In the last few months, many changes happened to VMware certifications, and in this short post, I want to cover those changes.
First and foremost: since October 31, legacy certifications are no longer available, which means we cannot schedule VCP-DCV or VCAP-Design exams anymore.
What about the current available certification? As usual, we can get all the information from the VMware certification page.
Nowadays, the certification focuses on two products: primarily on VMware Cloud Foundation and, in addition, on VMware vSphere Foundation.
Three levels of certification are available: Professional, Advanced-Professional, and Expert.
There are three types of professional exams:
- Administration – focused on administrating and implementing the product;
- Support – focused on troubleshooting;
- Architect – focused on designing the solution.
While administration and support are available for VCF and VVF products, the architect exam is available only for the VCF solution stack.
In total, we have five professional-level exams:
- VMware Certified Professional – VMware vSphere Foundation Support (2V0-18.25), blueprint;
- VMware Certified Professional – VMware Cloud Foundation Support (2V0-15.25), blueprint;
- VMware Certified Professional – VMware vSphere Foundation Administrator (2V0-16.25), blueprint;
- VMware Certified Professional – VMware Cloud Foundation Administrator (2V0-17.25), blueprint;
- VMware Certified Professional – VMware Cloud Foundation Architect (2V0-13.25), blueprint.
If you are using only the vSphere Foundation stack, you can start with 2V0-16.25 and 2V0-18.25. For VCF administrators, the starting point could be the 2V0-17.25 and 2V0-15.25 exams. Next is to take the Architect exam 2V0-13.25; I assume it’s kind of like the VCAP-Design exam.
The next step is three advanced-professional exams:
- VMware Certified Advanced Professional – VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0 vSphere Kubernetes Service (3V0-24.25), blueprint;
- VMware Certified Advanced Professional – VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0 Automation (3V0-21.25), blueprint;
- VMware Certified Advanced Professional – VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0 Operations (3V0-22.25), blueprint.
You can see by the name that each advanced-level exam focused on a specified topic – Kubernetes, Automation, or Operations.
Each professional and advanced exam costs $250, consists of 60 questions, has a passing score of 300 (as usual), and requires 135 minutes to clear.
The last step is VCDX – VMware Certified Distinguished Expert. – What? Where is the “Design Expert”? Currently, there is limited information available on the internet, aside from this post. As of writing, the official certification page is not updated. Therefore, I will add more info about VCDX later.
