VMware Certified Professional on vSphere 4 - Overview

The VCP4 certification exam for VMware vSphere 4 was released in August 2009, and is definitely the new "hot" certification to have if virtualization is your thing! As of February 2010, there were already over 15,000 VCP4 holders worldwide!

Over the last few years, the growth of server and desktop virtualization and VMware's dominance in the market, has seen VCP become an industry standard for those who have demonstrated their skills and expertise in virtualization.

I'm constantly asked questions about the VCP exams, so here's the information about VCP4 I don't think you can afford to be without:

 - You will be asked 85 multiple choice questions, all are multiple-choice and many require multiple answers
 - The exam uses a scaled scoring system, meaning that some questions count more than others
 - The maximum score is 500, and the required passing score is 300 or better - 350 or better for VMware Certified Instructor
 - You get your result as soon as you complete the exam
 - You have 90 minutes to answer the questions, any incomplete questions are scored as incorrect
 - You can go back to previous questions, and mark them if you want a reminder to review that question at the end

The single biggest tip, as I've been saying for a long time about VCP exams, is study the things in the Blueprint document!

 - You WILL get tested on the topics in the blueprint document, all of them
 - You WILL need to know some very detailed and specific pieces of information
 - You DO need to have a good understanding of all the products in the vSphere suite

As others have said on their blogs and the VMware community forum, VCP4 is a tough exam - it does require a broad, but also deep level of knowledge of vSphere. If you have taken the VCP2 or VCP3 exams, the VCP4 exam is a lot less about memorizing facts and figures and a lot more about actually knowing how a particular feature works, or what it's designed to do. I like it, I think it's a good exam that will really show that you know your stuff about virtualization, and of course about vSphere.

Global Knowledge UK have a VCP4 page on their web site, the content of which was created by me.

I've also developed an exclusive VCP4 exam preparation workshop for Global Knowledge UK - packed full of exam tips and tricks! There's nothing else like it in the UK!

VMware have now released vSphere 4.1, and one of the first questions I was asked was "Will the VCP and VCAP-DCA exams now be based on 4.0 or 4.1?" - so here's what I've found out so far...

VMware continually reviews the impact of major (eg. 4.1) and minor (eg. 4.0 Update 2) releases to ensure that all content on the VCP4 exam is consistent with the latest release of the software. They may also test on components included in these update releases if the components fall within already stated exam objectives, as they appear on the current version of the exam blueprint. If significant new features exist in a release that are not covered by current objectives and these features are identified as being critical to a VCP’s job role, a new version of the exam blueprint would be released containing the new objectives and the exam would be updated to test on these objectives.

So, if you're preparing for your VCP4 exam it would be recommended to study from the latest 4.1 documentation, and download the latest exam blueprint.