I’m pleased to announce that yesterday I passed the VCAP6.5-DCD exam, thus earning the VMware Certified Implementation Engineer – Data Center Virtulization “milestone” after elevating the VCAP5-DCA exam that I earned back in 2014.

The DCD exam has been on my list of things to do since not long after I did the DCA. My first attempt was during the beta cycle for the 6.0 exam. The results for that exam took so long to be returned, and after shifting in job roles since then, I’d not had an oppertunity to sit for it until now. The 6.5 version of the exam differs from the 6.0 in that there are no longer the “Visio” style questions, which I think were problematic for the exam from the beginning. There are 60 questions consisting of multiple-choice, drag-n-drop, and multi-select questions, with 140 minutes to complete the exam. I was able to complete the exam in just under 90 minutes, and I didn’t feel like I was rushing.

In terms of advice I can pass on to others who are interested in taking this exam, make sure that you understand:

• AMPRS (Availability, Manageability, Performance, Recoverability and Security)
• RCAR (Requirement, Constraint, Assumption and Risk)
• The difference between Functional and Non-Functional requirements

If you are hands on with vSphere 6.5, especially working with vCenter HA, PSC/SSO and cluster design, you should have all of the bases covered. I have been removed from much of that in the day-to-day for the last year or two, so that was probably the more challenging part of the exam for me. I think if I’d done more to read up on differences between 5.x/6.0 and 6.5, I’d have come back with a better score. But, pass is pass.