I’m scheduled to take the VCAP-DCA tomorrow (5/31/11) and in the course of studying came across this link from VMware which is a demonstration of the VCAP-DCA exam. Most interesting is the list of tools supplied: putty, vsphere client RDP client and all the VMware manuals in PDF format!
Another potentially key point – the comment about rebooting/restarting components. That takes several features off the table that would require a reboot to test (host config changes, SC memory change, DPM etc)
Also of interest is the fact that you will be controlling one environment the whole time, and later questions may depend on initial tasks – so if you screw something up or skip around you may not find everything configured or working.
I’ve heard the performance of the environment is the most challenging component, which I can believe if you are trying to open and browse large PDFs across a RDP connection.
other good links for studying:
http://www.seancrookston.com/vcap-dca/
http://www.ivobeerens.nl
http://kendrickcoleman.com
My current plan is to scan all the questions, answering any that can be done very quickly, and marking down any prerequisite chains and making a note of any I think would take a long time.
I’ll then start at the beginning, skipping any long ones (especially ones I would need to research or play with) that are not required for later tasks.
I don’t want to waste time fighting one long task and leave a few easy/quick ones unanswered.
I’ll save anything I don’t know (Orchestrator, vShield zones) until the very last.
I’ll also plan on letting anything run that needs to, making sure to note anything I need to go back and finish (if I need to run ESXTOP for 50 iterations I’m sure not sitting there and waiting for it. Ditto clones, template deployments …)
I’ve read up on all blueprint topics, concentrating on those that are not covered (or not well-covered) in the basic documentation.
Hope it pays off!!
