Hi all,
Recently I had the privilege to take a beta exam from the new VCAP Role Based certification. You might have seen that the exam study guide is already available on the Broadcom Education site. So let’s have a look at my first impression. This exam consist out of 60 items with a scaled passing score of 300. Candidates are given an appointment time of 135 minutes, which includes adequate time to complete the exam for non-native English speakers. The exam is proctored and delivered through Pearson VUE.
Personally, I found the questions fair—not too difficult, but definitely good and appropriate for a VCAP-level exam. The questions were very clear, which meant the exam didn’t take much time at all. In fact, I was completely ready and finished within one hour! I particularly liked the point-and-click questions, which make the exam feel much more engaging.
For me, it was really good to see that NSX is covered. Advanced networking absolutely should be a core part of a VCF platform exam, and the questions here had a nice, modern feel with a bit of an automation focus. vSAN was also well covered, and I must say the questions here were much clearer and more straightforward than what you typically find in the dedicated VCAP Storage exam.
My conclusion:
This is a great exam for administrators with real, hands-on experience! It’s exciting, but because it is a beta exam, the results are not shared with me yet. My tip: because the exam guide is already available, start preparing today and claim your VCAP badge when it is available!
Deep Dive: What the Exam Guide Covers
To help you get started on that preparation, let’s break down exactly what this exam is testing based on the official blueprint.
The Blueprint Breakdown: A Laser Focus on Administration
VMware exam blueprints have transitioned to a standardized five-section structure. However, for the VCAP-VCF 9.0 Administrator (3V0-11.26) exam, there is a major twist:
- Section 1 (IT Architectures, Technologies, Standards): NO TESTABLE OBJECTIVES
- Section 2 (VMware Products and Solutions): NO TESTABLE OBJECTIVES
- Section 3 (Plan and Design): NO TESTABLE OBJECTIVES
- Section 5 (Troubleshoot and Optimize): NO TESTABLE OBJECTIVES
This means 100% of the testable material falls under Section 4: Install, Configure, Administrate the VMware Solution! This single section contains 60 distinct objectives (from 4.1 to 4.60) covering the breadth of VMware Cloud Foundation.
Core Capabilities of a Minimally Acceptable Candidate (MAC)
To pass this exam and claim your badge, you must demonstrate the ability to effectively manage, maintain, and scale a multi-region and/or multi-organization VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) Private Cloud.
The exam tests your operational and administration expertise across:
- Compute & vCenter: vSphere advanced settings, VM management, and vCenter Server performance optimization.
- vSAN Storage: Standard and stretched clusters, cross-cluster capacity sharing, encryption, storage policies, and day-2 operations.
- NSX Networking: Advanced network operations, NSX Federation, NSX Edge Clusters, Tier-0/Tier-1 gateways, VRF, Logical Segments, projects, tenancy, DHCP, NAT, and advanced integrations.
- VCF Automation & Provider Portals: Managing Provider and Organization structures (including the Provider Consumption Organization or PCO), projects, namespaces, blueprints, content libraries, and access controls.
- VCF Operations: Capacity forecasting (What-If scenarios), cost management, alert configuration, business vs. operational intent, and Config Drift monitoring.
- vSphere Kubernetes Service (VKS): Supervisor cluster deployment, updating VKS clusters via rolling updates, managing package repositories, registry secrets, and supervisor add-on services like Harbor and external-dns.
How to Prepare: Key Courses and Study References
If you are planning to take this exam, Broadcom lists six recommended advanced configuration courses that cover these exact topics:
- VMware Cloud Foundation Compute: Advanced Configuration
- VMware Cloud Foundation Storage: Advanced Configuration
- VMware Cloud Foundation Networking: Advanced Configuration
- VMware Cloud Foundation Automation: Advanced Configuration
- VMware Cloud Foundation Operation: Advanced Configuration
- vSphere Kubernetes Service: Advanced Configuration
In addition, make sure to read the VCF release notes and documentation available on Broadcom’s Tech Docs site.
Exam Contributors
A big shoutout to the exam contributors who helped craft these items: Christopher Kusek, Emad Younis, Karel Novak, Michael Fleisher, Pawel Piotrowski, Tom Gillaspy, Tommy Grot, and Kim Bottu.
End of this post.
Disclaimer: Please note that the views expressed in this blog are solely my own and should be treated as personal opinions. This content does not hold any legal or authoritative standing.