Saturday 10 October 2020

NCP-MCI 5.15 Exam Experience

Today was a good day. And a busy day. After my morning coffee I did some painting in my bathroom, mowed the lawns and rode 60 KM in the French countryside, Virtually on Zwift I may add. There is not really a way out of New Zealand these days. And I managed to to squeeze in the NCP-MCI 5.15 exam as well....

Taking the exam had been on my list for a while. Initially I was planning to wait until .Next and do it while I was there. I really enjoyed the experience last year in Anaheim. Unfortunately some virus had other plans and Chicago will need to wait until another year. Kudos to Nutanix for still making the exam available to anyone, free of cost, who attended the virtual .Next conference last month.

I had booked the exam for some weeks back but ended up postponing it twice because I haven't had time to prepare. Even so, the exam date was approaching very quickly and I did go in not as prepared as I should have been. Normally I put a decent amount of time in preparation but I found it hard to get motivated this time around. Like most Kiwis, I spent a lot of time locked up inside either because of Covid or the winter and early spring weather. And once the weather gets better it is time to hit the mountain bike trails.

As I always do, I review the latest ECA course at Nutanix University and then go over the topics outlined in the blueprint. Only this time I did not go through the guides, which I do not recommend. I did open the Web Console Guide two days ago but I only managed to get through a quarter of the pages. Last night and this morning I reviewed the notes I took from the ECA course and crossed my fingers it was sufficient.

If you have taken a Nutanix proctored exam before you are probably familiar with the drill. Verify identity, take a picture and scan the room. I always tend to book a meeting room at work outside of office hours. Having a 6 year old hellraiser at home is to distracting and no doubt he would barge down the door and get me disqualified. There is a lot of do's and do not's during the exam and I always get told off for holding my hand in front of my mouth. Something I tend to do when concentrating...

When the exam starts you have 120 minutes to answer 75 questions. My strategy is to always go through all of them and answer the easier one. I also flag the ones I am unsure off or haven't answered. I was off to a flying start. First five questions were rather easy in my opinion but then I got hit with a few hard ones in a row. I started to wonder whether I had done enough and thought I may struggle to pass at one stage. I think I flagged about 15-20 questions or so the first time I went through the pool. I then work my work my way through all flagged ones until I don't have any left. I always tend to use all my allocated time. I thought it would be a close call but in the end I passed with a score of 5097. The passing score is 3000.
Surprised and happy at the same time.

I do have a few years of experience with Nutanix but as the product set grows there are quite a few I do not use. My employer is a ESXi shop and obviously the exam is heavy on AHV. I do have experience with AHV in lab environments and that definitely helps. However some items on the blueprint I have never had hands on experience with i.e Nutanix Move. If you have hands-on experience and you review the ECA course you should be able to pass or get close. Some of the questions you should be able to answer by applying common sense. I had some lucky guesses too I assume.

Every time I take an exam, whether it is Nutanix or VMware, I always get caught out by topics such as SSL, Encryption, etc. I have always found these topics as dry as Weetbix (A New Zealand breakfast cereal) and find it hard digesting the reading material. And as per usual you get hit with a few questions around this.

When I got my final score and was presented with a breakdown and actually failed one topic and that was Prism Central. I got 50% and although I cannot recall I think there may have been two questions on it.
As to other topics, it is all in the blueprint obviously but make sure you know about Security, AHV, Image Management, Move and then some.

I guess I better do something about renewing my NCAP certification now, which is called NCM-MCI now. I know from the previous edition that I cannot take the lazy approach I did for the NCP exam.


Good Luck