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I’ve got the opportunity to take the VCAP5-DTD exam during the beta period (at the beginning of this year). After a really long period (common in the VMware beta exams, but this time more long that usual), on May 16 I’ve received an email with this sentence:

Thank you for taking the VCAP-DTD Beta Exam. We are pleased to inform you that you passed! Congratulations!

I’ve not receive yet the score report (was sent by snail mail), but does not matter too much… I’ve pass this exam, that wasn’t so easy.

Some days later also my transcript has been update, with the right date of the exam:

VCAP5-DTD

Note that the #ID remain the same of the VCP(-DCV), as also happened with the VCP-Cloud certification. And it’s curios that the release number (5) has been removed.

VCAP-DTDI found this exam a little easy rather than the VCAP-DCD… or at least most linear in the type of questions. But still is a big challenge in how you have to manage your time and distribute it in the lot of questions, composed by multiple choice, drag and drop, scenario questions, along with some “visio” style design questions. And without the back button (again as in the VCAP4-DCD, and seems as in all new “Design” exams). There were also several sizing related questions, but without any calculator! Be prepared also to this.

Scenarios and some questions were also quite long in the description… be careful in the question to understand what exactly it’s asked. For the vision part I suggest to start from the question and then found the part of the scenario that are relevant to the design.

Official courses may help (but I’ve took the design workshop only on View 3), but a practical experience could be better. Also be sure to read not only the documentations (the View Architecture Planning it’s a must) but also the several whitepapers that are available.

Other exam experiences:

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Virtualization, Cloud and Storage Architect. Tech Field delegate. VMUG IT Co-Founder and board member. VMware VMTN Moderator and vExpert 2010-24. Dell TechCenter Rockstar 2014-15. Microsoft MVP 2014-16. Veeam Vanguard 2015-23. Nutanix NTC 2014-20. Several certifications including: VCDX-DCV, VCP-DCV/DT/Cloud, VCAP-DCA/DCD/CIA/CID/DTA/DTD, MCSA, MCSE, MCITP, CCA, NPP.