Test Track has finally been updated to cover DCA550.

I’ve been dragging my feet a little because the DCA510 exam has until recently been more popular, and the existing Test Track environment isn’t radically different from the DCA550.

That said, TT550 is done and available. There are 15 scenarios (the same ones from DCA510, minus one-and-a-half) with scoring and a page at the end of bonus scenarios with no scoring.

With DCA510 you were to perform four scenarios at a time and reset the environment between sets. That is no longer the case – all scenarios can be performed w/o resetting. This is due to dropping an item and a half, tweaking a little, and slightly re-ordering. You can still reset the environment with a script if you want to start over or have blown something up. However the DCA550 environment takes a few minutes longer to reset.

Access to the environment can be had at some VMUGs, both VMworlds or remotely via RDP. For remote access, use the contact page on the blog here or tweet at me @SOSTech_wp (Twitter is usually better, Bluehost isn’t great at mail handling). If you don’t get a response try again later or use a different method.

Remote access is first-reserved-first-served in 4 hour chunks of time. Please shutdown the environment (there is a script) when you are done to save on my electricity and wear and tear on my HVAC unit.

Test Track Components:

Alienware 18 laptop – Huge, heavy, terrible for gaming, but it draws a crowd at IT events.

i7-4900MQ – not an extreme, but it gets the job done

32GB RAM. 500GB SSD, 750GB 7200RPM

Windows 7 64-bit

VMware Workstation 11

VMs:

PDC-SQL. Windows 2008 R2.

RDP, Active Directory, DNS, DHCP, NFS (Services for Network File System), Microsoft iSCSI target

VMware client, Firefox, Putty, WinSCP, Adobe Reader

Performs tasks covered by the “ControlCenter” and “PDC-SQL” VMs in real lab environment.

VCS01. Windows 2008 R2.

vCenter 5.5 build 1750787. Simple install. Orchestrator enabled and configured.

ESXi01, ESXi02. ESXi 5.5.0 build 1623387

These host multiple pre-created VMs and templates including vSphere Replication appliance 5.5.1.2 and vma appliance 5.5.0.0

Networks:

172.20.10.0 “Management”

172.20.13.0 “IPStorage”

172.20.11.0 “Production”

172.20.12.0 “vMotion” (used for regular virtual machine traffic on TestTrack)

Storage:

local, iSCSI and NFS storage

Note that the names and sizes do not line up at all with the exam environment.

However, both have similar mix of local, iSCSI and NFS.

Missing from TT that you will see on the exam: vCenter Operation Manager Foundation

Protip: If your RDP client is set to suppress wall paper run the BGInfo link in the Windows Startup folder.

Old Test Track posts:

Connection info

Scoring

Resetting a lab environemnt