Wednesday, February 26, 2014

VCAP5-DCA failed first attempt, Preparing for 2nd shot

Today i got result (Failed :-( ) from vmware education for VCAP5-DCA exam, taken on 13 Feb 2014, i was preparing for this exam secretly and i was very curious about this exam. i've been reading VCAP-DCA exam takers review/feedback and became more determined towards experiencing this exam myself. Then i thought of improvising VMware 2nd shot exam offer (which valid between Oct'13 till 31 Mar 2014), So, if i failed in my first attempt, i'm still good to go for free 2nd attempt before 31st March 2014. but, take my word this exam is really tough and requires good practical knowledge of deploying/managing/troubleshooting VMware Infrastructures. this exam checks each and everything related to VMware (ESXi, Auto Deploy, Image profile, esxCli, vMA, PowerCLI etc.) list is endless and if you check the blueprint (req. mylearn login) you'll find around 300 things to master before sitting for the exam and i bet, even experienced people will get some gotcha's in this exam. In my opinion every IT exam should be like this (drag & drop, multiple choice, true/false are now old fashioned and easy to crack). but i really respect VMware Education people to come-up with such a great concept for recognizing true VMware Data Center Administration. However my exam experience was really good (yes, there was lag in Lab) but no other issues at all. i got 4 hours 30 minutes (extra 30 min. for non-english country) to complete 26 questions with mixed difficulty and during this period you can't take any break (if you take break for loo or anything, you will loose precious time). Be prepared for holding your hunger, nature call or addiction (smoking, coffee etc.) for 4 hour 30 min. Another thing that need to keep in mind is exam is completely based on ESXi 5.0, so if you're working on ESXi 5.1 or higher, forget that knowledge while preparing/giving this Exam. After hearing my experience, one of my colleague also booked the exam for experiencing the thrilling experience (troubleshooting/configuration marathon). Also Don't take any energy drinks (Gatorade, Monster or Red bull) for passing this exam you don't require wings. Jokes apart, yesterday i started my endeavour to unleash the 2nd shot offer, because getting a perfect time slot for exam is very hard and this particular exam is available on very few Pearson VUE centers (in Bangalore, only 2 centers). Logged into www.pearsonvue.com/vmware selected VCAP5-DCA from list of my pre-approved exams (yes, you need to get prior approval from VMware Education for sitting in advanced level exams) and selected 2 designated center, selected date/time slot available and proceed to checkout. when i inputed the Voucher code for 2nd shot offer "ADV103", website thrown an error.
After getting this error, only option left for is to report the same to Pearson VUE customer care "0008004401837 or +852 3077 4923 from (9:00 a.m.-6:00 p.m. AEST ) Monday to Friday" and got reference number and emailed them with my Failed result pdf file as attachment  to pvapcustomerservice [at] pearson.com, there SLA for such issues is 2-3 days, now waiting for there reply/resolution. 

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