I am studying for the VMware Certified Advanced Professional 6 – Data Center Virtualization Design Exam. I started to prepare for the exam this month and plan to take it in December. I had to hunt for good study material because VMware does not offer much. Only a blueprint, which is not even in a PDF. I contacted VMware education and was told the certification page with the blueprint is it. However, vMusketeers has made a spreadsheet with the blueprint. It includes the links that makes keeping track of studying easier because there are a lot of white papers to read. Also, check out the certification tab on the vMusketeers blog. There is additional information such as a practice quiz and useful links.

An absolute necessity is reading two articles on Jordan’s Roth’s blog; Scoring for VCAP6 Design Exams and VCAP6 Design Tips, Tricks and New Features. Read the comments on those two articles too. Jordan use to work for VMware on a team that created this exam. I think the information in those articles should be on VMware’s site so everyone has easy access to it. Here’s something funny Jordan said in one of his comments when someone questioned him. Jordan, “Well, since I designed the VCAP6 design exams myself, you can take my word for it or what you read somewhere else 🙂”

I highly recommend to watch the VCAP6-DCV Design Series on YouTube hosted by vBrowBag. They have a video for 11 of the 16 exam objectives. The videos are hosted by many VMware veterans and even some VCDXs. The few I watched so far have offered good, deep explanations.

There are two Google Communities to monitor; VCAP-DCD Study Group and VCAP6-DCV Design. The latter is more current. I recommend to spend as much time as possible to read every post, even if it goes back over a year ago when the VCAP6 was not yet leased. A lot of the 5.5 content is still every relevant.

Virtualtiers.net has a simulator, multiple choice questions, and drag/drop questions. I think it is based on the 5.5 objectives, but its worth going through to get a feel for the simulator and drag/drop questions. VMware has their official VCAP Datacenter Design Simulation, which is a Flash based walk through.

This should help someone get started on studying for the VCAP6-DCV Deploy exam. I will make an additional post after I take the exam. For now, I have plenty of content to keep myself busy for the next couple of months.