By a long shot the hardest exam I have attempted in my career. 100 questions with a 94:6 other questions to design questions ratio, 4 hours long, the damn thing was brutal.
Why I found it difficult - I lack real world design experience, I have been administering vSphere for about 2 years now but I have not been able to dabble in design at all. I found the DCA the easiest exam I've ever taken primarily because I have/had experience with almost everything in the blueprint.
Now I know people have written blogs about this test but no one ever tells you the kind of questions they faced. And rightly so! Dont ask me for specific questions. Passing this exam is a significant achievement and after my first shot at this beast I have a lot of respect for folks who've passed it. This beast is not to be taken lightly I tell ya!
Resources I used:
- the 2nd edition of the vSphere Design book. Great book, I read it cover to cover 3 times.
- the HA/Clustering Deepdive book. Read it twice for the DCA and skimmed it for the DCD. Mistake here - should've gone through it again. I'll tell you why shortly.
- the Managing and Optimizing book by Stagner and Crookston. Good book, I read it cover to cover in 3 days. Some of the scenarios they present in there are exam quality. Read it.
- the Design Workshop, some great material in there but most of it was in the vSphere Design book already. So if you cant get your hands on the workshop material, aint no problem. The Workshop itself was good. Again, the quality of the Workshop depends largely on the experience levels of the people that attend it.
Resources I didnt use but should've:
- the blueprint. Bizarre, right? Yes. When I prepped for the DCA, I followed the blueprint like a religious fanatic. The blueprint gave me structure and didnt let me wander off track. With the DCD, the blueprint is a different story. Most of it is open-ended. This was what put me off it. I was like - stuff the blueprint, I'll just follow the numerous blogs out there and read what others recommend. Wrong! I just resorted to reading the Design book and other books again and again. Not the way you prep for an advanced exam.
What I'm going to do for the 2nd shot:
- Follow the damned blueprint. I have downloaded a few of the case studies/whitepapers/pdf's the blueprint links to and I tell ya some of the case studies are really exam material. Dont ask me which ones, because I aint telling ya. READ THE CASE STUDIES and WHITEPAPERS
- Josh Odgers (VCDX 90) has some great Architectural Decisions links on his website (joshodgers.com). VALUABLE stuff I tell ya. Understand WHY he went with a particular solution.
- Participate in Gregg Robertson's Design practice. Good stuff there Gregg!
- Get my hands on as many design decisions documents as possible.
- Attempt the exam better. Some of the scenario questions are long winded. Dont get too wrapped up in reading all of it. Skim it, the useful stuff is usually in the last paragraph, Read the constraints/requirements carefully.
More about the scenario questions:
- Hope your questions are stable. Two of my scenarios had problems when they suddenly went out of whack and random HBA cards showed up. I couldnt delete them or Start Over. I believe it had an effect on the score I received. I've logged a ticket with Edu Ops at VMware about this.
- Some of them can be long winded. DONT concentrate on reading the whole thing carefully. Skim and when starting the design come back and read what's relevant.
Other questions:
- The drag and drops arent easy either I tell ya!! Some of them are very cleverly worded with only one word different. Makes all the difference!
- Some questions were dead easy. Almost as if they were dummy questions.
2nd attempt in a month or so. This time I'll be better prepared, now that I know what the beast looks like. I also believe the exam is too long. 100 questions, 4 hours, drains you completely. My brain was absolutely cooked by the time I got through it. O and once you answer a question and click next, aint no coming back to it. This is a good thing if you ask me. Atleast you dont have to worry about your marked-for-review questions as you go along.
Long post I know, but I thought I'd give folks a decent idea of this beast.