As some of you know, last night I took the VCDX Enterprise Administration Exam.  So, let me paint you the picture of how it worked, first you need to read a sheet that shows the rules and regulations for the testing center. Then you need to show two forms of ID (Drivers License & Credit Card worked for me), then you give a digital signature and they take a photo. After your signed in you then remove all your belongings and put them in a locker (this includes cell phones, watches, wallets, money, cheat sheets or food), you can have nothing in your pocket except for your drivers license and the locker key.

Then they will take you to a workstation where they sign you into the test. First you answer 10 simple survey questions, then your dropped into the test where you have the first set of 75 multiple choice questions which make up 60% of your score. It covered a lot of topics, unlike the VCP exam that touched on some of the other VMware products, the VCDX exam strictly stuck to VI3.5 – for example: VCB, DRS, HA, ESX and vCenter.  They didn’t talk about ESXi nor did they get into the details found in the VCP (DiskMaxLun, Portgroup max’s, etc.).

After your finished with those 75 you should have >1 hour remaining to finish the last 11 lab based questions, these final 11 make up 40% of your grade.  The lab actually connects you to a session at VMware corporate, you switch between the question and the lab with a button at the top of the screen.  You continue to use the same session for all the lab questions, I found myself jumping between questions if I remembered something I missed — this makes it nice because your answer isn’t final until you end the lab section at the end of question 86.

{.thickbox}Once you’ve completed the exam you raise your hand and one of the employees will escort you out of the testing room, you are then provided with your confirmation report.  You then wait 10-12 business days for your results from VMware. In the event you fail, you can take the test again but you’ll need to pay the $400 fee again.  The waiting period between taking the test is 10 days, but you’re going to wait that long for the results so it doesn’t matter.

Correction : I originally stated you can only take the test a max of 2 times, this has been cleared up by Jon Hall at VMware. You can take it as many times as needed, but you must wait 10 days between sittings and you must pay the $400 registration fee again.

I’ll let you know as soon as I get my results!