My VCAP-DCV 2018 Deploy experience

Yesterday I did the VMware VCAP-DCV 2018 Deploy experience. I dreaded to do the exam because the VMware DCV landscape is a fast landscape. I do have enough experience and expertise, but to know all the tiny details….
To be honest , there was a little fear for failure….
Especially because I heard that you really need all the time (3,5 hours)…. and that the performance of the virtual environment is bad …. And no access to VMware pubs/Docs/KBs and blog sites….
Do I really have it in me to pass this exam ??

But, eventhough I don’t now the score yet ( that could take up to 6 weeks or so)…. I’m quite confident that I passed it.
Why ?
Well… the situations you need to solve are for me common troubleshoot scenarios in a vSphere environment. Yes some questions are tricky… but hey… of course they are, you want to prove that you have advanced knowledge in this area..
I even enjoyed taking the exam.
It just felt as a normal day at the office…

Critics

Yes I do have some critical comments.
It is true, the lab enviroment (same experience as a VMware HOL enviroment), performs poorly. Not sure if it is because the internet connection, the hardware, or just the exam enviroment. But…. it was a while back that I used a 17″ monitor…. (i mean years…. prehistoric period)… but yesterday… yes …. really…. my exam enviroment had a 17″monitor….
Which is challenging.
As you maybe know… the HOL enviroment has a book area where the questions and explanations are shown (right side on the screen)…..
I had to switch often between this area and the console area.
With a normal monitor, you can keep them side by side…
And the performance…. selecting text with the mouse, click delays up to 10 seconds …. which is really annoying, and not helpful for someone who is nervous.

Conclusion

So I have to wait a few weeks for the result.
And even if I failed, I still think that in hindsight I should have taken this exam earlier.
If you have day to day hands on experience with a vSphere datacenter virtualization environment for more then a year, then I my advise would be to consider this exam. Your experience should be like, implementations , troubleshooting, and day-2 operations of a vSphere datacenter environment.
Get some experience with the VMware HOL environment to get used to the lab environment. It is also a great place to practice with certain functionalities without destroying your own production … euh…. test environment.
You can find VMware HOL here.

So fingers crossed (f0r me) and good luck when you want to certify your advance experience with a vSphere environment.