VCAP-CIA (Cloud Infrastructure Administrator) Exam Experience
I sat my VMware Certified Advanced Professional – Cloud Infrastructure Administrator (VCAP-CIA) exam on the 24th of January at Global Knowledge in Vienna (Austria). If somebody is not familiar with the certification roadmap here is a short Overview.
I felt very exhausted and a little bit disappointed after the 4 hour exam (210min + 30min non-native English speaker).
Exam
There were 32 lab questions. Some which could be answered easily and some which took some time because of sub-tasks. My lab connection was quite fast compared to the DCA exam but I lost my connection twice for about 30 seconds, this was a little bit annoying. As with all other Administrator VCAP exams time management is the crucial element. I ended my exam with 28 seconds left and some questions unanswered or partially answered. Before the exam I felt good prepared but after the exam I was disappointed because I missed some easy questions because of time constraint and wrong description in the manual. I hope I will not break NDA, but for one question the stated admin user was not working (wrong credentials).
As a wrote in my VCAP-CIA Beta exam experience be on time at the testing center because the lab will be locked when you are to late.
Preparation
- Mainly for this exam I created a lab environment at home which is similar to the exam lab (2-3 vCloud cells, 2 vCenter, Chargeback Server, 4-6 ESX)
- VCAP-CIA Study Sheet by Chris Wahl to keep track of my progress
- VCAP-CIA Study Material and Blue Print by Karthic Kumar
- VCAP-CIA Blue Print by VMware (Login needed)
Conclusion
The VCAP-CIA exam is a quite fair exam. If you have hands on experience and working with vCloud Director on a regular basis then you will have no problem on passing this exam.
I hope I will pass this exam but I don’t think so. The 10 business days waiting time is now the worst time.
Next on my list -> VCAP-DTA @VMware PEX 2014
Update
2 days before I headed to San Francisco I got my score report and I PASSED the CIA exam. You can’t imaging how happy I was about that. Passing score was 369 which was my best VCAP score so far.