So after many calls to my friends at Pearson Vue I finally got the exam re arranged for this week. When I got to the test centre they had problems with the internet and had to switch to a back up line, this added another few hours but eventually I got to do it. Anyone readying this in UK I would suggest you do not book your exam in Edinburgh!
Now onto the exam.
The exam is very much like the HOLs so if your prepping I would recommend you run through some of these even if its just to get used to the interface. Given the small screen I managed by maximising the main console screen and closed the question screen by using the X. This hides the questions to one side and they can be expanded when needed. You only need to read it once or twice, this way you have a full screen to work on.
The performance from this test centre was incredibly poor, each click took 10 seconds at least. Just getting to Edit Settings on certain things took 3 clicks in the web clients - 30 seconds! In this time I didnt get to do all of the questions I would say I completed 10-12 questions, this test for me was a fight against time and internet connection rather than ability.
I obviously cant cover any of the material but the blue print is a good guide. My role is deployment so a lot of the tasks I could do from memory, I didn’t have time or internet connection to look at any documents. Make sure you can do the blue print from memory. I don’t do a great deal in the CLI but can manage by knowing the main key commands then using the CLI help to find the rest. Try not to rely on reading any docs in the exam.
Finally I had a strange issue, my time completed from 240 minutes to 0 but when I left the test centre only 3 hours had passed, my registration confirms this. Hopefully I can find out why but its a mystery at the minute. This adds to the internet connection frustration, the extra hour even with the lag might have got me through enough questions to pass.
If you have done the beta in the UK I would love to hear from you to see if the internet lag was an issue for you.
In terms of study, I will continue the study guide and hope to get this complete soon.
I did some HOLs, these can be great if your not involved in the deployment side of things or even just for a refresher
HOL-SDC-1602
HOL-SDC-1627
HOL-SDC-1604
HOL-SDC-1607
I also went through some of the PluralSight courses, I get access to this as a vExpert so if you have access use them. I went through the VCP6 course, although this is aimed at VCP candidates some of the advanced courses on vDS, AutoDeploy, HostProfiles etc are really good.