The VCAP5-DCD Exam. Content published on by Paul McSharry -

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Content published on www.elasticsky.co.uk by Paul McSharry - 2013 @pmcsharry

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The VCAP5-DCD Exam

The VCAP5-DCD is one of VMware's advanced certifications that validates both general datacenter and specific vSphere related design skills.

The 225 minute exam comprises of 100 questions, mainly multiple-choice, drag and drop and a handful of in-depth design scenario questions.

The design scenario questions make use of an custom design drawing tool, where objects can be linked together to show the logical or physical design of a platform, or specific configuration.

To take this exam, you must register and already be a VCP-DCV. Although there is an official course for this exam (The Design workshop) it is not required to become certified.

As per all VMware exams, the main starting point for preparing for this exam is the

official VMware blueprint . The blueprint outlines the main areas of interest in the exam, with recommended reading material. You may notice that these documents are pretty much standard VMware documentation for configuration, administration and best practices. As a VCP, it is also likely that you studied this material before.

This is where the VCAP5-DCD certification differs from other VMware exams. The exam is challenging and has been well constructed to validate if you think like a designer, rather than knowing the options and how to do something referenced in the recommended reading material.

For people who are experienced designers it should be easier to take the documentation and concepts , then incorporate into their design methodology. However, if you are a

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VCP and VCAP-DCA technical engineer looking to develop or validate design skills without years of leading design projects it may seem daunting.

The VCAP5-DCD blueprint appears to take the latter situation into consideration by specifying that a design process and methodology is part of the exam. Understanding the terminology used in design scenarios from both technical and business perspectives. then developing a process to review technical documentation and construct / deconstruct designs is in my opinion the key to success for this exam.

How to approach The Exam.

The approach I used for this exam was to initially review all the design process and terminology again to ensure I had the correct through process. From there I worked through each of the technical components specified in the blueprint, then ensured for each technical objective

1. Review the known best practices (Both the Official VMware documentation, and other documentation - communities, books, blogs, etc)

2. Read case studies on how people in the community or vendors have implemented the technology effectively and what issues they had.

3. Review the VMware knowledge base for issues around the technology and how to avoid them.

4. Relate the technology to previous projects I have worked on.

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For items 2 & 4 I practiced creating logical / conceptual / physical diagrams and deconstructing the highlighted designs looking for trade offs, items against the known best practices and creating component relationship diagrams.

One of the challenges with this exam and design in real life is that there are normally multiple ways of satisfying project requirements, is the best practice suitable, what if you cant complete configuration to best practices, what is the impact?

The VCAP5-DCD covers a lot of ground and requires many hours of reading around the subject.

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Study Questions For the VCAP5-DCD - Test 1

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1 Logical Design precedes physical design (True or false)

2 Active discovery methods used in project activities such as current states analysis, do not have an impact on machines (true or false)

3 A physical design should include IP address and other types of specific information (true or false)

4 You are working as a VMware Architect on a large migration project.

The communication links between sites are not controlled by you or your team. The contracts are already in place and cannot be amended for 2 years.

How would this situation be classified in the project high level design. A. Requirement

B. Assumption C. Constraint D. Both B & C.

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5 A best practice can change over time. True or False

6 A website running within a VMware platform. consists of 15 servers. 10 Web Servers

3 Applications Servers 2 Database Servers

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The business has several requirements, the below are just two examples,

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The Recovery Time Objective is 3 hours The Recovery Point objective is 15 minutes

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Which of the following is true in this case.

A. Non VMware - Application level redundancy configurations can only be used to satisfy these requirements

B. Native VMware vSphere based functionality can be used to satisfy this requirement.

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7 VMware HA functionality can be used to lower RTO (True / False)

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8 The infrastructure qualities are

A. Assumed design Considerations that may be requirements for business projects B. Physical attributes of the hardware in a physical design

C. Should be automatically considered by a architect during the design phase D. Should only be considered by an architect if part of the requirements.

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9 A project requirement

A. Must be achieved

B. Should be considered if appropriate . C. Should be removed form the project plans.

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10 When using vSphere 5, a platform using auto deploy can be protected by VMware HA . Is this statement True or False

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11 Which of the following is true of with respect to failover hosts in vSphere 5.1 HA configuration

A. The ESXi host defined as a failover host is not used for DRS or workloads. B. These hosts are only used after all ESXi hosts in a cluster have failed C. These hosts are the only recovery point in a HA event

D. These hosts are a priority for HA events, however other hosts in a cluster can be used if required.

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12 VMware FT functionality can be used to lower RPO (True / False)

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13 You are designing a DR process for a multi-tier application. The applications are spread across 4 server roles and 9 servers. One of the key requirements is to restart the application automatically in the event of a a hardware issue.

Natively, when configuring to best practices can VMware HA guarantee the restart order of a vApp. Yes / No

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14 Which of the following configurations can have an impact on cluster consolidation ratio with respect to HA

A. Guest VM specific reservations B. Resource pool defined reservations

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15 When considering scalability of vSphere Platforms, which of the following is correct

A. The larger the consolidation ratio, the higher the risk and potential impact in the event of a physical host hardware issue.

B. The larger the consolidation ratio, the lower the risk and potential impact in the event of a physical host hardware issue.

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Published Books

• VMware Press - Official VCAP5-DCD Certification Guide by Paul McSharry • VMware vSphere 5.1 Clustering Deepdive by Duncan Epping & Frank Denneman • VMware vSphere Design by Forbes Guthrie & Scott Lowe

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Exam Experience Reviews

• My Exam Review & Pearson Certification Article • Josh Atwell Review - Great write up on exam approach

• Alex Galbraith Review - Great process and timeline based article -

• Paul Meehan Review - Lots of links and process information - Great Stuff!

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Answer Key To Study Questions

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1 TRUE 2 TRUE 3 FALSE 4 C 5 A 6 B 7 TRUE 8 A 9 A 10 TRUE 11 A 12 TRUE 13 NO 14 A 15 A

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Feedback

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I hope you have enjoyed these questions, hints and links reading material.

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I would appreciate any feedback or additional links you may recommend. I will gradually update this list over time.

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If you are studying for the VCAP5-DCD and like this content I would recommend picking up a copy of my guide via VMware Press .

The VCAP5-DCD Exam. Content published on by Paul McSharry -

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Recommended VCAP5-DCD Reading

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Answer Key To Study Questions

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