I’ve completed and passed the Veeam VMCE v8 exam, having done the v7 exam some time ago.

The official deadline is 15th May, to upgrade from v7 exam to the v8 exam, miss this deadline and you need to take the full course within 90 days and pass the exam to keep your status, anything after this your status will end as a VMCE and you will need to take the full course and exam to re-ignite it. So basically after the 15th May you need to take the full course.

To be completely honest, I wasn’t that impressed by the course and exam for version 7, and had our partner status with Veeam not relied on me doing the exam, I wouldn’t have bothered this time around.

Course Material

Having done the version 7 course, you are entitled to a what’s new video on demand course for free, which should allow you to upgrade your skills ready for the exam.

However you still need hands on knowledge the of the product. The video course lasts around an hour, and basically highlights all the new features of Veeam, It doesn’t really touch anything deeper. I.e how snapshots work. There is a resources section at the end, and that basically says read the Administrators Guide and use Veeam University.

So I basically sat playing around on an install of Veeam just understanding the menu’s and options which are available, went through the online course twice taking notes. And then went though my revision notes from the version 7 course.

If you are a partner, its worth taking the exams for the VMSP and VMSTP exams. I can’t say I noticed any questions that were the same, but it definitely helped me to get into the right mind set for the exam.

I’d point you into the direction of these two unofficial mock exams for revision as well.

Exam Experience

The exam was a lot easier than the version 7. Mainly because the questions were written more clearly, and I only hit one question about what appears where in the GUI. They really seem to have undertaken the feedback given by those who took the version 7 exam.

The exam for me covered all area’s of Veeam, I would say 70% on the core infrastructure and how it works and the benefits of Veeam, and the other 30% around the new features and options available. There was only one badly wrote question, where depending on your stance on the word backup in the sentence, then depended on your answer.

As english is my first language, I was given 60 minutes to complete 50 questions. You are now able to go back to previous questions, mark them for review and revisit them at the end of the exam.

I was given my score at the end of the exam with a breakdown on-screen! Which didn’t happen last time, you had to go and get your print out to find the result.

Note: once the exam finishes and exits, a survey is then presented, it doesn’t seem to be part of the same exam engine like a Cisco or Microsoft exam.

Overall thoughts

I’m still not sure on the name of the certification, something about calling it “Veeam Certified Engineer” doesn’t sit right with me. As I don’t feel the course material makes you an engineer. It definitely helps you to understand the product and the architecture, but further than that, it’s a bit poor. The troubleshooting sections are very basic, and if you sat someone on the course and then exam, and expected them to be on a managed service support desk to fix Veeam faults for customers, you’d find they would constantly log them with Veeam. As thats what Veeam teaches you to do in the course.

At the same time, unless you deployed Veeam you’d struggle to pass the exam, as you do need to understand where each bit fits in, and for some, they learn by doing, rather than reading or viewing a course.

For anyone looking to take the exam, good luck.

Regards

Dean

Follow @saintdle



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