Recently VMware Education announced the availability of the “vSAN Specialist” exam which entitles those who pass it to receive the “vSAN Specialist 2017” badge. The badge holder is a “technical professional who understands the vSAN 6.6 architecture and its complete feature set, knows how to conduct a vSAN design and deployment exercise, can implement a live vSAN hyper-converged infrastructure environment based on certified hardware/software components and best practices, and can administer/operate a vSAN cluster properly“.
As I consider myself to be a vSAN specialist I thought this one should be rather easy to achieve, so after I read about it last week, I immediately scheduled my exam at Pearson VUE and took it today.
The exam is a “typical” VCP-style exam. There were 60 multiple-choice questions and I was given 140 minutes (including the 30 minute extension for non-native english speakers) to answer them. This proved to be more than sufficient, since I had over 100 minutes left when submitting my answers. Most of the questions I knew I answered correctly, but there were a few that I needed to review because I was not 100% sure. I probably missed one or two questions as the score I received was 489 (out of a possible 500). Since the passing score is 300 (similar to the VCP exam) I am now the proud owner of the “vSAN Specialist 2017” badge … that is : actually after Acclaim has sent me the confirmation of the badge entitlement and I can share it with the world.
How did I prepare ? Well … I have been working with vSAN since the beta version (vSphere 5.5) and have kept up-to-date with the various new releases ever since, so for me personally there was not much to do specifically to prepare for this exam.
For those of you that have not gained much experience yet, I can say that attending the
“VMware vSAN: Deploy and Manage [V6.6]” training course will definitely help you pass the exam. Having some more hands-on experience besides the knowledge provided through the training (knowing where to find what information in the vSphere Web Client) will certainly help you achieve a higher score.
Good luck to all future vSAN Specialists !