VMware Certified Professional 6 Datacenter (VCP6-DCV) Delta Beta Exam Experience

On March 31, 2015 VMware announced the availability of VMware Certified Professional 6 – Datacenter Virtualization exam. This announcement was for the Beta version of the exam. Because I would never do VCPs anymore, I’m a Fan of beta exam because I like to give feedback on the various questions and possible answers. Starting with VCP6 certification you need 2 exams to get VCP6 certified.
1. vSphere 6 Foundations Exam – This exam is intended to cover all the common vSphere knowledge which is required for every certification paths (VCP6-DCV/CMA/DTM/NV)
2. VMware Certified Professional 6 – Datacenter Virtualization Exam – This is the exam as we know it with additional topics on top of the Foundation exam.
3. VMware Certified Professional 6 – Datacenter Virtualization Delta Exam – As we know it from the VCP5.5 Delta, this exam is available for a limited time covering the same topics as in VCP6-DCV full with the exclusion of the following objectives:

• Objective 7.4: Troubleshoot and Monitor vSphere Performance
• Objective 7.5: Troubleshoot HA and DRS Configurations and Fault Tolerance
• Objective 8.3: Consolidate Physical Workloads using VMware Converter
• Objective 10.3: Configure and Maintain a vCloud Air Connection

The delta exam consists of 75 questions and is 90 minutes (120 min for non-native english countries) long. Normally VMware was charging 50% of the exam prize for beta exams but with the new betas it was only $50 or 37€ which is quite nice for an exam. The pass score as in every VMware exam is 300 but because this is an beta exam you won’t get any score at the end of the exam. For more information about beta exam see this link.
I took my delta exam last week and unfortunately I had no time for preparation. There are single and multiple choice questions and you can go back and forth every question. I would recommend reading some new white-papers of features which were introduced in vSphere 6.0 before taking this exam. If you are experienced in your day-to-day work with vSphere this exam should not be a challenging. A lot of question can be answered by the method of elimination. Some other question can be challenging if you don’t read the question and the answers properly but you will know it when there is only a single choice and you think that 2 answers are correct. If this happens read the answers again carefully!
Because the only reason for me taking an VCP beta exam was to give feedback I was really disappointed when I saw that there was no comment button or similar to give feedback I hope this will be possible in the VCIX beta exams coming later this year.

UPDATE 2015.09.15

After a recent comment I checked the objectives of both exams ( VCP6-DCV & VCP6-DCV delta) and it looks like that both have now the same objectives, so there is no objectives excluded from the delta no longer.

Update 2016.01.30

I somehow forgot to update this post. In April I did the beta for the VCP6-DCV Delta and in September!!! I got my results which was unfortunately a fail. VCP and Beta are not a good combination. After that I scheduled the GA version at VMworld EMEA where I passed the exam. From my point of view, the question were nearly identical to the beta and I also answered it nearly identical.