Hi,
I think there is a lot of similair opinions on the VCP510 exam, basically I am a competent Vsphere 4 administrator with exposure to production environments with Fibre channel storage, I spent about 50 hours addtion effort doing reading and video learning, and used a home lab. I certified in VCP410 about 6 months ago so a lot this is fresh in my mind.
My lab is a 8gb memory i5 laptop with VM Workstation, I put on the Vcentre appliance and 2 hosts and did the job.
Good luck guys,