I too am on the VCP5 quest. After searching for several weeks, I found this -
The book is well worth the money. Most of the books I found assumed you already had a fair amount of knowledge with ESX as I found terms that I wasnt familiar with. The study guide is great but the lab manual is exactly what I have been looking for as it walks me through just about everything I was looking for. You can also rent rack time from this same company.
Ron