Monday, April 22, 2013

VCP5 VMware Certified Professional on vSphere 5 Study Guide: Exam VCP-510 1st edition, Brian Atkinson



This textbook or "study guide" is very informative and quite detailed and will definately help study for the VMWare VCP5 certification. The textbooks strengths include the exercises through to the detailed explanations and chapter questions/summaries.

I cant speak to much of the book because I have yet to take the exam so I am not sure how well it would prepare one for the VCP exam. Nevertheless, this book is very informative and useful for those who have some VMware experience and it gives you a comprehensive look at the whole vSphere 5 suite. This book is NOT for virtual network engineering, but it will help you determine certain network requirements and needs for such an implementation.

It's a good book that covers the Blue Print of the VCP5 exam in order however it could have been proof read much better, Chapter 4 (Plan and Configure vSphere Networking) has many errors when talking about vSwitches and DvSwitches, there are numerous times when the two are confused and he's referring to one type while the book is written with the others name. It's quite confusing for someone trying to learn from this book.

Example: Page 195 "Note that in steps 6 and 7 of Exercise 4.18 you are choosing the options to move all virtual machines connected to the virtual machine port group on a vSwitch to a dvSwitch. In steps 13 and 14, you are choosing the options to move all virtual machines connected to the virtual machine port group on a vSwitch to a dvSwitch. In other words, you are reversing steps 6 and 7."

This is just one example where it's confusing all over in this chapter. Definitely should have been proofread more and I can count at least 10 instances in this chapter where he's confused the two in writing. I hope there is a version 2 of this book that fixes these problems.

This is a great book that follows the test objectives pretty much verbatim as they appear from VMWare. There are good labs to help you with the material being discussed as you are going through the book. You will have to do a bit to get a lab environment set up depending on the hardware you have to work with, but it is not impossible. Only criticism that I have of this book is that the last sentence in most sections says what will be covered in the next session which in most cases is on the same page. It is redundant and only adds to the amount of reading.

This is a great resource for anyone looking to pass the VCP510 exam. The book is divided into chapters, with review questions at the end of each chapter.

Just like the required VMware training courses (VMware vSphere: Install, Configure, Manage [V5.0]) does not cover all the topics required for the actual exam, just studying this book will not guarantee a pass.

However, unlike the training courses, the book does cover all the areas required, and the step-by-step exercises it contains helps you build the hands-on experience that is required to pass the exam.

Neatly divided into chapters, this book not only helps you study, it also helps you build your own environment from the ground up! The chapters correspond with the objectives laid out by VMware in the Exam Blueprint, and this makes it easy to track your progress and relate it to the actual exam.

Clearly a great resource for anyone looking to obtain the VCP5 certification, especially those just starting out with VMware certifications.

I used this book along with Mastering VMware vSphere 5 to study for VCP5. I recently passed the exam and I believe this book helped quite a bit, it's really easy to work through and manages to keep you interested. It's basically full of hands on labs so you'll need a vSphere 5 lab to get the most out of the book.

I loved this study guide as it is concise and straight to the point. The author does a good job of covering all of the topics that will be covered in the exam. I thought that the flow of the material was logical and well organized. There was a distinct direction that the guide is working towards and that is getting you as ready as possible to get your cert. As with any of these guides, this book is meant for people that have some exposure to vSphere and VMware. Thinking that you can come in blind to any OS or computer framework, read a book and pass an exam is foolishness. This guide, coupled with some studying and some real world experience will get you passed every time.

Well done!

I bought the book, used the test engine and found that I was presented with questions I couldn't answer, acronyms I didn't know and so in general I was disappointed and guess I'll have to take a 7,500.00 class for the test to get the knowledge I need to pass the test.

I'm disappointed and gave the book 1 star even though it was much less expensive then the Microsoft certified books that I bought that can't be bought at Amazon.

The content of the book is great. I was worried this book would have a lot of overlap with the Mastering VMware by Scott Lowe. I'm glad I bought both books. Both of these books are much better than the books provided by VMware in their official training classes.

The on-line test is clearly half-updated from vSphere4. For example, the practice test claims RAID 10 is the only supported level for the storage appliance. VMware documentation says the appliance supports RAID 5,6, and 10. The questions were clearly not proofread by a native English speaker.

I have been using VSphere 5 Enterprise Plus for several months so I've had significant experience with it. I discovered that this book had been released a week before my scheduled exam. I sat down in my apartment and read the entire book and did all of the review questions over about 15 hours. When I took other practice exams I found that the book had got me about 90% of the way to passing. I used the excellent exam cram outline from Vidad Cosonok's blog and it filled in the gaps that I needed to pass the exam. I gave the book 4 stars instead of 5 for the gaps and the fact that the book format expected me to do long involved "labs" that seem to add little value. I recommend it for exam prep.

The book seems to basically cover what the VCP 5 exam will go over. However, it skips simple stuff and just expects you to know how to do it. For instance, Chapter 2 shows you how to install ESXi. Then Chapter 3 expects that you've already added it to vCenter. However, it doesn't go over how to add it or even tells you to actually do it.

I did learn some stuff, but not a lot since there is not much in depth detail.

Just seems to skim the surface of the basics of vSphere and I don't think with this book alone you'd pass the exam.

I received this book a few days ago and it is an enjoyable read. The author is a great contributor to the VMware community and incredibly knowledgeable, which is apparent while reading the book. It was technically reviewed by an all-star cast resulting in it being very well written from a technical standpoint, and that is critical when studying for a certification. I highly recommend this book as a valuable addition to your library when studying for the VCP5.

Product Details :
Paperback: 816 pages
Publisher: Sybex; 1 edition (May 14, 2012)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1118181123
ISBN-13: 978-1118181126
Product Dimensions: 7.4 x 1.7 x 9.1 inches

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