easier to learn as I can focus on similar resources for this. Once I have taken the online foundations exam, I will then be able to take the DCV test.
My first resource is a blog post I refer to often when studying by our local VCDX Travis Wood (@vTravWood) – 7 Tips to Prepare Pass VMware Exams – This has some fantastic suggestions, such as creating a scorecard to rank your knowledge. I was impressed with this blog that I printed it out and laminated it. I now try and stick to it as a guide.
The below resources are what I will be using throughout this process, I am definitely open for more suggestions. As I mentioned in my previous post, I want to go right back to basics and fully understand the finer details.
Mastering vSphere 6 (Purchase here)
This by far, is my favourite series and book. I have been reading them since Mastering vSphere 5 and use it as a resource for production. The amount of content and the presentation of the content is phenomenal. There have been a lot of stories I’ve heard where people have passed the VCP exam from labbing and using just this book. Nick Marshall (@nickmarshall9) has done a terrific job following on from Scott Lowe.
vSphere Official Documentation (Blueprint)
The official documentation lays out the bare metal details, there are documents that are 200 pages on a particular technology (vSwitches, Storage, etc). These are also linked in the Blueprint available on the VMware Certification page. I highly recommend this documentation, even just for further clarification on a particular topic.
VMware vSphere Design (Purchase Here)
For further detail, use case and design information, this book has been a great read, I have read it a couple of times already and enjoy the way it breaks down different scenarios for components. This is an older book that was written back in the 5.x days, however a lot is still relevant. Scott Lowe (@scott_lowe) and Forbes Guthrie (@forbesguthrie) have done a great job.
vBrownBag (@vBrownBag – Podcast VCP-DCV series)
This is a series of Podcasts by members of the vCommunity running through the VCP blueprint over a number of weeks. These are some great videos as they are all deep dives. I’ve found a lot of information and learnt a lot just from watching tutorials. I highly recommend checking out the series.
Pluralsight (vSphere 6 DCV – vSphere 6 Foundations)
There are a number of series on Pluralsight that are dedicated to both the Foundations exam and the DCV. both David Davis (@davidmdavis) and Greg Shields (@concentratdgreg) have put together some great course with excellent content that dives into the blueprint and real world use cases. I highly recommend Pluralsight videos for more than just vSphere certifications.
vSphere HA Deepdive (HA DeepDive – Gitbooks)
This is a dynamic online book hosted on Gitbooks written by Duncan Epping (@duncanyb). The level of detail that Duncan dives into and explores really gets the deep understanding of how HA in vSphere 6.x works.
This is just an outline of what I am and plan to use. At present I am watching vBrownBag videos and reading Mastering vSphere 6 on the bus to and from work, as well as on my lunch break. I am currently finishing off vSphere distributed Switches and will hopefully have my completed Section 2.0 review notes completed for posting within the week.
Please feel free to leave any comments below or suggestions.
Thank you.
Keiran.
