Some clarifications......
Some of the wording within the article as well as the comments here seem to indicate that there are some misunderstandings regarding the VCDX certification so I thought I would provide some clarifications based on my experience as someone who has gone through the certification process, and who is now on the VCDX certification panel.
1. The defense process is not an 'interrogation' or 'inquisition', nor is it a ‘brutal process’. My experience was that it was about the same of level questioning as you would expect when presenting a design to a team of customer architects.
2. I suspect the hours of prep time mentioned in the article is a reference to the time taken to put together the design and certification application that you intent to defend. It is not the total hours experience and learning that the candidate has undertaken. (I'm not aware of any VCDX holders with less than 5 years experience with VMware products in an enterprise environment) 350 hours does seem high for this step. My personal experience was around 30 hours (in addition to ~10 years experience with the technology) but it will depend on whether or not you have an existing design you can present.
3. Once you have your VCP certification there are no compulsory training requirements to attain the higher levels of certification (VCAP or VCDX) so this is definitely not an exercise in pushing VMware's education offerings. There are 'suggested' courses available, but these will only get you so far and are not mandatory. Without extensive real-world experience you won't succeed. This certification is designed to weed out those who only hold theoretical knowledge.
4. ‘Complexity’ is not one of the criteria for this certification and unnecessary complexity will definitely hurt your chances of passing.
5. The correct name for the certification targeting desktop virtualization architects is "VCDX-Desktop", not "VCDX-EUC"
5. I'm VCDX certified and I don't own a Porsche
6. The manager running the VCDX program drives a (rusty) '91 Jeep.