I failed the VCAP7-DTM Design exam, but expected it and the first try of the exam showed me what stuff I need to learn better and where my weaknesses are. Let me tell you about my exam experience.
I arrived on time at the PearsonVUE test center, but they had PC problems and so I had to wait first for 30min until I could start the exam. The timer showed me that I have two hours for the 60 questions. The most of the time I was guessing and eliminating the obviously wrong answers and so I was through 50% of the questions of 50% of the time. If you would know a little bit more than I do and you work/worked with all the products on a daily basis, I would say that the exam is a piece of cake!
Nevertheless, I answered all 60 questions 15 minutes before the timer ended, but I didn’t review any of them, because I knew that I still wouldn’t have the better or correct answers. This may sound to you like I failed with a score of 0, but no. I had 252 of the 300 needed points and this is a sign for me that I just need to improve my weak spots and the topics I didn’t check during my preparation time.
Today I’m going to travel to VMware Airwatch in Milton Keynes (UK) for my VMware Workspace ONE: Deploy and Manage [V9.x] training which starts tomorrow. And I have to prepare a presentation for a roadshow with five events where I will be the speaker of a 30min slot. This means no time for studying yet.
But I’m lucky that I still got a seat at the Digital Workspace Livefire Architecture & Design training taking place in three weeks. This will be last part of my preparation for the retake which I planned for 23rd November 2018. But first I have to wait for my new exam voucher. 🙂
I cannot tell you which topics/technologies or questions were asked during the exam, but I can assure you that I didn’t expect some of the questions – they were just craaaaazy or about veeeery old stuff.
This is also one of my problems. You have to study things which are not valid anymore for the today’s product version or implementation. In a few cases the configuration limits or some parts of an architecture have changed.
So, I read the exam blueprint again and checked some of the attached URLs and document links again. In my opinion the following products and versions you should know for the exam:
- Horizon 7.2
- VMware Identity Manager 2.8
- App Volumes 2.12
- User Environment Manager 9.1
- ThinApp 5.1
- Unified Access Gateway 2.9
- vSAN 6.2
- vSphere 6.5
- vRealize Operations 6.4
- Mirage 5.x
So, this was my exam experience of the VCAP7-DTM Design exam and my advices after. It is totally okay to fail, because it will just help you if you are not prepared well enough or just went to early for your first shot.
My last advice: Use the note board for the difficult answers and topics you have no clue of. If you have enough time, reviewed your answers and you are ready to end the exam, memorize all your notes. Just in case you didn’t pass, you now have the notess in your mind and could transfer themto your personal notebook. This is totally legal and really helpful! 🙂
Good luck to you if you take the exam. I have another four weeks now to fill the gaps. 🙂 See if I passed or not.
