Worth While Certifications

Capt Doufos

Capt Doufos

Capt Doufos

Soldato
Joined
18 Oct 2002
Posts
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Location
Nr Colchester, Essex
Hi Guys,

I was just wondering what exams you think it's currently worthwhile investing the time and money in to pass? I am looking to move my career forward and I am a bit uncertain as to whether it's worth while getting certified or just rely on experience. I am thinking of trying to get more into Infrastructure or maybe Citrix Xenapp, what do you think?

I currently have an MCTS and I have noticed VMWare have the associate level exams which you can take online, however they are still £80 and you don't really need any technical knowledge to pass them so I am a but unsure of their value.

Having to go to exam centres is a bit of a pain as all my closest ones are in London, that isn't an issue in itself but the train fare adds £35 to the cost of each one.

:)
 
If you've got some spare time Microsoft are currently offering the Server Virtualization with Windows Server Hyper-V and System Center 74-409 exam for free. Heres the link:

http://www.hotukdeals.com/freebies/free-hyper-v-training-free-prometric-test-voucher-1808142

I'm currently going through the training course atm as i'm on nights and haven't got a lot else to do, and its free. I'm also going to do the vca-dcv exam after this because it's online, straight forward and could potentially lead on to other things.
 
In my experience (and no particular order):

MCSE (if you're working with Wintel at 3rd/4th line then expect employees to ask for this)
VCP (most companies have virtualisation now and want qualified people to handle it - requires attending a course to complete the certification)
CCNA (or above - if you're messing with networks don't be surprised to see this)

I normally find that my qualifications get me an interview and my experience gets me the job. They both go hand in hand and I've never thought that my qualifications were a waste of time. I've had companies actually inform me that they only interview qualified people. If the company also has partner links to Microsoft, VMware, Cisco, etc. then you can assign your qualifications to the company making it get more rewards (and obviously unlink it when you leave).



M.
 
I will take a look at the free MS one thanks. I am happy to Progress on MSCE and VCP but up until now I haven't really had any reason to invest the money, especially given they now are only valid for 2 years. The investment for both of those in time (I have a young daughter) and money (I am guessing several thousand pounds baring in mind the MS exams will be around £140 each including travel) Makes it difficult to justify.
 
Nice one of the Microsoft Cert.! Will deffo look at that!

I just picked up my VCA-DCV cert, so simple and straight forward. There are a few vouchers floating around for it too :)
 
m4cc45 said:
I normally find that my qualifications get me an interview and my experience gets me the job. They both go hand in hand and I've never thought that my qualifications were a waste of time. I've had companies actually inform me that they only interview qualified people.
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I'd echo this in my experience as well. Certs have got me though the initial application stage as the company will only interview people who have xyz certification, but can't exactly rely on that solely when it comes to interviews ;)

All I say is keep them relevant to what you want to be doing in future (if you're one of the few people who know what you want to do, I still wonder sometimes!).
 
I have no idea what I want to do! I am trying to find somewhere that is engaging and gives me the chance to get involved with new things and always be learning, people to learn off of etc and then hopefully be able to contribute ideas of value back. I pick up things super quick, so I have no issues getting involved in new things.

I have 15 years experience (Not counting all the support I did at Primary/secondary school/college :p ) Once I get an interview I am certain I can convince them of how valuable I could be to them.
 
The MS Hyper-V exam is nothing like the VCA-DCV for anyone who's taking them in that order. Much more in depth, very typical MS exam asking you things like which tab you will find a relevant option on, testing you on the exact phrasing of features etc.

I would highly recommend doing some lab time with the products before taking it.
 
Caged said:
The MS Hyper-V exam is nothing like the VCA-DCV for anyone who's taking them in that order. Much more in depth, very typical MS exam asking you things like which tab you will find a relevant option on, testing you on the exact phrasing of features etc.

I would highly recommend doing some lab time with the products before taking it.
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Totally, an no one is going to pass an MCTS exam just by reading through the material and watching the videos. They have questions to catch you out, and you have to memorise tables annoyingly.
 
If you were already running a load of Microsoft stuff virtualized on an older version of VMware and had licensed the full System Center suite then your cost to migrate to Hyper-V is essentially time since you already have all the licences you need.

But on the flipside it's pretty bad.
 
kohlditz said:
Does anyone use Hyper-V in actual real life?
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I have used it in a production environment, but it was a small deployment (5 physical servers) and it was back in 2008. We couldn't afford a VMWare implementation at the time, and Hyper-V gave us a great deal of flexibility without purchasing additional license (we were an EA customer). Sadly I left a year later, and the organization ceased to exist in 2011, so I never got to see how it went in the long term. It was pretty good for what we wanted.
 
kohlditz said:
Does anyone use Hyper-V in actual real life?
Click to expand...
I've used it in a production environment, working in the public sector.
Cost was the main reason, we never had any real issues with it but we didn't do anything too intensive with it.
 
kohlditz said:
Does anyone use Hyper-V in actual real life?
Click to expand...

We use Hyper-V and all of the new installations we've done this year have been on Hyper-V. These are all for companies that don't have / want to spend much money. 2012 R2 is good enough for these shops. Shared Storage is still a sticking point for a lot of them as the cost of technical knowledge for looking after cheaper installations is too high and the upfront cost of proper storage is too much.

Between 2012 R2 and Veeam, small shops can have incredibly robust virtualisation solutions for relatively little money.

VMWare is still better for larger installations / the multi-tenant space simply beause the ecosystem of products is larger and more mature.

On topic: Get certs in whatever work will pay for and preferably in an area you enjoy.
 
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Depends what you want to go in to.

If you don't know any window server stuff or have no corporate experience supporting windows servers then the microsoft certs can help. But if you know windows servers and have experience supporting them, it may be best to try different certifications.

You could try vendor specific certs, vmware, citrix, juniper, check point.

You could also get your voip certs like cisco voip. But first i think you need ccna before you can specialist with the cisco side.

I think i know windows servers so i won't bother with MS certs, I have actually used the self study material for some of the windows servers stuff and there is still some things that i dont know that i will try and learn when i need to. You can also pick a lot of stuff up free on youtube. For example if you want to learn to decomission a DC you can go to youtube and there is walk through videos on there. But when i decomissioned my first production DC i used a guide i found on the internet that pointed out things that were not mentioned in the official ms certifications. Stuff that gets picked up by experience.

In terms of certs, i would like my vcp, even though i feel confident with all aspects of vmware, except distributed switches as not had the licensing to try those out properly.

Citrix certs will also be valuable because the software is widely used and companies always looking to for people who can deploy a citrix environment.

One thing you could do is get exchange certifications as exchange is becoming quite specialised now and due to the increase in usage of powershell over the ui. This will lead to it becoming more specialised. If i didn't hate exchange so much i might consider specializing in exchange because exchange expert contractors can take in £500 per day easy.
 
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