Yesterday (21st July 2014) I sat and passed the VMware Certified Advanced Professional Cloud Infrastructure Administration (VCAP5-CIA) exam at my local test centre here in Melbourne, Australia.

As with the VCAP-DCA which I did as a prerequisite for VCDX back in 2011, the CIA exam is a live lab exam where VMware get you to demonstrate your hands on expertise with their products.

I find the value of the VCDX, is in part due to the fact it is a requirement to have not only “Design” but hand-on implementation/administration/troubleshooting experience as it is my opinion a person should not be an architect unless that person has the hands on experience and ability to implement and support the solution as designed.

So, enough rambling, what did I think of the VCAP-CIA?

As with all VMware certifications, the exams are generally well written and closely aligned to the blueprints which VMware provide. For VCAP-CIA the blueprint and exam registration can be found here.

The VCAP-CIA was no different, and aligned very well to the blueprint.

The exam is 210 minutes and has 32 questions some of which are simple 1 min tasks where others require a significant amount of work. One secret to all VCAP exams is you are challenged not only by the questions, but by the clock as time is the enemy. This makes time management essential. Do not get caught up of one question, if your unsure, do your best and move on.

Be ware some questions are dependant on successfully completion of earlier questions, but in saying that, a lot of questions are not, so don’t be afraid to skip questions if your struggling as you will still be able to complete many other questions.

The actual live lab in the exam consists of seven ESXi hosts, three vCenter Server virtual machine, four VMware vCloud™ Director (vCD) cells plus additional supporting resources. The lab has a number of pre-configured vApps and virtual machines will also be present for use with certain tasks. It is importaint to understand the lab environment is based on VMware vCloud Suite 5.1 and vCenter Chargeback Manager 2.5, not vCloud 5.5 so ensure you study and prepare using the correct versions of vCloud/vCB!

At this stage some of you may be thinking, I just breached the NDA telling the world about the exam? Well I haven’t and this is the beauty of how VMware does their exam blueprints, the above information is all available in the blueprint so there is not trickery or secrecy to the lab.

As for the questions in the VCAP-CIA, you will not get a brain dump out of me, but what I can tell you is the questions are in most cases very clear and what is asked of the candidates is vastly skills that anyone with any significant vCD experience would be familiar with. For example, the blueprint under Objection 1.2 – Configure vCloud Director for scalability, states under skills and abilities:

 Generate vCloud Director response files
 Add vCloud cells to an existing installation using response files
 Set up vCloud Director transfer storage space
 Configure vCloud Director load balancing

Its safe to say if you know the blueprint properly, you will be able to complete the tasks in the exam, and as a result, get a passing score.

Now the bad news!

Being based in Melbourne, Australia, and the live lab is being accessed by RDP to a location in Seattle, USA. So what does this mean, Latency!

I was only able to complete about 2/3rd’s of the questions in large part due to the delay in the screen refreshing after switching between for example the vCD web interface and production documentation, Putty etc.

On that point, all the PDF and HTML documentation is available in the exam, but I would highly recommend you don’t rely on it, because accessing the doco and searching/scrolling for things is very slow, at least it was for me.

I had numerous occasions where the screen would totally freeze which was a concern, but I soon accepted this was a latency issue, and the lab was fine, and waited out the freezes (which varied from a few seconds to around 20 seconds, which feels like hours when your against the clock!)

I have heard from numerous other VCAP-CIA who sat the exam in the Australia/NZ region that they experienced the same issues, so if you are A/NZ based, or any location a long way from the USA, be prepared for this.

Now being a live lab, the exam is not scored on the spot, and you have to wait for VMware to score the exam and then you will receive an electronic score report via email. The exam receipt says 15 business days, but I was very impressed that less than 24 hours after sitting the exam, I got my score report. Obviously VMware education have done a great job in automating the scoring process, which is a credit to them!

Overall, the experience of the VCAP-CIA was very good, the exam/questions are a solid test of vCloud related skills and experience, so great work VMware Education!

I am very pleased to have completed this exam and all prerequisites for VCDX-Cloud (VCP-Cloud, VCAP-CID and VCAP-CIA) and I will be submitting my application in the near future.