1.0 VCAP-DCA Study Guide - Overview
Posted on 07 Feb 2011 by Ray Heffer
If you are an existing VMware VCP then you are probably already aware of the VCAP-DCA exam which is why you’ve landed here. There are two VCAP certifications available, the DCA (Datacenter Administration) and DCD (Datacenter Design). Just a few days before writing this post, VMware announced the new Desktop Certification Program, the VCA-DT (VMware Certified Associate, Desktop), VCP-DT and VCAP-DT. This is great news as it strengthens the VMware certification even further with a recognition into the valuable skills a desktop virtualization specialist will have.
I intend to share my study guides, based on what you need to know with essential learning points. If you are studying for this exam then I will assume you are already a VCP, and I would be surprised if you don’t already know the difference between different RAID levels. With that assumption in mind, I will also guess that you are not that comfortable (like me) with commands like esxcfg-mpath. It is not my intention with my study notes to regurgitate the exam blueprint, but I will follow the order and provide key learning points for each topic.
The VCAP-DCA is the next step for most VCP’s that have set their sights on the VCDX, so I intend to start collating my study resources here for my own reference and others to share. These resources are intended to compliment a lab environment as the VCAP requires a huge amount of lab study.
- First, get the latest Blueprint from VMware
- Attend official VMware training for the VCAP-DCA.
- Check out the VMware training videos by TrainSignal.
- Get a collection of PDF’s to read, here are my some suggestions to get you started!
Note: Make sure you have a copy of the latest VCAP-DCA blueprint which outlines the topics you need to be comfortable with in order to take the VCAP-DCA exam.
- vSphere 4.1 Configuration Maximums
- VMware vCenter Server Performance and Best Practices for vSphere 4.1
- Configuration Examples and Troubleshooting for VMDirectPath
- Configuring VMDirectPath I/O pass-through devices on an ESX host
- How to Configure NPIV on VMware vSphere 4.0
- VMware Storage Best Practices
- Best Practices for Configuring Virtual Storage
- Performance Best Practices for VMware vSphere 4.0
- VMware Multipathing with the SAN Volume Controller and the Causes of SCSI-2 Reservation Conflicts
- Fibre Channel SAN Configuration Guide
- iSCSI SAN Configuration Guide
- Performance Characterization of VMFS and RDM Using a SAN
- VMware VMFS Volume Management
- ESX Configuration Guide (RDM, Storage Filters, Resignaturing)
- Masking a LUN from ESX and ESXi 4.x using the MASK_PATH plug-in
- vSphere Command-Line Interface Installation and Scripting Guide (good section on LUN masking)
- Identifying disks when working with VMware ESX
- Storage Workload Characterization and Consolidation in Virtualized Environments
VCAP4-DCA Exam Format
- Lab: 210 minutes and 40 lab tasks. vCenter server, ESX hosts, vSphere vMA, SSH client (PuTTY)
- Scoring: Scored on lab assessment
- Where: PearsonVUE
- Materials: vSphere 4 PDF documentation
- Results: Within 10 days
Tagged with: vmware certification
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