Ending the year on a high!! Today Rutger and I passed the VMware Certificed Professional – Network Virtualization (VCP-NV) exam!! Robert will surely follow soon. 🙂
We had a rather small time frame to successfully pass VCP-NV because as of January 2015 we want full focus on VCDX-DCV. So it had to happen in 2014.
Although we didn’t have a great deal of hands-on experience (yet) with VMware NSX, we were able to pass the exam after a steep learning curve following our NSX deepdive session at VMware along with some really good documentation and blogposts on the matter… not to mention the VMware’s HOL labs!
Speaking for myself; I have a fair amount of networking knowledge. Passed my Cisco CCNP Routing & Switching exams a while ago. This being a big help when entering the world of network virtualization.
Exam blueprint
Make sure you are eligible for the exam and request exam authorization. After that, you can book the exam within PearsonVue. The VCPN610 exam itself being a fair exam consisting of 120 questions, mostly multiple choice. As with all VMware exams, be sure to fully cover the exam blueprint.
Requesting authorization, blueprint, practice exams are all found within VMware MyLearn: https://mylearn.vmware.com/mgrReg/plan.cfm?plan=51111&ui=www_cert
Hands On Labs
Because of the lack of real-life experience with NSX, we were mostly bound to the VMware Hands-On-Labs (HOL). We are still amazed with the quality of the HOL’s, very good stuff. The must-do labs to experience NSX are:
- HOL-SDC-1403 – VMware NSX Introduction
- HOL-SDC-1424 – VMware NSX in the SDDC
- HOL-SDC-1425 – VMware NSX Advanced
As a lot of my diehard networking colleagues are not that familiar with VMware vSS/vDS environments, the lab below is strongly recommended:
- HOL-SDC-1402 – vSphere Distributed Switch from A to Z
VMware HOL labs are free of charge and are found here: http://labs.hol.vmware.com
Videos
The youtube series created by Ivan Pepelnjak (@ioshints) are simply fantastic!! Really giving you an overview on network technology before focusing on NSX!! These series proving essential study material for the NSX exam!!
The VMware vBrownbag series on NSX are also very good to watch! Found here: http://professionalvmware.com/?s=vcp-nv
Documentation and blogposts
There are a lot of blogposts around on VMware NSX and even on the exam material. The ones we used were very informative and sometimes very into detail so usable for VCIX-NV.
First of all the VMware community documentation and in special the NSX vSphere Design Guide. A must read and found here https://communities.vmware.com/servlet/JiveServlet/previewBody/27683-102-3-37383/NSXvSphereDesignGuidev2.1.pdf
Blogpost(series) which are definitely worth reading are:
- http://networkinferno.net/nsx-compendium by Athony Burke (@pandom_)
- http://bradhedlund.com/category/nsx by Brad Hedlund (@bradhedlund)
- http://blog.scottlowe.org/learning-nvp-nsx by Scott Lowe (@scott_lowe)
- http://wahlnetwork.com/tag/nsx by Chris Wahl (@ChrisWahl)
Happy studying on NSX!! Network virtualization is coming on strong, so get certified!!! 😉
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