Sorry the updates haven’t been forth coming. That’s mainly because my two year requirement for recertification was coming up for my VCP-DCV certification, and I was preparing to meet it by achieving VCP6-NV. Saturday, I passed, so I wanted to share my experiences and provide a 2V0-641 exam review.
2V0-641 Exam Review – Thoughts on Exam
This exam is no slouch in difficulty. I’ve ready plenty of reviews that seem to suggest the VCP-NV exam isn’t difficult, but maybe that was the predecessor to 2V0-641. I made my first attempt a week before, and failed it despite putting a lot of time studying, and soaking in as much as possible using the Hands on Labs from VMware.
My first score was 276, and you must score 300 to pass. I think part of the reason why was contained in my score report, which lists objectives recommended for review if you fail. I noticed a string of questions that didn’t pertain to what the exam blueprint described for various network fabrics. The blueprint had stated to know the challenges of various network designs, and how NSX solved them, but these questions were more about how to configure NSX when you have various network fabric design types. Sure enough, one objective listed that I needed to review was “Describe considerations for running VMware NSX on physical network fabrics”. As of the time I’m drafting this blog post, that is nowhere on the exam blueprint. Needless to say, I was extremely frustrated, with another 2 weeks to go before I lost my VCP status.
After dusting myself off, I went back to studying and gathered information for this new objective, and scored 357 on my second attempt with one more week to go before my VCP-DCV expired. A little too close for comfort, but I got it done.
2V0-641 Exam Review – How to Prepare
I attended an online version of the 6.2 Install and Configure Course back in August. Be very aware that this course alone is absolutely not sufficient to pass this exam. I can’t stress that enough. You’ll know just by looking at the exam blueprint, as entire major exam objectives are completely not covered at all. The course covers others, but only scratched the surface. You absolutely have to know your stuff for this exam!
I highly recommend the VMware Press Official Cert Guide for VCP-6-NV by Elver Sena Sosa. I had the pleasure of meeting him at VMworld 2016 this year in Las Vegas. It’s one of the best written IT books I’ve ever read, and comes with simulation exams. However, it too is also not sufficient for preparing for this exam, either. But it helped me understand how NSX works that I didn’t even realize I was short on despite attending the course. I found the packet walkthroughs for both the logical switch and logical routers extremely helpful! However, the book also doesn’t cover some sections for this exam in the blueprint. The simulation questions also do not reflect the difficulty or the style of questions I found on both attempts on the exam well. I scored consistently almost perfectly on these simulation exams on the first attempt prior to taking the actual exam, and yet failed anyway. Still, this is in my opinion the most helpful resource for this exam. In fact, I’m quite certain I’ll reference this book in future NSX deployments.
Finally, I really wanted to give a shot out to another blogger, Rich Dowling, who helped me immensely with his notes on various portions on the exam objectives listed in the blueprint. While it’s not for the current exam, most of the exam objectives are the same. Make sure you check them out if you’re taking this exam!
Also, make sure you read carefully through the recommended documents within the exam blueprint. This is especially the case for NSX Design Guide! (see surprise objective!)
2V0-641 Exam Review – Resources
Here are some resources to help with your 2V0-641 exam review.
VMware Certified Professional 6 – Network Virtualization Exam page – Contains the exam blueprint
VMware NSX Network Virtualization Design Guide
NSX for vSphere Administration Guide
NSX Command Line Interface Reference Guide
VCP6-NV Official Cert Guide (Exam #2V0-641) (Kindle Version)
2V0-641 Exam Review – Check back for more
I’ll be posting some section reviews where I think my notes would be helpful for others beyond Rich Dowling’s excellent notes to try to help others as Rich helped me. I hope you’ll find those useful!