Good Community Day to everyone -

I am pleased to share with the Community I scheduled my VMCE 2023 on v12 exam for this morning and was able to pass; even scored a little higher than the goal I set for myself. I was able to get into the 800s, so was pleased with my result.

@Michael Melter created a post just under 2 weeks ago, and shared some great information. For a review of his post, you can read it here:

I won’t re-hash the same things, but will give a little bit different take from my perspective though. Like Michael shares in his post, follow through the VMCE v12 Study Guide, as well as Anton’s What’s New document to review all the new features Veeam introduced with v12. And, this may seem common sense, but some may not take this to heart, but I also spent less time reviewing things I felt confident in, and spent more time with things I didn’t. Then, I took notes on them in a note style I could remember the info better. I spent a LOT of time in the User Guides.

As for the exam, I chose to also take it at home. Whether on-site or home, you have 10mins to get instructions on how to use and navigate the exam interface. I recommend taking 2mins to do so, just so there’s no questions while using the UI during the exam. Since it’s been several months for me since my last exam, I decided to use this UI review.

As I’m native English-speaking, I had 75mins to take the exam, which was plenty of time. I think I finished my 1st passthrough in about 45mins or so. This allowed me plenty of time to not only review the questions again, but even a 2nd time for a handful of questions I still had trouble with. Also note, with the exam UI, you do have a Calculator and ‘Scratch Pad’ at your disposal, which may come in handy for a question or 2. Use them.

Lastly, I think I mentioned this for the 2021 (v11) exam as well, but I like the question format change Veeam came up with since their huge VMCE change in 2020. As Michael mentions in his post, they ask questions which could be real-world like. Yet, in doing so...and what I *really* like most about them, is they’re not paragraph-long questions. They get their point across in a statement or few. And, they even ask several questions which are real-world like in only a few words. It’s a good mix of questions you may have to spend a little time on, then those questions you can (should?) wiz through without spending hardly time at all on, to make up for those handful of questions you have to spend more time on. Well done Veeam! Oh, and one final thought (issue?) I had with the exam - at the very end, when I was done with review and then comments (I didn’t provide any comments), I clicked ‘end exam’ twice like normal, and was prompted with a blank screen with the Veeam logo at the top of the page - no results!  Freaked me out! Did I do something wrong?? hahaha I guess now Veeam doesn’t provide ‘instant’ exam results. It took about 4-5mins for my score report to get generated and placed on Pearson. Not sure I like that, but it is what it is. I just wanted to make others aware of this change. 

Regardless, glad I was able to achieve this goal. As I was part of the VMCE v12 Pilot Course which started beginning of October, I wanted to get this achievement before the holidays started. A little bit of challenge due to a little ole Summit the Veeam100 was at a few wks ago. But, achievement unlocked! 

If I can help others with their studies, please don’t hesitate to reach out.

All the best!