Exam Profile: VMware Certified Professional 5, Desktop (VCP510-DT)
Date: Jun 28, 2012
If you've done any virtualization, you've probably heard of—and may even have—a VCP certification. It is the must have of certifications and well worth the work that's involved. But getting just a VCP means you, along with 76,820 others, are just another certification in the crowd. Today, to stand out, specialization is key. Previously, it was enough just getting the VCP, but given the number of certified individuals it's not enough on it's own. For those of whose virtualization goes beyond servers and leads to the desktop, the VCP-DT may be the certification for you. As of writing there are only 91 certified VCP-DT 5s (there are 134 VCP4-DTs, however). That's an elite group to be part of, and these specialized certifications truly make you stand out in a crowd. But there's a lot more to the certification than just the number; it is being able to fully understand how to build and manage a whole View environment.
The VCP-DT 5 exam really does require you to be an expert at View, ThinApp and desktop virtualization. Although there is no class requirement for the VCP-DT 5 certification, it does require you to be an existing VCP before you can write it—which does, of course, require. But that said, it is recommended to take a course or two (specifically the VMware View: Install, Configure, Manage and Application Virtualization with VMware ThinApp). Knowing not just how theoretically works is not sufficient. Actually knowing how it works and how to navigate the interface to do various tasks, pool creation, deletion, modification and to add or remove ThinApps from pools and/or desktops.
Exam Details
- Exam Number: VCP510-DT
- Number of questions: 85 questions with 7 pre-exam survey questions
- Types of questions: multiple choice, single and multiple answer
- Passing Score: 300, using a scaled scoring method
- Time limit: 90 minutes with an additional 15 minutes for answering questions and for countries where English is not the primary language an additional 30 minutes is added
- Language: English
- How to register: Pearson Vue
Trouble spots
One of the biggest trouble areas is the idea that you need only a cursory understanding of the View Administrator interface. Knowing how to navigate this will make answering some of the questions easier.
Preparation Hints
The exam itself covers a variety of topics that, as a View administrator, you’re expected to know—whether your environment has that piece or not in it. All parts of View are fair game and specifically it will cover the following:
- Section 1—Install View server components
- Section 2—Configure the View environment
- Section 3—Create and configure pools
- Section 4—Implementation Troubleshooting
Each of those sections has a variety of subsections (which I won’t cover here but you can explore more in the Blueprint). Additionally, the Blueprint lists additional resources to gather information about those subsections. So this Blueprint is key. It is what we use as a guide to write questions and it is what you should use to help focus your preparation to study for the exam.
As a best practice, whenever I get asked how best to study for this exam I offer the following:
- Download the Exam Blueprint found at the VMware Certification website.
- Read through the topics and ensure you can actually describe the topic to someone else. As a rule of thumb, if you can describe a particular topic to someone who doesn’t know anything about it then you know it. If you cannot, then you need to review that.
- Highlight those topics you don’t know and prep some more. Preparation should include hands-on experimenting in a lab environment.
- Try the mock exam found on VMware’s website (same location as the Blueprint) to get a feel for the questions.
On the day of the exam, you should plan your time carefully. You can go back to any question so if you cannot answer the question in about a minute, mark it for review and continue. Come back to the question at the end of the exam. Additionally, make that you actually read the question. It may seem like an odd statement, but as someone who has seen many students misread exam questions and then provide the wrong answer, I can assure you misreading can catch you every time. Read the question once and then re-read it before even attempting to answer the question. VMware has been careful about avoiding double negatives and tricks in questions, but that doesn’t mean that your mind won’t interpret what it thinks is there and not necessarily is there.
Above all else, do not panic. Exam taking is one of my biggest phobias—and I do the beta exam, which is considerably longer and has far more questions. Before I begin the actual exam, I take some deep breaths and focus my attention to what’s going on around me. And I recognize that sometimes I can have a bad day. So even if I do not pass, I take what I learned in the exam and keep it in mind for my next attempt.
Resources
The current list of resources for this exam is the official blueprint (listed above) and the VMware View: Install, Configure, Manage class. Other than that, actual experience with the product and product documentation is the way to go.
Exam topics
To pass this exam you will need to know the following:
- how to install the various View components
- how to configure the various View components and the View environment
- understand how PCoIP and RDP work
- understand the various security features (e.g., role-based administration)
- know how to create, configure and manage automated pools (both linked clones and fully provisioned virtual machines)
- understand how to configure and manual local mode pools and desktops
- how to build good desktop OS sources
- know how to troubleshoot issues in the View environment
Where to go from here
Once you’ve passed this exam the next step, once it is released, is to pass the VCAP5-DT, the VMware Certified Advanced Professional 5-Desktop, exam. That will make you stand out in the VDI environment as not only a View expert but a design expert as well.