Exam Study Material - My take on it

Oh man! Ad-blocking software has been detected! :'(

This website is run by the community, for the community... and it needs advertisements in order to keep running. Blocking our ads means your killing our stats!
Please disable your ad-block, or become a premium member to hide all advertisements and this notice.

So I see this pop up from time to time and thought I would post what I have just done with my VCP-NV exam.

For those of you who don't know the VCP-NV exam is the VMware VCP (VMware Certified Professional) exam based on the VMware NSX Platform (Network Virtualisation).

Now I am not a network guy, it's been years since I did my CCNA and I haven't touched core networking for probably over 10 years so the idea of network virtualisation was new to me.

I have been fortunate enough to attend a couple of NSX Training courses over the last year and it certainly helped but it wasn't enough to cover all the exam requirements.

In addition to the course manuals I also used a number of additional resources, actually the more the merrier in this case because some of it confirmed my thoughts from previous material.

In my case I used a mix of official training material as well as video material and study guides.

In the end I went through the NSX Admin Guide, the NSX Design Guide, a 132p study guide that covered the VMware Exam BluePrint requirements, I also went through the 7 VCP-NV vBrownbag Videos on YouTube as well as the two NSX Training Courses from Pluralsight, all in all about 9 hours of video training material (and trust me I didn't just go through this material once). I also used the VMware VCP-NV Exam Prep test on the VMware site (you can run through this as many times as you want, as long as you don't pass it 100%).

All told I would say that I have spent the last month really pushing my training to pass this exam, sure it's only the VCP and I have to admit that some of the material was over the top for the VCP level exam but it does make me feel better for trying the VCIX exam sometime next year.

My advice is to definitely use multiple sources for training, use each to backup what you're being told because I have seen far too many 'official' books contain the wrong information (looking at you VCP Cloud Book).

 

Oh man! Ad-blocking software has been detected! :'(

This website is run by the community, for the community... and it needs advertisements in order to keep running. Blocking our ads means your killing our stats!
Please disable your ad-block, or become a premium member to hide all advertisements and this notice.

How many hours would you say you spent in prep for this, @SimonD ? And what's your strategy for getting those hours in on a daily basis, as I imagine you work a lot more than the standard 8 hour day and then have a family to see when you get home?

 

Stuzzle I commute for 3 hours a day in my car so have at least some of that time to listen to PodCasts and MP3's. I also have a lab at home that I play with constantly (although it's been powered off the last week due to a room move at home which leant to more reading and videos).

I carry my iPad mini with me all the time so have a mix of videos and reading material available to me whenever I am in wifi range.

Revision wise I would say I probably spent 2 - 3 hours a day with one form of media or another.

On the Pluralsight side of things I viewed the NSX videos as well a couple of OSPF related videos just to get myself up to date on it. One trick I learned early on is to listen to the media at a faster rate (1.4x worked best for me although there are people who do 1.5x speed), I have to admit that I went through videos a couple of times.

As far as family are concerned my two little ones are generally going to bed by the time I get home so don't get to spend too much time with them during the week, I am also a bit of a night owl (hence posting at 01:30 in the morning now).

 

I like to watch videos and then reinforce it with reading a book. I like interactive videos with quizzes built into them, that helps alot. My son goes to bed at 7pm, so will generally hit the books from 7-10; but next week will probs be doing 7-12.. I have my energy drinks and coffee ready.

 

Juelz, not too much time in one block, take a break in between otherwise your mind will wander and you will lose interest (it's why courses have breaks in them).