Friday 26 April 2019

Spring 2019 Update - Exam retirements and non-exam upgrade paths

A couple of updates from VMware for Spring 2019...

Exam Retirements
On April 10th, VMware announced the retirement of 13 exams - all of which will no longer be available to take after August 30th, so if you are working towards them already you should have time to complete your preparations and get them done in time.

The exams themselves relate to a variety VCP and VCAP certifications, based on these older products:

vSphere 6.0
vSphere 6.5
vRealize Automation 6.x
Horizon 6.0
Horizon 7.5

All of the retiring exams already have an equivalent exam/certification based on current software versions.

Check this blog post for the full list of retiring exams.

Upgrades Without Exams
Another recent change was the ability to upgrade an older version certification to a newer version by taking training only - no exams required!

As an example, let's say you took the vSphere 6.5 Install Configure Manage class and passed the 2 exams to achieve the VCP6.5-DCV certification - now if you complete an advanced training class on vSphere 6.7 (such as the Troubleshooting Workshop) you would be awarded the VCP-DCV 2019 certification.

I think this is a nice simple benefit if you were taking the training anyway - it's cheaper to upgrade by passing an exam, but now there might not be a need for you to do that at all.

For further information, have a read of this blog post.