Career redirection?

5502george

I have been thinking alot about VM certs. My job will be moving to the cloud here soon so I was wondering what you all thought about the VM direction.


-How long to VCP if I have about 4 hours a day to study?

-What job would I realistically expect with no work exp and a VCP certification?





I know these are very general questions, but I really need to make a move soon.

BTW I have about 5 years IT (sys adm/security policy) and only a CCENT level of networking knowledge.

N2IT

http://www.techexams.net/forums/general-certification/111755-if-you-could-only-get-one-certification-what-would.html

See Dave330i's post. He should be able to answer this questions for you.

goatama

It really depends on how you want to do it. When I got my VCP my work paid for the class, I read the books, setup a lab, and went through everything I could. I was still barely prepared. The VCP is a tricky exam, and they do things with the questions that seem specifically designed to trip you up. They aren't kidding when they say you should be a VMware admin for a couple years before you take the exam. Granted, we all know there are ways to pass the exam without all that work, but if you actually want to be a VMware admin, the payoff is worth it. There are a lot of VCPs, but fewer VCAP certified folks, and even fewer (less than 200) VCDXs in the world. If you go down this path, the potential for some serious coin is there.

If you want to actually learn it, and not just "pass the exam", I recommend the following book: Mastering VMware vSphere 5.5 Read it, learn it, live it, love it. And then download all the official docs provided by VMware and grind through those as well.

Meanwhile, build yourself a lab. If you have the hardware, awesome. I built mine on an i5 with 16GB of RAM and a 120GB SSD. If you have at least those specs, you should have no issues with it, check out Autolab for an easy setup. If not, you may want to check out the Hands On Labs provided by VMware. I built my lab the long way, with a couple virtualized ESXi hosts, a vCenter, SQL database, and Active Directory. It worked well for my purposes. You get 180 days with an eval copy of vSphere.

Don't forget, you have to also take one of their classes, it's required before you can get approved to take the exam. I think they're around four grand.

Honestly, you should be able to get a decent-paying VMware admin job with that cert, as long as you actually learn it. The worst thing you can do is download one of those VCEs if you actually want the job. Because a competent tech interviewer will know pretty quickly if you just memorized some facts to pass the test, or if you actually know what you're doing.

kendr1ck

From my colleagues that have taken it, the VCP is a very tricky exam and that's from people who have been VMWare admins for quite some time. If coming into studying the test with no prior VMWare experience, I would think you'd need several months of studying before being ready for the exam.