So I took my exam today and passed with a reasonably respectable score of 428 (pass mark for VCP-510 is 300/500). So how was it?
The exam itself was reasonable, and not massively dissimilar to the VCP 4 in terms of difficulty and question style. The content was all pulled pretty much directly from the exam blueprint, so if you are confident you know the blueprint, then you should be ok with the exam. I would also STRONGLY suggest you take the official mock VCP-510 exam once you feel you are prepared enough, as it will give you a really good feel for the exam and if you pass it comfortably, you will almost certainly do fine in the real one.
The exam has a total of 85 questions to complete in 90 minutes, which sounds tight, but when some of the simpler questions have very short (e.g. 1 word) answers, you can get through those in just seconds, giving you more time to complete the more tricky ones. Just don’t panic about time, or even bother looking at the clock until you’re at least 60 questions into it. I completed mine in about an hour.
I used Scott Lowe’s Mastering VMware vSphere 5 as my main study aid, followed by building several test environments (thanks to the vSphere 60 day evaluation) and doing loads of practice questions etc. I would highlight the fact that his book does not cover much about the extras which are likely to come up, such as the VSA, vDR and even a basic knowledge of other VMware products (Workstation, Server, View etc). I would suggest a little time is dedicated to understanding the basic capabilities of these products too (perhaps a little unfair as the exam is on vSphere but hey?!).
For more info on the exam prep materials I used please see my previous blog post:
VCP5 Exam Prep Guide
Next task: VCAP-DCD 4 (backwards I know)!