Looking for some direction cert wise VCP/AWS/RH etc

langenoir

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[FONT=&quot]It's been a long while since I've posted here. I'm looking for some suggestions on a direction to go cert wise to keep me relevant. I have about 5 years experience working for Windows based tech service provider for small/medium sized business. Then 6 years working for a startup that was bought by a very large IT company. One that might be laying me off in 1-2 years. In my current position, I went from doing all the sysadmin engineering in the start up (VMware, SLES Linux, SAN/NAS/NFS, Veeam DR, some Windows) to being a cog in mostly doing VMware admin/engineering on the new team. It was good because I got to work with vSAN, NSX, etc, but bad because Amazon has basically taken over the virtualization space. I don't want to go the way of Novell. Also, I work exclusively from home. [/FONT]
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[FONT=&quot]So my breakdown for the last 4/5 years has been since we were bought[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]VMWare - 40%[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Veeam - 20%[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]SAN (trad and virtual) - 20% [/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]RH/CentOS - 15%[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Win 2008/12/SQL - 5%[/FONT]
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[FONT=&quot]I let my Cisco certs expire. I don't do hardly any Cisco. The only thing I have that expires is my VCP and I have been renewing them because I don't want to pay the class fee. I'm sitting the VCP DCV 6.5 in Sept.[/FONT]
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[FONT=&quot]My goal is to stay relevant and employable. I want to have the flexibility to work remotely in case I can't find a job that fits locally. I want to keep doing virtulization (I prefer VMWare, but will use AWS. Not really a fan of HyperV/Azure). I would love to find a mixed environment that runs Win AD and Linux, but if I had to pick one over the other, I would pick Linux. I've been teaching myself Ansible and Vagrant. I would love to work more with Ansible/Vagrant/Terraform/etc. Something that leans a little into DevOPS, but is really more of an OPS/Infrastructure role.[/FONT]
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[FONT=&quot]Trying to think for the next 5 years or taking and keeping these certs current:

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[FONT=&quot]VCP: DCV just keep current[/FONT]
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Then[/FONT]
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RHCSA[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]AWS SysOps Admin[/FONT]
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[FONT=&quot]Thoughts?[/FONT]

paul78

As I started to read your post, the thought that occurred to me was that you seem to have the right mix of experience to work in DevOps. And if you are already starting to work with Ansible/Vagrant which you mentioned you enjoy, even better. Maybe throw in some labbing with Chef and Puppet so you can contrast them if you are in an interview.

I realize that you mentioned you prefer VMWare. But I'm inclined to think that the opportunities for AWS and Azure may be greater - especially since you mostly work remote which I assume you would prefer to maintain.

If you do plan to continue with the VMWare track, you may want to pick up some experience with OpenStack.

Your cert roadmap seems reasonable. But you may want to consider doing the AWS certs sooner than later if you think you may want to pursue a more cloud-centric job in the future.

Good luck.

langenoir

paul78 wrote: »

As I started to read your post, the thought that occurred to me was that you seem to have the right mix of experience to work in DevOps. And if you are already starting to work with Ansible/Vagrant which you mentioned you enjoy, even better. Maybe throw in some labbing with Chef and Puppet so you can contrast them if you are in an interview.

It's not that I don't want to be full on DevOps, it's just that I've never really been that good at DEV. Light scripting ok, but much deeper than that and I'm going to have trouble. We were trying to implement Chef for a time, but for some reason, that was changed to Ansible.

paul78 wrote: »

I realize that you mentioned you prefer VMWare. But I'm inclined to think that the opportunities for AWS and Azure may be greater - especially since you mostly work remote which I assume you would prefer to maintain.

I would probably be fine working with either, but correct me if I have the wrong idea here. It seems like Linux people HATE Windows people, but I don't feel like most Windows admins care if you've worked with Linux or not. I just don't want to reduce my opportunity just because people have strong opinions on a product. I'm OS agnostic. Our systems are *Nix and I access them using Windows VMs on a Mac. Go figure.

paul78 wrote: »

If you do plan to continue with the VMWare track, you may want to pick up some experience with OpenStack.

I want to keep the VCP current so I don't have to pay to take the class, but I've worked in it for 6 years at this point. I could work with other vendors. I'm not trying to VCDX or anything.

paul78 wrote: »

Your cert roadmap seems reasonable. But you may want to consider doing the AWS certs sooner than later if you think you may want to pursue a more cloud-centric job in the future.

Honestly, that was probably my biggest question. AWS before the RHCSA? It seems like the RHCSA is a more serious cert, but AWS seems more valuable right now.

paul78

langenoir wrote: »

It's not that I don't want to be full on DevOps, it's just that I've never really been that good at DEV. Light scripting ok, but much deeper than that and I'm going to have trouble. We were trying to implement Chef for a time, but for some reason, that was changed to Ansible.

Yeah - in a former position, the devops team switched form puppet to ansible. I don't recall the reasoning but the manager had made some good points at the time which I supported. My only point was that to have some of the experience, it could help you in a conversation about why you like one vs another if you don't have any practical commercial experience.

langenoir wrote: »

I would probably be fine working with either, but correct me if I have the wrong idea here. It seems like Linux people HATE Windows people, but I don't feel like most Windows admins care if you've worked with Linux or not.

That's mostly bluster and typical ego boosting. There is a perception that if you have to setup a system using a point-and-click gui, it's not real sysadmin. But reality is that most linux admins that work in larger enterprises (at least the ones that I've encountered) have a healthy respect for Windows admins. Especially when it comes to things like enterprise access controls and management. I do see a bias among Mac and Windows desktop support admins though but that's generally lack of understanding. Usually if you can have a discussion about good/bad of both stacks, you are going to be more valuable team member.

langenoir wrote: »

I want to keep the VCP current so I don't have to pay to take the class, but I've worked in it for 6 years at this point. I could work with other vendors. I'm not trying to VCDX or anything.

That makes sense. The reason why I mentioned Openstack is because VMWare now supports integration into Openstack. And I've started to see adoption of Openstack in some companies. And given that VMWare is a mature hypervisor, I suspect that any enterprise with an existing VMware investment that may wish to diversify may consider using Openstack as well.

langenoir wrote: »

Honestly, that was probably my biggest question. AWS before the RHCSA? It seems like the RHCSA is a more serious cert, but AWS seems more valuable right now.

Agreed. I think the RHCSA is a more serious cert - I can't comment on it since I've not looked at the materials. But AWS certs are pretty straight-forward and the materials are interesting (at least to me). It could be a good complementary to your existing VMware experience.

langenoir

Thank you for the input paul78.

odysseyelite

I'm in the same boat as you. I just recently changed jobs and feeling the pain of staying up to date. Like you I came from a pure VMware shop and got stuck in that role. I just started studying AWS and I can say if you like VMware, you will like AWS. At first I was a bit standoffish because it seemed more complicating than it really is. VMware running on AWS is going to be in demand the future. Its good you found experience with NSX and VSAN as well as I'm seeing customers adopt it fairly quick verses a few years ago. My roadmap is AWS, Azure, GCP and Linux. The virutalization engineers of today are becoming the cloud engineers of tomorrow.