This morning I sat the VCP6-Cloud exam. I looked at the Blueprint for the first time this morning on the train which is where I got my first shock – this wasn’t an exam that tackled a single product. In reading through the blueprint, it’s clear that what VMware is trying to do is help you to learn about building a Private Cloud with the vCloud Suite. There are objectives in the blueprint for the following products:

vSphere/vCenter (based on 5.5)

vCloud Automation Center (I use the old name on purpose as this is based on 6.1)

vCenter Operations Manager (As above, based on 5.8)

vCloud Connector

NSX

I had been thinking that this was a shoe-in based on my experience with vRA, but now it was even money.

If you were to study the blueprint in detail, then I think you would gain a wealth of knowledge – in fact it’s a great idea for a blog series if someone was so inclined. As it was, I sat the exam without having studied and so the questions felt a little bit disjointed. It’s not a difficult exam by any means, and sits pretty clearly at the VCP level. There are the typical annoyances – questions about the user interface which are blatantly obvious when using the product yet for some reason you are required to memorize in order to demonstrate that you know the product.

If anyone from VMware Education happens to read this, I would you to see you introduce some hands on tasks – I’m not talking VCAP level here, an specific example here could be getting someone to create a series of Endpoints for the different types available with a given set of information. I’d also like to see you get away from the “word tricks” style of questions. If someone told me to perform a task in the vCenter Web GUI instead of the vSphere Web Client I may have a little chuckle, but I’d be more interested in whether they knew what needed to be done than doubting their capabilities because they got an interface name incorrect.

In summary, I really like the direction that VMware has taken this exam – they are looking at your ability across a solution rather than a product. With a few tweaks it would be a fantastic exam.