A little over a week ago, I took and passed the Cisco DevAsc 200-901 exam! 🙂 I would like to share my experience of both online testing, and the exam itself.
So with all this COVID-19 bother that’s going on, Cisco have been forced to offer online exams. This might be one of the very few good things to come out of COVID-19 😆 and online testing is REALLY convenient, and personally, I had a great experience.
As you probably know, the Cisco exams (and many others) are offered by Pearson Vue. To book an online exam, you book it in the same way as a regular exam, with the only exception being, you don’t select a physical testing center, you instead, select ‘online’. The really cool thing is, the exams are offered 24/7, so if you’re an early bird, or a night owl, you will likely be able to find a time to match. Once booked, there is some software to download, and this software is your interface in to the exam. The software is called OnVue. Make sure you complete at least one test ‘set-up’ before the actual exam day.
When the big day finally arrives, prepare your work space, and ensure you’re not going to be interrupted, then load, and log in to OnVue. The first step is to take some photos of your workstation space. The Instructions for this are provided on the OnVue app, and are very easy to follow. Once the proctor verifies your photos, the exam will begin. I had to wait about 3 minutes, but I have heard of other people waiting longer. Once the exam begins, things will look no different to a regular training center, so if you have taken Cisco exams before, you will feel instantly at home. As I said at the start, overall I had a pain free experience with the online testing, and I will certainly be making use of it in the future.
Now for the exam itself 🙂 First off, the exam had way more questions than I was expecting! I can’t really say how many due to the NDA agreement, but it was a lot! If you ever took the legacy CCIE R&S written exam, it was a similar amount! The questions were fair throughout though, and seemed to map well to the blueprint technologies. The wording was also very clear and concise, I have taken exams in the past, where half the battle is understanding the wording (yes CCIE lab I am looking at you) so hopefully Cisco are beginning to listen and correct this. The pool of questions was nice and varied, with no real emphasis on one section over another (at least not that I picked up on). If you’ve studied the materials, you will be absolutely fine. Overall a great exam.