VCIX-NV Exam Experience

Last Thursday I went over to Leeds to sit the VCIX-NV exam. Obviously regular readers will know I haven’t been using NSX all that long (around 6 weeks, I’d say) and I’ve already managed to get the VCP out of the way, so I figured I needed a new challenge! As per usual, there are no exam questions listed as per the NDA, but if you’re thinking of doing this exam any time soon, I’d recommend it. Advanced exams are always a tough but rewarding experience.

The exam itself, as per the blueprint, is 18 questions with a selection of subtasks. Passing score is 300 out of 500 and obviously you can score points even when you don’t fully meet all question requirements. Total time allowed is 225 minutes, although I didn’t spend a lot of time clock watching until the end.

I’ve read a lot of people complain about latency issues, but I didn’t really see that during my sitting. I have a level of expectation that there will be latency anyway, and it wasn’t so severe that it really made much of a difference to me getting things done. I did have an issue with low colour on the screen, which is obviously a known issue as it was listed on the exam start screen. Again it didn’t prevent me performing any tasks, so I elected against disconnecting and reconnecting as recommended, I’m always paranoid that something bad will go wrong second time around!

The exam itself is very faithful to the blueprint, but as the blueprint is so wide in scope and there are only 18 questions, some areas were not covered at all, which you’d sort of expect. There was certainly nothing in there that I thought was not fair game.

About half way through I had a major issue where a host stopped responding. After informing the proctor and some phone calls to and fro between the test centre, Pearson and VMware, it was decided it was my fault and so therefore wouldn’t be fixed. I wasn’t sure I agreed with that assessment, but as things turned out it worked out in my favour, in a crazy way. Firstly, up to that point I’d been going quite slowly and not managing my time very well (a constant point when sitting VCAP/VCIX exams), so having 20 minutes out of the room to look at the host issue meant that when I went back in, the dead host issue meant a fire was lit under me to get things done quicker and in the end, the dead host had no effect on any other tasks I had to do (and I should add that Pearson did give me the time back on the exam timer).

I did miss one question out that I was saving to the end, but I ran out of time to come back to it. After hitting the finish button with seconds left, I got my score report back on Friday night (thanks again Josh @ VMware for pushing the scoring through) and much to my surprise and utter relief I passed with 300/500. Right on the limit, but a pass is a pass and the exam has helped me identify areas I need to strengthen, so a win-win all around.

In terms of study materials, let me recommend the following:-

• Martijn Smit’s VCIX-NV Study Guide
• Jason Nash’s PluralSight NSX Courses
• VMware Hands On Labs 1403 and 1425 (NSX Introduction and NSX Advanced, offline manuals available here)

The Hands On Lab environment is very similar to the exam environment and working through each exercise several times until you have it down pat is a really effective way of preparing for the exam. Remember during the exam that you can score points in a variety of ways, so make sure to read the question and complete as many tasks as you can, this was basically the key to me just about getting over the line. Even if it’s only one sub task out of three or four, if you can complete it, do it and add it to your total.

Finally, get to your exam centre in plenty of time, stay relaxed and don’t be intimidated! No idea what is next for me exam wise, I think I’ll probably have a breather and wait until the new VCIX-DCV and DTM are released, probably towards Christmas/New Year time.