Veeam Backup & Replication: A VMCE Preparation Guide
Want to master your organisation’s backups or disaster recovery plans? Check out this real life advice on getting VMCE certified.
Not that I want to start on a downer, but I’ve noticed a lot of garbage articles on Medium, concerning, of all things, Veeam’s VMCE qualification. I’m not entirely sure why. And I’m not talking about the quality of people’s writing here either — I’m talking about stuff just lifted out of Veeam promotional materials or help center pages and dumped into a Medium article. Not cool, and a waste of everyone’s time, to boot!
Im not going to waste your time with recycled, garbage clickbait. I’m a real life Backups & Storage Engineer, and have been dealing with backups for nearly five years. In that time, I’ve used a multitude of clients and softwares; Veritas Netbackup, Commvault, Backup Exec, even the archaic Control-M by BMC. Veeam has to be the easiest and most intuitive of the bunch, in my experience, and if you have any say in how your organisation backs up or replicates its data, you should strongly consider using Veeam as a solution.
Attend the classroom course.
A lot of guides for the VMCE seem to miss out the fact that attending a classroom course (usually for 3 days) is mandatory in order to qualify for sitting your VMCE. This is the first, and — unfortunately for you if you are working alone — the most expensive step. The 3 day classroom currently runs at a price of £1995, so if possible, try and convince your boss or business that this qualification would be extremely beneficial for you.
Personally, I didn’t find much value in the classroom course in regards to preparing for the exam, but I did enjoy spending three days doing a deep dive on the Veeam Availability Suite. I use Veeam daily at work, but I did not configure it, as it was set up by a previous employee. I also don’t use every component of Veeam whilst at work. As this is a mandatory step, you might as well try and get as much out of it as possible. The classroom includes a considerable amount of labs for you to complete, and if you lack for hands on experience, this could be a good option to learn how to configure Veeam’s components.
Scrub up on your Hypervisors
In all my years working in IT infrastructure, never have I worked for a company or with a client that had a Microsoft Hyper-V deployment. I have always, across multiple employers, worked within the VMware vSphere environment. Veeam however, is compatible with both of these hypervisors. Meaning, a large part of the exam could focus on deploying, using and troubleshooting components of Veeam from the perspective of a Hyper-V administrator. This meant a lot of learning on my part. I’m not saying you have to immediately spin up a lab environment and intimately get to know the hypervisor which you are not well-versed in, but a fundamental understanding of how both work will go a long way.
Veeam’s help center is split into two — one exists for VMware-based deployments, the other for Hyper-V. It may seem like the amount of information you have to learn has now doubled, but for more in-depth or obscure functions you come across, it may be worth flicking over to the same help page written for the other hypervisor to see how its done differently. If something is very VMware specific, it doesn’t hurt to know how you would try and achieve the same result with Hyper-V.
Book your exam
I don’t know about you, but if I don’t have a hard deadline to work to, I’ll kick the can down the road. I work hard, but I also like to play hard, too. If I’d just spent hours on change work or troubleshooting a technical issue, breaking open the proverbial Veeam text book was not high on my to-do list. Or maybe, your work life is so incredibly busy, and you just don’t have the time to buckle down and revise for your VMCE? Well, I promise you, if you book the exam, say, two or three weeks into the future, you’ve now given yourself a deadline to work to. See it as another piece of work to complete, and booking your exam — either in a classroom or online setting — gives you something to aim for.
Utilise practice questions
Notice that this is the 4th step on this list. I’ve tried to pull this further down the list a bit because people can become increasingly reliant on practice questions. If you are not careful, it quickly becomes the case that you are learning the answers to the questions of the practice exam, and not much else. You may be tempted to check out dumps of previous VMCE exams, and whilst I won’t speak for or against this practice, nor pass judgement on you if you decide to so, just bear in mind most of these sites do not have your best interests at heart, and the correct answers may not be entirely accurate.
Thankfully, the VMCE has some excellent practice material available. There’s an official version you can access if you or your employer is a part of the Veeam Pro-Partner program, but for the rest of us, you’ll want to be checking out Rasmus Haslund’s pages over at Perfect Cloud.
Rasmus has prepared three sets of 50 questions as practice exams. Two are scenario-based exams, and the final one is a brutally difficult multiple choice exam. Now, sources online indicate that Rasmus works for Veeam, so his website and mock exams are a brilliant place to become acquainted with the kinds of things that you can be asked. Some of his easier tests will tell you where you went wrong, where the harder one gives you zero indication at the end as to what questions you answered incorrectly. What’s also great is that the easier tests break down your percentage score across the various sections that the exam covers, so you can identify which areas you need to scrub up on.
It’s worth noting that the VMCE exam itself will break down your percentage scores in each field, just like Rasmus’ easier tests.
Always keep a bookmark for the Veeam bible
I am, of course, talking about the Veeam help pages. This resource is not to be sniffed at. Yes, there are books on Veeam Backup & Replication available to buy, but Veeam provides detailed online technical documentation for all to access. Reading this from start to finish can be very dry, and a bit pointless. However, hopefully by this stage you have identified the areas of the Veeam solution you are struggling with, and you can pinpoint the relevant documentation to go through to try and better your knowledge. Don’t forget, as I said in step 2, separate help centers exist for Veeam/vSphere and Veeam/Hyper-V.
Check out some YouTube Study Guides
This is where Rasmus Haslund rears his head again. I really tried to make this article not so “Rasmus-centric”, but the man really is providing a great service for those who are preparing for their VMCE certification. It would be a crime to not mention his channel. On YouTube, Rasmus has countless videos to help dive into Veeam, but those which I would strongly recommend are his Veeam VMCE Study Guide (less than one hour and packed with good tips), and a series of short videos expanding on the questions he chose for the practice exams I mentioned in step 4. This not only helps to illuminate areas in which you need more work, but also gives you a more sound understanding of how the questions are structured, and why. Rasmus has plenty of excellent advice on taking exams in general, which is always nice to be reminded of.
Don’t over-do it.
This last one falls into the more hippy-dippy, slightly-patronising territory that I see in a lot of Medium articles, but it really is worth pointing out. Don’t burn yourself out or try and cram too much in whilst preparing for the VMCE. Take your time, book the sitting for a few weeks in advance and give yourself some time every other day to go through things. It helps to have hands-on experience with the software, but I use Veeam daily yet still needed to heavily revise for this exam!
But, hey — these are the steps that worked for me, you may be totally different. The important thing is not to drop the ball by cramming too much in and stressing yourself out. Apologies for the kid gloves — but look after your mind, after all you’re going to need it.
That pretty much wraps it. I hope this little guide is of some value to you if you are looking to sit your VMCE. These are the steps I took to prepare myself and I thought I would share them to try and encourage others to take the plunge, book in for the cert and get cracking the books!
If you have any questions about the Veeam Availability Suite, Veeam 365 or the VMCE, please always feel free to drop me a comment and I will get back to you as soon as I can.
Good luck everyone!
