Saturday 15 June 2019

NCAP exam - Experience and thoughts

The weather has not been to all that over the last few weeks here in New Zealand. As it is winter here it us pretty much to be expected. In the weekend I usually hit the local mountain bike tracks but after the rainfall over the last two weeks it is like riding in peanut butter. So instead of riding I decided to take my Nutanix Certified Advanced Professional exam instead and I am pleased to say I passed.

I have always been a fan of industry certificates. I believe you learn a lot in the process and while it may not always get you the next job I do believe it adds tremendous value to your CV. Like most other vendors, Nutanix also offers a certification path. If my memory serves me correctly, I believe they started with certifications in 2014 and although I have no idea how many people are certified these days, I managed to become Nutanix Platform Professional #180. I kept up to date when they upgraded to NPP4 and 5. When the new Nutanix Certified Professional track was announced I was having too much fun on the mountain bike and upgrading was not a priority.

During .Next in Anaheim, Nutanix offered free certification during the conference and that got me excited enough to review the training course and materials. I registered for the NCP exam as soon as I arrived and managed to pass without too many issues. NCP was a fun exam. Very similar to NPP when it comes to difficulty but the big difference is that it is no longer open book. While I sat my exam I was sitting close to the proctor's table and I was surprised to see that a large chunk of people failed. Now this could have been for any of the exams offered not just NCP.

Since there was still a day to go at the conference I was persuaded to give NCAP a go. I knew I would surely fail without looking at the blueprint let alone no study. I was told that the NCAP exam was about 30% harder than NPP. So I sat the exam and has expected failed. 2600 out of 5000 with a passing score of 3000. The exam focused heavily on Metro Availability, Prism Central, CALM, AHV Networking, ABS and AFS.
My employer's choice of hypervisor is ESXi and we do not use any of the other features in anger so haven't done any study I thought I was pretty close. Good thing was that you also got a voucher for 50% off on the next attempt. A saving of USD 100.

When I got back to New Zealand I downloaded the blueprint and started studying everything that is in there. I decided to give myself a month before taking the exam. I read all the guides and watched the videos that were linked to blueprint and wrote down what I thought was most useful in a notebook. In the last week I have been mainly reviewing, not just my notes but also working with the product.

My exam was scheduled for 9 AM and this was my first time doing an online proctored exam. You can actually launch the exam 30 minutes before or after scheduled time. I recommend you launch it 30 minutes earlier as there is still a bit of work to do. First I needed to download and install PSI secure browser. Once that was done I had to take a scan of an ID and a picture of myself. Finally, I had to scan the room with the webcam. They are pretty strict as to what you can and can not have in the room so I booked a meeting room and locked the door.

I had a pretty good idea has to what was going to come my way and I had studied the sections that I had no clue about in attempt one. Although I was more confident in some of my answers I was still struggling with quite a few. You are allowed 150 minutes and I used all of them. I reviewed all the questions I was not sure about multiple times and changed a few in the end. When I was finished I was relieved to see that I passed.

I like the exam. It is fair and definitely achievable. The best training resource is to do exactly what the blueprint provides. And hand on experience of course!! I suggest you get to know CALM, PRISM Central, AHV (especially networking), AFS and ABS inside out. Getting to work with these technologies hands on will help tremendously. Other than that pay attention to the wording. Sometimes the difference and answer lies in the wording. Pay close attention to questions on the same subject later in the exam. Sometimes it includes a hint to the right answer in a previous question.

Good luck!!


2 comments:

  1. I now have a much better understanding of NCAP exam. Thanks a lot for sharing your experience.

    ReplyDelete