One of many advantages of passing the VCP-VCF (VMware Certified Professional – VMware Cloud Foundation) exam is that you can get access to home lab licensing. The license is valid for 365 days and can be used in non-production environments. An extra bonus is that if you also happen to have a VMUG Advantage subscription, you can renew the licensing for another 2 years.
In this post, I will show you step-by-step how to get your VMware home lab licensing after passing a VMware qualifying exam.
The Process
- To start, you need to pass the VCP-VCF exam. If you haven’t passed it yet, I’ve created the blog post, Passing VCP-VCF Admin Exam, which covers what I did to pass my VCP-VCF Admin exam.
- Once you pass the exam, you will receive an email letting you know that you are eligible for home lab licenses.
- Log in to the Broadcom Support portal https://support.broadcom.com/ using the same account you used to register for the VMware exam.
- Go to the following URL https://support.broadcom.com/group/ecx/alpine-certificate
- You will now see a list of the licenses you can request.
- Currently, the licenses you can request after passing the VCP-VCF Admin exam are:
- VCF-CLD-FND is VMware Cloud Foundation
- ANS-FW-ATP-B is VMware vDefend Firewall with Advanced Threat Prevention (Bundle)
- ANS-VMW-ALB is VMware Avi Load Balancer (Enterprise)
- Click on Request License for each license you would like to request.
- Once you request a license, the status will change from Not Requested to Pending.
- Behind the scenes, Broadcom is processing everything. During the processing, you will get a few emails.
- The first email you will receive is similar to the standard email when you purchase a VMware product from Broadcom. Even though the email will list a Site ID, you can’t associate your account with it.
- The following email you receive will inform you that the software has been fulfilled. However, you can’t access your licenses just yet.
- If you wait about one more hour, when you check the VCP Certification Licenses page, you will see that the licenses now have an expiry date along with a download icon and a license icon.
Currently, the product keys you get access to are for VCF 8. Broadcom has an ongoing project to enable access to VCF 9 licensing for home labs.
That’s all it takes to get your VMware home lab licenses after passing your VCP-VCF exam.
To check on the current status of the VCF 9 home lab licenses, check the VMware Code blog, specifically the post VMUG Advantage Home Lab License Guide by Eric Nielsen.
