Having recently sat the VCP 5 exam, I thought I would offer some tips and study advice. Overall, there are 85 multi-choice questions and you have 90 mins to complete and their is a lot more focus on new features, troubleshooting, and configuring than previous versions of the exam which was usually based around limitations and maximums.
Networking
- VMKernel securing – how (and where) to do it.
- Load balancing policies
- Path Selection policies – Quite a few questions on these.
- Traffic shaping
- VDS – Lots on this topic. What features are unique to VDS and what aren’t,
- Promiscuous mode vs forged transmits – About 2 questions involving these
- Restarting management network – how to do it in vSphere 5
- Securing your host – turning off ssh etc.
- Uplinks – what are they and what do they do. Relationship with vSwitches
- CNA – Question around image profiles and driver certification
- ISCSI and implications of changing certain parameters such as CHAP
Storage
- New features: VMFS3 vs VMFS 5, migration to VMFS5 – what changes and what doesn’t. Maximum file size supported
- VSA – How to configure. Valid states of a VSA
- RDM – Physical compatibility vs Virtual
- Storage Profiles – Learn what it does.
- VMKernel interation with storage array, what the array does and what the kernel does
- VAAI – Benefits of VAAI and what the supported array can do.
- Trouble shooting storage performance – What counters to look at
Advanced Features
- HA – What it does.
- FT – Why you would use it – use cases
- DRS – Ports for DRS and HA
- vMotion/EVC – Where to configure and requirements around CPU. NPIV and vMotion compatibility
- Resource Pools, shares, limits and reservations – Lots of questions around these, learn what increasing and decreasing each element does and the effect.
- Performance tuning and troubleshooting – They give you line graphs and ask you to understand and diagnose the issue, scenario based troubleshooting. (I.e Image shows error, what is the cause), ESXtop
- Memory conservation – TPS vs ballooning
- Upgrading from ESX3 to ESXi5 – One question on this, basically you can’t do it.
- Upgrading from ESX4 to ESXi5 – rules, methods and things you need to look out for.
- How to back up a ESXi host before upgrading
- Understanding alarm warnings and alerts and how to configure
- vApps and IP allocations, and what objects they contain.
- Log file configuration. Increasing etc
- vCenter Server – What extra capabilities does it give you over managing a host directly.
- Auto Deploy – Learn Image profiles and how to use.
- VSA – Quite a few on this, how to upgrade from earlier version was one question
- Modifying Users and permissions and the impacts
Hope that helps.
