Cheers! Today I sat & passed the VCP5-DT exam. DT is a cert I’ve been procrastinating in attaining, so I’m glad I finally hunkered down & got it out of the way.
As with other VCP-level exams, the DT has 85 questions & you have 90 minutes to finish. An additional 15 minutes is allotted for answering 8 pre-exam survey questions. Since I have used both View 5.0 and 5.1 moderately in a very small SMB at my previous organization, I felt I didn’t really need too much “extra” knowledge-gaining resources to pass the exam. For my studies, I simply built a lab (of course…if you’re not doing this to prep for any of your exams or to test settings/configurations, you are missing out on valuable knowledge-gaining expertise), then I went through the VCP5-DT Blueprint Objective by Objective, as well as reading through the View documentation. Overall, I spent less than 2 weeks studying before sitting the exam. Now if you have not used View before, you may need to take more time to look into the architecture, the web UI, and how all the components interact as it can be just a bit confusing at first.
The one area I wish I would’ve taken another couple hours to dive into a bit more was ThinApp. I’ve played around with it a little bit in the past, but nothing too deep. Even though I passed my exam, I still plan on reviewing a couple video resources from TrainSignal – VMware View Essentials 5 and VMware View 4 Administration. Brian Knudston presents both courses and each have a lesson devoted to ThinApp. I will be reviewing those to gain more expertise in that area since it is a topic I lack in. The DT exam does cover ThinApp; and since it’s mentioned in the Blueprint, it is fair game. So, I recommend reviewing ThinApp if you feel you need more expertise with that tool like I do.
Other than that, if you go through the Blueprint from top to bottom, & do so utilizing a lab, reading through the View 5.0 documentation the Blueprint suggests carefully, & review the DT practice exam VMware has, you should pass the DT just fine.
As with other exams I’ve taken, I documented my studies and wanted to share it with the community as a resource to hopefully help you in your studies in achieving a pass on your exam. As I did with the IaaS Study PDF, I left out procedures for vSphere tasks since the DT requires having VCP5-DCV to attain the certification. In other words, you should know how to do certain vSphere tasks as they relate to View. Other than that, if there are any errors, omissions, or you have suggestions to add material, by all means let me know and I can modify the document.
All the best in your studies!
Shane
I’m on day 3 of the View 5.1 Fast Track course right now, and plan to take DV and DT shortly after. Thanks for the heads up!
I took this exam yesterday and the format has changed. It now has 135 questions in 120 minutes and some questions seem to be VCP5-DCV related, so brush up on that if you took your VCP a while ago
Can you verify which exam you took? VCP-Desktop or VMware View exam?
http://sostech.wordpress.com/2013/07/13/vmware-certification-program-updates/
The old VCP5-DT was renamed to VMware View and a new exam VCP-Desktop added. Either will result in VCP5-DT certification if you meet the requirements.
http://sostech.wordpress.com/2013/07/17/vmware-certification-program-updates-part-2/
VCP-Desktop has 135 questions and covers some of the VCP5-DCV topics. VMware View has 85 and doesn’t cover much VCP5-DCV. See the blueprints at http://mylearn.vmware.com/mgrReg/plan.cfm?plan=28343&ui=www_cert