This is the first certification exam I have ever taken. In the past I looked into taking MCSE and its variants, I have also gone through the RHCE courses but that was mostly for my own personal knowledge, not so much about certification. Other than the Cisco certs, and possibly some of the more obscure storage related certs that are generally geared towards certain product lines (Brocade, EMC, Netapp) , I havnt really seen much value. I’m more of a hands on guy, if I can do it, and do it right, I didnt really see a point in becoming “certified” in it.
Then I got into virtrualization. I initially took the Install Config class in September 2009, and at the time I was so swamped with work that there was no way I was going to have time to study for the test. The more systems I virtualized, the larger my environment got, the more my job became full time virtrualization and storage, the more I wanted to make virtrualization a cornerstone of my career, the more I realized I needed to validate and certify my knowledge. Of course, now I regret not having sat down and done this a year or two ago. Hindsight 20/20.
And now of course, like many other VCP4’s, I will be running a near month long crash course in VCP5 in order to meet the deadline of February 29th. Damn you procrastination.
For the record, my passing score was 381. Not too awesome really. I think for me a lot of it comes to what is in the documentation versus what you deal with every day as well as, experience cannot necessarily translate into question/answer. I think another key point for me was a limited exposure to ESX. My initial clusters were ESX clusters, but as I saw the direction moving towards full blown ESXi, I tore everything down and made the transition as soon as I could. I’m glad I did. I think the Service Console model was less than efficient, less secure, and less forgiving.
So for the record, I would recommend it to anyone. It’s a tough test for sure. Though I have nothing to really compare it to other than college work. I know one thing, we will have one less tree after I print off the VCP5 blueprint and accompanying documentation.