VMware Cloud on AWS – Master Services Competency Specialist Exam 2019 Experience, Tipps & Tricks

During VMware Empower every participant had the chance to do a free VMware Exam. After doing my VCAP-DTM Design exam last year in Vienna I gave this year a new exam a shot.

VMware Cloud on AWS – Master Services Competency Specialist Exam 2019

Why? I am interested and fascinated of the VMware Cloud on AWS stack. Besides that, the newly created Master Services Competency requires this exam as well (besides doing an online & one onsite training).

When I registered for this exam a few days before Empower has started, I had no idea what to expect (normally you should prepare first and than register for an exam – but hey it was free and a chance to become one of the first who gets this certification).

I had already visited the VMC on AWS Deploy & Manage training in January on Fuerte Ventura, I did the Pluralsight Training for AWS basic certifications and am currently in a preparation of a VMC on AWS Proof of concept/value for a large enterprise.

So where do we start when doing an exam? As with every exam, I started with the exam preparation guide by VMware.

Since some of the objectives were quite unknown or details has been lost I used Paul McSharry Mindmap about VMC on AWS to refresh some of my memories. This has been a good resource if you have learned things already, but lost some of the details over time.

What’s the ‘size & time’ of the exam?

Around 60 minutes for 34 questions. That doesn’t sound so hard (or at least it’s not so long).

Let’s summarize the resources I have used so far to get ready for the exam:

• VMware Cloud on AWS: Deploy & Manage
• Pluralsight AWS
• Paul McSharry VMC on AWS mindmap
• VMC on AWS Training within the VMware Partner Portal

Would it have been enough to pass the exam? Not really. There things asked that I didn’t had that much in scope, but which made out around 50% of the questions:

• HCX (I had some experience and went through he documentation. Some questions are still a ‘Frechheit’)
• Site Recovery Manager (I deliver the trainings for a certain amount of years)
• vSphere Replication (I deliver the trainings and did some blog posts about it multiple years ago)
• VMware’s Hybrid Cloud assessment (I had no clue about that, but assumed certain things)

The other 50% could be answered with a basic AWS (know the services), VMC on AWS and solid/deeper vSphere, vSAN, NSX know-how. If you read carefully and exclude possible answers that didn’t not really make sense.

But take care: As always the important and game-changing keywords of a question are hidden within the text. If there are question where you have the feeling that multiple things could be right or all of the answers are wrong; search for those keywords.

If you have the basic knowledge of AWS and the SDDC stack, learn the above mentioned bullet points and pass it.

I wish you all the best :)