VMware Certified Associate Desktop VCA4-DT Review

I decided to put all of the time and effort I’ve been doing with installing View  in the home lab to good use.  I downloaded a copy of the VMware Certified Associate – Desktop Certification blueprint and went about seeing how ready I was to take the exam. For those of you that are not familiar with VCA-DT, it is one of 2(ea) VMware View specific certifications (others are on the way).  The other one right now is VMware Certified Professional – Desktop or VCP4-DT for short.  Today the only version of the certification is for VMware View 4.x and VCA5-DT and VCP5-DT exams are in beta.  I was really on the fence on just waiting for version 5 to get out of Beta but I figured since EMC was going to pay for the exam, I might as well take advantage of it and see how I would do.  I thought I would jot down a few things that might help others if they decide to knock out this exam as well.

The VCA4-DT is really geared towards the VMware View Admin.  They really expect you to have spent a good amount of time in the View Admin interface and spent time troubleshooting common issues.  The goodnews is, I’ve installed View 4.x a couple of times as well as View 5 a couple of times in the last few months so I sort of feel like I really had my hands around it.  The test is pretty straight forward.  I would HIGHLY recommend you just follow the VMware VCA-DT Blueprint and do everything it tells you to do.  Especially the ThinApp stuff.  OH MAN did it seem I had a lot of ThinApp questions.  The problem was, I haven’t messed with it to much yet.  I plan on fixing that really soon in preparation for VCP4-DT. 

I used the following documents to help me as well:

• VMware Certified Associate – Desktop Blueprint
• VMware 4.5 Admin Guide – probably could have used the 4.6 but for some reason, that’s the one I used 🙂
• Administering VMware View 4.5 – by Mike Laverick – this is a great document to read from page to page as you start to wrap up your studying for the exam.  I found this the day before I took the exam and it reads really well.  It takes you through a lot of the blueprint stuff as well as step by step guides on how to install View 4.5.

• If you’ve never installed View 4.x and you want to – then you need to run over to Paul Slagers blog ASAP.  His guide really helped me get my hands around how to install View the very first time.  

Now I’m starting to study for the VCP4-DT exam and hope to take it the first week or 2 of January and then I need to do a full-court-press on VCP5 so that I can start on the View 5 Certifications. 

Fun Fun Fun !!

@vTexan