VCP-DTM 2018 Exam and My Studies 2V0-51.18

One of the reasons I’ve been a bit lax posing new content is that I’ve busy spending my free time (what little of it there is) studying for the VCP-DTM exam, the 2V0-51.18 to be exact. VCP-DTM is the certification. I’ve been involved in a View deployment at work and  since I’ve been working with the tech a fair bit over the last few months I though “why not?”.

There are three exams currently offered for Horizon View:

  • 2VO 51.18 – VCP-DTM 2018
  • 2V0-751 – VCP7-DTM
  • 2V0-651 – VCP6-DTM

The 2VO 51.18 is the latest and fits into VMware’s new Certification naming. There is a bit of a write up about it here.

The main notable difference between the 751 and 51.18 exams is that the requirement for Mirage is missing from the latter and the exam preparation guide clearly states that it is focused on Horizon View 7.5 and related products. So get the preparation guide and use that as your base to get going.

Studying – The Lab:

So first and foremost was my trusty lab. I am fortunate enough to have a fairly beefy workstation with 64GB RAM, running ESXi. This allowed me to run quite a few infrastructure VM’s and 4 or 5 desktops. While a machine of this spec isn’t strictly necessary, you will need a lab of some kind.

When you start looking at whats needed it can look like a lot of infra is needed but it doesn’t all need to be running at the same time. You can get away with only one running desktop as you test the different deployment types. The Composer server is more than happy to run on the same VM as the SQL Express install and once the VCSA is deployed you can shave off some of the RAM. vROPS, Identity Manager, App Volumes and User Manager don’t need to be up and running all the time or even together. If this is internal, turn off the UAG as soon as you’re done with it.

Much of this can be run in VMware workstation but you will need an ESXi server at some stage to deploy desktops onto.

Study – The Hands on Labs.

This resource from VMware is amazing. Its also free. Some of the Horizon Requirements I wasn’t familiar with at all, so this helped. I went in and did a search for Horizon 7.1 and did them inline with the Official Study guide. “HOL-1951-01-VWS – VMware Workspace ONE – Getting Started” isn’t strictly needed (but still worth doing) but I would strongly recommend the first two modules of “HOL-1951-03-VWS – VMware Workspace ONE – Advanced Topics” as it covers “Identity Manager”.

Studying – The Videos:

The most popular videos are the ones Greg Shields has created on Plural sight called VMware Horizon 7 Desktop and Mobility (VCP7-DTM). These are well presented and you can follow along in your Lab and have been collected into a learning path.

There are also a bunch on the official VMware YouTube channel which are worth watching.

While attending a class is a great experience, I do often prefer video study. I can work at my own pace, jump back and forwards as it suits me.

Studying – Reading Material:

To be honest I didn’t find any really up-to-date books on 7.5, which was a bit disappointing.

It was mostly going through the official material and blogs. The release notes and Architecture Planning Docs I found good, and I bounced quite a lot from these into the other official documentation

This blog post on the network ports is quite interesting too.

A very notable blog (much better than is one) is by Carl Stalhood over at www.carlstalhood.com. Its really well formatted and kept current.

The Exam Experience:

The exam itself is 59 questions over 105 minutes. Its not easy, I give it that.

I arrived just in time and after the usual round of stuffing my stuff into lockers, form signing, photos, and checking of pockets, was rushed through into the exam room. 59 questions later (several of those flagged) and I got the popup stating that I’d passed. I don’t particularly enjoy sitting for tests but I really enjoy that moment.

Exam tips:

Arrive about 15 minutes early and bring photo ID. First and foremost, nobody is out to trick you, but you are being tested to a high standard. Always make sure you read the questions carefully and in full. The questions are usually always clear and concise, and even if you don’t know the answer you can sometimes work out what what answer is not. It’s easy to get rattled during any kind of test, if you are not sure of your answer mark it for review and come back to it once you’ve gotten to the end.

If you decide to go for this exam, good luck!

VCDX – Here we go.

The first of the VCDX defense dates for 2016 have been announced and in the last week a new round of VCDX’s have received their emails and a big congratulations to all of them

I’ve been looking forward to the new 2016 dates for a while. This gives me a time frame to get all the requirements together.

If all goes according to plan I’m hoping  to defend in the last week of April but that means I need to submit but the 11th of February. which is only three short months away and I still have a huge amount to get together.

As I work through various part of my design I’ll be tracking my progress through this blog.

Designs that are your own are easier to justify, or are they? Take one of your own designs (as I’ve done with this one), and try to look at it with fresh eyes. It’s yours, yes, but can you really quantify every decision to a third-party. Why have you chosen to ignore LACP, why aren’t you using resource pools, why have you used the windows deployment of vCenter server instead of the appliance. iSCSI vs NFS. 5 Hosts, really, why not 3 larger hosts instead? Want to bring in VVOLs, have you spoken with the storage team to find out if it can fit with their vision? Why, Why, Why?

All of the above and more needs to be worked through. The foundation of my design is one that I have done for the company I currently work for. It is a two DC deployment with SRM to replicate between them. My submission will be partly fictitious as I want to take what I currently have and update it.  I’ll need to go through and look at every decision and document it.

I understand that this will be a huge undertaking but I am looking forward to it. Most importantly I have the support of my family.

Now, I need a mentor…