I’ve just got my VCAP-DCA result this morning and you know what, I’d passed it with 325 passing score. To be honest I almost drop my tears due to following facts:

• The hardest,
• The longest battle,
• The most terrible,
• The longest awaited

I try to retain myself before from sharing my VCAP-DCA experience with others knowing that a failure in the exam can change everything that I share here to something meaningless. So, since I’d passed it, here is my story…

1.Why The Hardest

I can’t find best words to explain this. But imagine you had been given a car’s engine which wasn’t from Perodua or Proton. Instead it was from Audi and you need to fix and fine-tuning it. Most of the lab questions we never see and implement it in Malaysia and it’s means for Enterprise scale of user.

2.Why The Longest Battle

It was four hours battle and believe me, it never be enough. Each question have more than one lab tasks. Luckily, I’d skipped most of the questions which I think require more time to complete it. I still remember the feeling when it’s 59 seconds from time…

3.The most Terrible

Yeh! the most terrible experience I ever had so far. I’m five minutes late for the exam and the exam administrator didn’t help me much. Instead he put me some pressure by questioning why I’m late and told me that I’m lucky because he wasn’t busy and able to attend me for the exam. Seriously, I’ve just feel like I want to throw 2-3 punches to his face. Then when I’m finished, some crazy thing happened. After went back down to Level 3 suddenly I’ve forgot where I had parked my car. Spent another one hour to locate it and finally I’ve found it at different floor (Level 2).

4. Why The Longest Awaited 

Supposedly, you can have the result within 10 business days. Unfortunately and perhaps due to the nasty thing that I’ve done when answering the exam, they took a month to mark all the answers. I took the exam on 24 of May and since then I had chased VMware for the update on weekly basis (every Monday). Finally, today (26 of June) they email me for the result.

Preparation

Well, I have only spent four days for the preparation but bear in mind, due to some job requirements (i.e attend the meeting, prepare reports, doing support and project) I believe that I’ve just have 48 hours to study the blueprint.

Support

Without doubt the best support that I had received was from my wife and daughter and indeed they both were very supportive to me during the preparation. Not to forget my Boss and other colleagues (Khairul kecik and Fahmi) as well although they may not realized it.

Resources

Basically I have my own list. Since I know that I’m not going to get a full mark for this, I’m just focusing on something that is more practical. A simple list (6 pages) but enough for me to remember and master it. Then, there were two resources that I’ve referred the most for the exam (VCAP-DCA blueprints and VCAP-DCA Study Guide Published Version). All my lab test was based on these two.

The Facts

• There were 35 questions and I’ve just managed to answer 22-25
• There were 9 questions that I never went through
• The rests I partially answered it

My Advices

• Do as fast as you can
• Skip the one that you don’t know or require more time
• Make sure there are at least 25 questions you definitely know the answer or how to do it
• Do crazy thing when answering the labs hahahaha (PM me)

ariyossss

I’m not ready to die yet (bleeding nose) though I’m a bit busy lately and haven’t got any chance to update my blog here. Same goes to my other colleagues, but this is norm and a team work is the only option for us. Right now, we are having up to 10 concurrent projects and few of its must be closed within this month. Yes, we all struggle but believe in me, we are okay.

One more thing, we don’t know yet when the next big thing will come. The rumors already being talked lately and I already get the number of the server, expectation and constraint. Now what me and my colleagues can do is, be well prepared!

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Unfortunately no new enhancement but it includes repair for number of known issues. VMware also provided a ways on how to upgrade you old VDR to the latest one while preserving the old restore points. Your old VDR could be with local virtual disk, rdm or CIFS. My advise, just read it carefully before you perform the upgrade.
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Just knew about it last night at I would like to take this opportunity to invite you all to Zen’s latest event on this coming Thursday, 14th of June, 2012 at Shangri-La, Putrajaya.

My bet is, Zen’s Pre-Sales (Microsoft team lead by Mr.KC) will do a demo for the private cloud computing and if it’s true, no wonder I’ve seen them last week testing a Windows Server 2012 in the office with bunch of hardware from Cisco. One more thing is, you can look for our Pro-Microsoft’s Sifu (Mr.Suhaimi) if you would like to have a better view on Windows Server 2012 especially for the license part and new features of this new Gem. You could win The New IPAD too in the lucky draw. So, please don’t miss out.
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One of the most waited guide (vSphere 5 Hardening) has been released to the public recently. This guide is very helpful for those who intend to harden their vSphere 5 environment for security reason. Unlike previous released, this one only come in Excel format but inclusive of CLI’s commands for the purpose of assessment and remediation. One side note is, profile is one of the good thing that you should always start and follow…
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