VMWare Certified Professional vSphere 4 (VCP-410) Exam Prep Resource Guide
Date: Feb 16, 2011
The latest VMWare vSphere 4 certification exam (Exam ID: VCP-410) has proven to be an extraordinarily popular virtualization technology exam since its release in April 2009, yet so far only a few books have been published on this topic. Despite a relative paucity of paper publications on the VCP-410 exam, there’s a plethora of digital materials available online, including exam tips and advice, practice tests, and question banks, as well as online and classroom training materials of all kinds. In this resource guide, I attempt to make sense of this cornucopia and point out some particularly useful and helpful sources of information and learning.
What About Brain Dumps?
A certain class of websites (and prep materials) may be described as “brain dumps.” As is my practice in reviewing and even investigating exam prep materials of any kind, I steer clear of brain dumps entirely. For the record, a brain dump is a collection of verbatim questions (and answer options) as reported by one or more individuals who claim to have taken some particular certification exam. Their impetus is not just to provide you with information about what is covered on the exam but to provide literal versions that are as close to what appeared on some actual exam as memory will permit.
Though you can find brain dumps for just about any exam, including the VCP-410, I don’t believe they are worth consulting (or taking seriously) for all kinds of reasons. Chief among these is that exam takers are asked to forgo sharing exam details with the public as part of taking any modern cert exam these days, so by posting such information, individuals who create brain dumps do so in violation of their promises to the contrary. Ethical issues aside, brain dumps are seldom exposed to the kinds of serious editorial and technical review to which commercial and professional exam prep materials are routinely subjected, and are thus also highly questionable from the standpoints of technical completeness, accuracy, and coverage. If you read the fine print on exam agreements for Prometric and Vue, you can’t also help but notice that both of them reserve the right to invalidate exams (and the certifications they support) if evidence of cheating[md]including access to brain dumps[md]can be substantiated. Thus, my final word on brain dumps is: “Steer clear!”
Books on VCP-410
An Amazon search on VCP-410 turns up exactly three titles, while one on vSphere 4 turns up 20. Of these, I mention all of the prep titles and an equal number of general vSphere 4 books. If you consult the blogs I cite in the next section, you’ll find pointers to other books and documentation also worth consulting, above and beyond this short list.
Table 1: VCP-410 and vSphere 4 Books (cert prep titles in bold below)
|
Title |
Authors |
Stats & Info |
|
Maximum vSphere |
Eric Siebert, Simon Seagrave |
Reference; Prentice Hall, 8/27/2010, ISBN-10: 0137044747 |
|
Professional vSphere 4 |
Cody Bunch, Patrick Ancilloti |
Reference; Course Technology PTR, 4/20/2011, ISBN-10: 143456548 |
|
VCP VMWare Certified Professional on vSphere 4 Review Guide (Exam VCP-410) |
Brian Perry, Chris Huss, Jeantet Fields, Troy McMillan |
Cert; Sybex; 11/2/2010; ISBN-10: 0470639288 |
|
VCP VMWare Certified Professional on vSphere 4 Study Guide: Exam VCP-410 |
Brian Perry, Chris Huss, Jeantet Fields |
Cert; Sybex, 8/9/2010, ISBN-10: 047059611 |
|
VCP VMWare Certified Professional vSphere 4 Study Guide (Exam VCP-410) |
Robert Schmidt |
Cert; McGraw-Hill Osborne Media; 5/21/2010; ISBN-10: 0071633685 |
|
Mastering VMware vSphere 4 |
Scott Lowe |
Reference; Sybex; 8/31/2009; ISBN-10: 0470481382 |
Online vSphere 4/VCP-410 Resources and References
The granddaddy of all good vSphere 4 and VCP-410 information occurs nowhere other than on the VMWare site itself, where you’ll find copious documentation and exam information online. I also recommend the resources section at the VCPHelp.com Website, itself another good source for all kinds of VCP exam information and insight. In fact, the VCPHelp.com Resources page begins with links to all the good VMWare stuff, so I won’t bother to provide those links here, because you can get to them all easily from that very page. See also Forbes Guthrie’s vSphere 4 Reference Card for a great, compact overview of the whole vSphere 4 feature and function set.
Blogs and Information on VMWare and VCP-410
You might not expect to find current and useful information about the VCP-410 exam in blog form, but if you overlook these resources you’ll be doing yourself a considerable disservice. That’s true not only because the information you’ll find is helpful and useful, but also because these blogs (and sometimes the sites on which they appear) are themselves useful compendia of resources for this exam. Here’s my short list of blogs worth checking out:
Table 2: Cool vSphere 4/VCP-410-related Blogs
|
Name |
Author |
Notes & Info |
|
Mark Vaughn |
Blogger Mark Vaughn shares experiences, tips, information, and resources as he prepares for and takes VCP-410. More great resource pointers. |
|
|
Simon Long |
Great collection of links and resources, plus free practice exams that SL put together while preparing for VCP-410. |
|
|
Forbes Guthrie |
Well-known VMWare expert shares information, news, resources, and references on vSphere, including VCP-410. |
|
|
Eric Siebert |
Author of Maximum vSphere, Siebert is a prolific writer and fountain of information on VMWare and vSphere. Lots of good stuff here. |
Practice Tests
Lots of vendors offer so-called practice tests for VCP-410, but I’ve not heard of most of these outfits. Unless you jump on the set from Test King, which has gotten accolades from many (including several of the aforementioned bloggers), you should probably proceed with great caution, and insist on a money-back guarantee if not satisfied with what you download. If you can’t get such a guarantee, you probably don’t want to buy the practice test either. Some of the other vendors who appear to qualify as “dump-free” and “money-back” include CramGuides and Pass4Sure, but before you spend any of your hard-earned cash make sure that reality and appearance actually match, please!