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So its that time of year again, when we VCPs have to bone up on the latest developments in the VCP world and get our exam done in time before we have to go cap in hand to our line management asking for them to pay for a course we never needed in the first place. In order to avoid this embarrassment, VMware kindly give us the opportunity (as existing VCPs) to pass the VCP-510 exam by 29th Feb 2012, bypassing the course attendance requirement (fair enough!).

As per usual, I have left this pretty much until as late as I feasibly can while still giving time for the (hopefully never required as yet) resit, meaning I am booked in to sit my exam on 1st Feb.

For the sake of others who are also planning to take this exam, I plan to post the links to all of my study aids below, along with any other hints/tips I come across for studying towards the VCP5 exam. If it only helps out one or two people it’ll be worth the effort.

One point worth highlighting is that reading books is all very well and good, but there’s no substitute for actually “doing it”. The best thing I would suggest is to create a home lab and use the vSphere 60 day evaluation to have a play with all the latest features. I have accomplished this in a couple of ways, but I found the most flexible to be running 2 x ESXi hosts and a copy of FreeNAS 7 inside VMware Workstation 8 (using NFS or iSCSI). I’ll try to create a post on this when I have time, but do a quick search on google for lots of other people with similar setups.

This should be considered a “living list” for now, and I will endeavour to update it as I find/use further resources.

• Mastering VMware vSphere 5 by Scott Lowe (Kindle Edition)
  A superb resource. Even though I am already VCP3 and 4 certified, it is still worth a full read, in part as a refresher, and in part because it does highlight many of the updates with vSphere. Kindle edition is also cheaper, and lets be honest, as vSphere 5 will be out of date in another couple of years, do you really need 2 kgs of dead tree choking up your bookshelf, when you could just have an electronic copy, which you can share across all your devices?
  I have spent an hour or two a night reading and taking notes from this for a couple of weeks, which is a lot less painful than trying to get through it in one go, and hopefully should ensure slightly better retention!
• VMware vSphere 5 Clustering Technical Deepdive by Duncan Epping and Frank Denneman (Kindle Edition)
  Having read the vSphere 4 version of this (first Kindle book I ever bought) in prep for my VCAP-DCD 4 (still to sit), I can confirm Duncan and Frank are very capable teachers! An excellent resource which goes above and beyond the VCP requirements, but will give you a much more in depth understanding of HA, DRS, DPM, SDRS, etc. This will be invaluable when the VCAP exams are out for vSphere 5!
• VCP 5 Exam Blueprint
  If you know all this, then you cant fail!
• What’s New in vSphere 5.0 Overview
  A quick reminder / highlight list of all the new features in vSphere 5
• What’s New in vSphere 5.0 – Technical Whitepapers
  Platform
  Storage
  Networking
  Performance
  Availability
  Licensing, Pricing and Packaging
  Particularly useful for a quick reminder skim for all the new features, prior to the exam.
• vSphere Private Cloud Service Definition
  Whitepaper covering key terms.
• vSphere Storage Appliance
  Official VMware blog post with documentation links for VSA stuff. Not covered in Scott Lowe’s Mastering Vsphere 5, but you will almost certainly be asked some questions on VSA in the exam.
• Official VMware Mock VCP510 Exam
  An excellent resource, especially if you have never taken a VCP exam before. HINT: If you can pass this, you’re probably good to go for the real exam.
• VCP5 Practice Questions by Paul McSharry
  A great set of practice questions being regularly updated with extra questions… I actually met Paul when he taught my VMware vSphere Design [4.x] workshop. A very knowledgeable guy, and his website (www.elasticsky.co.uk) is well worth checking out and subscribing.
• VCP Practice Exams by Simon Long
  A boat-load of questions here coving general knowledge and config maximums per feature.

Please feel free to send me any links to practice questions and I’ll vet them and add them to the above list.