Career in SCCM and VMware?

hptennis14

Hello all. I am a desktop administrator for a healthcare company. I deal with SCCM and VMware Horizon View on a daily basis. Can I further my career in these fields or would it be better to either specialize in one or the other?? Also, what certifications would you recommend for me advancing my career?? Right now, I push out windows updates, patches, and software applications from SCCM. We have over 2,500 workstations and looking to make the next step in my career and would like extra opinions and thoughts.

Itrimble

You can most certainly further your career with both of those platforms. SCVMM is great in the fact that you can mangage Hyper-V, ESX, and Xen hosts. If I were you I would look into the MS 74-409 (Hyper V & System Center) , and the VCP 550 (Virtualizing the data center) System center is a very versatile tool for monitoring, patching, deploying, and managing clusters, and individual vms.

I would look into designing the software designed network and software designed data center.

Chitownjedi

I agree with Itrimble. If you are headed down the path I think you are headed, you will definitely need both, as Hyper-V and Vmware will be partners in a lot of data centers going foward as Hyper-V fines niche roles in testing environments where the reduced cost and licensing fee's help make it a alternative to VMware when it comes to the non production servers and testing environments being developed ...blah blah blah

Will be a lot of places that leverage both, and with SCVMM you will be able to leverage your exposure in SCCM even more, Microsoft Cloud Azure is also using SCCM, so between Vmware and SCCM you are headed down the same path I am.

bridgestone

SCCM is a great skill to have. Many jobs ask for it.

I'm not sure about the Hyper-V. Some companies use it but many more seem to use VMWare from what I can gather.

lsud00d

I think everyone is confusing what OP is asking for...he's asking about SCCM (Configuration Manager) and VMware Horizon View (VDI)...aka enterprise desktop management tools.. (not SCVMM, Hyper-V, or VMware ESXi).

Demand for SCCM and any VDI is on the rise. I have seen a lot of contract positions that ask for these skills, specifically SCCM. If you can specialize in it and are open to relocating occasionally you can make a very lucrative career out of it. Or you can target an employer such as one that you are with that has a huge desktop presence (large user base).


Since you are currently doing some of the standard SCCM tasks, start looking at OS imaging/deployment/customizations/upgrades. There is a lot of fancy things you can do in this arena and this is the money maker for the product. Start looking into architect & designing SCCM deployments of varying sizes in different LAN/WAN environments because the network/server infrastructure can very much be a hurdle in these types of implementations