I challenged the VCP5 exam today and passed (VMware Certified Professional on vSphere 5). It was a lot more challenging that I was expecting. You really need to have a lot of hands-on experience to be able to answer the questions.
I already had my VCP3 and never did upgrade to VCP4. Because of that, I had to take the What’s New in vSphere5 2-day course which thankfully was offered online in order to jump directly to VCP5.
If you are a VCP4 currently, you only have until Feb29/12 to challenge the VCP5 exam without needing the What’s New course. If you are a VCP3, you only have until Feb29/12 to only require the 2-day course – after that you need to take the 5-day full course. Much more expensive.
This is a new exam that just came out in late August so this certification is still very new with few people and resources online regarding it.
There isn’t much I can say due to the non-disclosure they have you agree to.
The test was 85 questions in 90 minutes and I used up the entire time to complete it. I read over each question very slowly in fine detail as the exact wording is super important in qualifying the possible answers.
I feel the exam was fair. Setting up your own little lab and installing everything from scratch, going over every screen involved, every option, testing things, breaking things, upgrading things. It all helps and is valuable knowledge that will help you out. I don’t feel it is a memorization exam though. It really was more based on actual experience.
I don’t work with VMware every day. I do have a number of clients that I help support their VM environments, yet they aren’t enterprise size clients with using all of the features available. They are all SMB. So I had to configure, test, and play with a lot in my own home lab.
Feels great having my certification renewed now to the latest and greatest. VMware has done on a great job on vSphere 5 with the new features it has to offer.