Owen Reynolds Personal blog

On Thursday March 4, 2021, I sat/passed the VMware VCP DCV 2021

My path to this certification was a bit LOOOONG, like this here cat

My path to the VMware VCP DCV cert / status started all the way back in 2019. I didn’t actually start studying in 2019, but I was given this pin from my former co-worker Pascal Proulx after he attended the VMWorld 2019 event. 

In 2020, after passing the vSphere 6.7 foundations exam, I placed the below pin on top of my HP mini computer as a reminder to write / pass the VCP DCV. I didn’t wear the pin on my clothes outside, that would be faking! It remained at home next to my stuffed animals and other desk trinkets I’ve been using to keep me SANE during the various rounds of covid lockdown here in Montreal, Quebec.

At the time of this blog post, the official requirements from VMware stipulate you must sit in a VMware academy accredited institution . Which I did twice actually, once on the VMware VCP 6.5 track, then again in 2020 on the VMware VCP 6.7 track via an excellent school in North Carolina called Stanly College .

• But here’s the thing, VMware recently announced EOL for the VCP DCV on the 6.7 track, you can STILL book it via Pearson-VUE, and they don’t actually warn you that the cert will EOL by July of 2021. 2 weeks back, I was ready to sit the exam, and was on the final page of the related Pearson VUE exam page portal, just before I entered in my credit card details , I decided to check the EOL dates for the 6.7 exam track (2V0-21.19) and found the following blog post. I’ve been using vSphere 7 (vCenter / ESXi) for almost a year now, so after reviewing some additional study materials and practice exams, I was comfortable enough to sit the updated exam based on vSphere 7 2V0-21.20. I took some time to enable/learn some of the exam topics on my home lab:
  
  
• vCenter HA: I kept this running for a week, but found it over-kill for my home lab which at the time was 4 ESXi nodes, now 3. For now, if I want to ensure my vCenter instance continues to run while I do maintenance on an ESXi host, I just vMotioned it over my 10 GBe network to another online ESXi host
  
  
• vSphere fault tolerance: This feature is straight up MAGIC. Do they hand out tech innovation / invention awards each year? I stopped watching the Academy awards more than ten years ago, I think we should have an Academy awards for tech, and a retroactive award for this feature. 
  
  
• 2 and 3 node vSan setups: In 2020, I was running a 3 node vSan cluster , in 2021, I switched to a 2 node closer with an external vSan witness appliance. Simple/ez/fast!

To close ; I had read online a few times that the VCP DCV exam has had 50% failure rate for a few years, I gotta say, it’s true, it’s a challenging but worthwhile exam to write. I learned a TON and am much more confident to handle service and project requests in the vSphere realm

And more good news I just found today, no more time-bombs on folks that write the exams! 

Have a good weekend, all!