VCP Foundation Exam

With the release of vSphere 6, VMware have updated the exam structure as normal. This time there are a couple of interesting (to me at least) changes.

The first is to bring the VCP-NV more in line with the other VCP exams. It now has a consistent structure with the DCV (Data Centre), CMA (Cloud) and DTM (Desktop) variants with the same requirements (except for the additional “Cisco Certified” Route which bypasses the course requirement. This looks like it will stay until the end of January 2016), and with a foundation exam, it tests some general vSphere knowledge as well as just the NSX side.

The foundation exam brings us neatly to the second change, which is, ahem, the foundation exam. Exam 2vo-620 is a requirement for all VCP candidates starting from scratch from now going forward. It is the same exam no matter which track of VCP you take and it covers the basic “What is vSphere”, “What’s it for”, “Install”, Maintain”, and “Troubleshoot”. Each VCP track now places their specialised exam on top of this foundation, to dig deeper into the cloud, desktop, data centre, or networking track.

This change makes a lot of sense to me. All VCPs should have a base level of knowledge with the out of the box vSphere product set. I don’t want to employ a VCP to find out later on that they did VCP-NV and don’t know how to add a Datastore to a cluster, or install vCenter. The foundation exam looks like it makes a good step forward in making this happen. It also means that the exam tailored to the current track can go into more depth and so separate the wheat from the chaff a little better.

Of course, the downside is that for new entrants the VCP is now a 2 exam task, with the additional cost and time implications (my nearest test centre is 45 minutes away) that implies.

What interests me the most in this is that, having sat the VCP-NV exam a few times, the blueprint for the networking track exam (2vo-641) looks identical to that of the VCPN610 exam. A side by side comparison of the objective titles certainly shows no difference except for a few typos and copy paste errors. I wonder if the DCV, DTM, and CMA tracks have taken a jump in depth of knowledge required to match this. It looks like at this point in time you can sit VCPN610 or 2VO-620, and 2VO-641 and result in the same certification, as the 610N is still bookable, and is auto-upgraded to VCP6 on completion.

Over the next few weeks I’m going to dig into the objectives of the foundation exam with the aim of taking it. Less because I need to, but more because I think it will round out my knowledge and I wont feel I have a “second class VCP” at the end of it.