More than a year ago I wrote a post about my VMCE 2021 exam experience.
If you want to read more about that experience : VMCE exam personal experience | Veeam Community Resource Hub
In this post I wanted to share my experience with the latest VMCE 2024 (V12) exam 
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It’s already my fourth time I did a VMCE exam (first V9, 2020, 2021 and now 2024).
On those exams I always passed from the first time and that with a much higher score than needed.
So, my goal was again to pass from the first time 
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If you want to know how this ended, just keep on reading 
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Normally I prepare myself months before by reading the things I have to know (mainly helpcenter.veeam.com) and especially the things I’m not that familiar with and not that experienced with it.
The problem this time was that I didn’t have any time doing that months and even weeks in advance 
I scheduled the exam (online proctored) months before and the only I could do in advance to prepare myself was, 6 days just before the exam (1 day holiday - weekend and 3 days workstudy).
Fortunately my children were not with me those days, so totally alone at home 
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So what did I do in those 6 days?
From the morning to evening I read and read helpcenter and tested some things on my labs on a high pace and no smartphone with me - this of course with eating, sleeping, and taking breaks.
Next to that I did the official VMCE practice test on the Veeam propartner portal and watched some video’s created by
I must say at the 6th day I was tired of reading and testing 
4 hours before the exam was scheduled I didn’t study anymore, it was enough. I watched some Netflix, went outside for a walk and then I prepared myself to take the exam.
Ok, it was time to take the exam….
I’m aware that I know a lot about Veeam, but even then, when the exam starts, I feel some kind of stress…
How hard will it be?
How relaxed I will be?
So the exam started ( I had 90 minutes time – 15 minutes extra because English is not my native language - for answering 60 questions).
After a couple of questions the stress was all gone and it went very well.
I didn’t look at the time and the number of the current question during answering.
After some time I did look and was already answering question 34 of 60 and not even 20 minutes were passed.
Alright, now I was super relaxed.
After some time all 60 questions were done and I only flagged 5 questions.
When I’m sure about the answer I gave, I never flag and never look back to that question, when I’m not sure about the answer I flag it and look again to it at the end if I have time left.
So, I look again at those 5 questions and didn’t change anything to the given answers.
I looked at the time and 45 minutes were passed, so more than enough time to answer all questions.
I ended the exam.
Very, but very annoying : you don’t get any result at the end, you don’t know even if you are passed or not !!!
With former exams you knew immediately if you were passed or not.
So stress came up, what happened?
After some minutes I received an email from Credly with : Congratulations!
I was releaved again from that time.
Then afterwards I received an email from Pearson that I could download my score report.
I checked and seems that I had almost the maximum you can get, so it went very well as expected after taken the exam.
So, to summarize :
Do I recommend doing the same strategy like I did now?
No!
Start to study much more in advance, this on a lower pace, practice on a lower pace.
I had the advantage that I work with Veeam software on a very frequent basis, but I don’t have experience with certain topics and I don’t believe there is anyone that has. It’s almost impossible to have a thorough experience with every part of Veeam Backup & Replication and add-ons.
So you have to know your strengths and weaknesses and focus on the weaknesses and try to have some experience with it.
Years and years having experience with the product does help a lot, but study is absolutely a requirement !
I’m totally agree with the way that a combination of study and experience is a requirement in succeeding the VMCE exam.
The only remark / suggestion I have to VEEAM is the following…
You have a study guide, but that is not sufficient enough, so it’s not always clear what is the real content of the VMCE exam.
Because I don’t take any risk in that because I want to succeed on the first try and with margin, I have to study almost everything that could be part of the exam.
Good luck with the exam!
