MCSE boot camp

Hello,

Recently our company has discussed the possibility of getting MCSE's for its system admins. Right now they are looking at using the boot camp as a means of training and getting us to attain the MCSE certification. One of the reasons they cited is lack of time (my boss figures it's about a min. of 10 weeks to attain the full certification using the full course load) and some money savings. My questions are follows:

1. From an exam passing perspective, is it realistic to assume the boot camp will properly prepare you for the exams even if your experience with Windows 2003 is somewhat limited (ie. perhaps restricted to the desktop side and for edge services such as IAS, and DNS -- though not inexperienced with sytems administration in general)?

2. From a training perspective, is it realistic to assume to the boot camp will prepare you for a new migration from a different system (with the admins in this case running the gamut of fairly experienced to somewhat noobish) ... with the system being fairly large (ie. 5-8 sites)

I argued the case with my boss a little bit, saying the full courses would be more suitable, but the time argument always came up (he doesn't want to have people off on training for a long period of time, thus possibly disrupting operations in the process)

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Comments

Mishra

This is always the big argument with managers. You benefit so much more from classes than boot camp but they somehow believe that if you get your MCSE no matter how long it takes you become a genius. True story, a co-worker of mine went to boot camp and came back and the CIO was telling everyone "yeah but we have him and he just got his MCSE so our data centers are covered now". Crazy.

1. No boot camp's have prerequisite's that you have to match before you can take the boot camp. Like 5 years of experience and such.

2. No a boot camp isn't going to teach you how to do a specific migration within your company. There is a lot of research and testing that goes along with doing a project like that and boot camp cannot do that for you.

Not to sound rude but you are trying too hard and not going to win. If you have already presented your case and your manager hasn't said anything like "if there was proof then..." then I would just take what you can get and move with it. Businessmen don't like to hear someone taking the solution that costs more and takes more time when there is a easier solution.

bertieb

To be fair, your boss sounds like a bit of a muppet. Pretty much as Mishra said, only a non-technical business man can expect to "shove a few people on a quick bootcamp" and expect them to obtain an MCSE in Server 2003 from scratch in less than 10 weeks

I have these images of your boss thinking of the bootcamp as some sort of conveyor belt where you stick a regular person in at one end and come out with an MCSE uber-genius-Superman figure the other. Crazy, that process takes significant learning, time and experience.

I've passed a few NT4 MCP exams (easy), 2000 exams (not too bad) and now I'm back on the 2003 track I can vouch for the difficulty and the vast amounts of knowledge Microsoft expects of it's 2003 MCSE's. I've been working with Win 2003 for years, but even just by reading the 70-290 stuff and getting ready for the exam, it just hits home how much harder this track is than it used to be (and rightly so, IMO).

If you look through previous posts on the MCSE forum, you can see the success stories of folk who set out on the MCSE and completed it (they are a great inspiration to me!), but you'll see that 18 months to 2 years isn't an exaggeration. No way will that bootcamp give you the knowledge and experience you need to get that end task done, and I have severe doubts it'll get anyone through an MCSE.

Anyhows, I wish you all the best in your future studies.

Vogon Poet

Your talking about different goals. A boot camp is designed to get people to pass a test or series of tests. It is not designed to get people trained to be the best admins they can be. Think of the comparison of long- vs. short-term memory. I think most boot camps last about 10 days per exam. Can you learn well enough to remember and incorporate these skills over the next few years, or will you learn enough to pass a test and then forget most of it (remember college anyone?).
I would point out that the decision might also hinge on how much pressure your boss is under to get everyone in his dept. certified. Sometimes a boss's boss will say "I want all of your staff certified within a year." If it's his decision, he's wrong. If he's been told to "get it done yesterday" then I can't blame him for choosing the quickest path.
Good luck!

bishop7

Thank you for your responses.

I agree (or at least, suspected) that a Boot Camp is not going to be the correct learning solution for us, at least if you want an actual admin instead of just someone with letters in front of their name.

Basically, we're a Novell shop (Netware, not Linux ... yet) and 2012 isn't that far away (the date that Novell is basically cutting support, with 2015 being the date where they don't offer self-support (whatever the hell they mean by that...)) so we need to choose another solution. Linux isn't really a suitable replacement for our environment, so we've pretty much agreed that moving to Windows is the better solution. My boss is pushing for training to be included in the budget. We are overworked and understaffed -- he is more worried about people being off for training for an extended period of time, money isn't really the factor here.

I'm glad I am getting these responses, it confirms what I suspected and will let him know -- hopefully I can convince him to pay for the full track and just bite the bullet on the time cost.

Daniel333

First off, it's great that your company is going to be doing such a migration and is willing to take you with it! Some places would be just as inclined to contract out the migration, and hire a skeleton staff to maintain it.

How many on your staff are they planning on training? And why do you think they are considering the MCSE? Is this a business need?

ilcram19

i really dont think is up to their boss to decide; you as and It professional should decide what is best in your career plus if you are to lazy to study having all the time in the world imagine under presure omg...you should be preparing your self for mcse instead of putting xcuses

bishop7

ilcram19 wrote:

i really dont think is up to their boss to decide; you as and It professional should decide what is best in your career plus if you are to lazy to study having all the time in the world imagine under presure omg...you should be preparing your self for mcse instead of putting xcuses

I am studying for my CCNA right now, I wasn't expecting any training from my company at all (they typically don't want to spend the money) ... and if you had bothered to read my posts you would have understood that a) my BOSS is the one worried about time constraints, not me. I have no problems studying on my own time , and b) I am not the one arguing for the boot camp, I am trying to convince him to finance the full track and set realistic expectations with regards to the time it will take to properly train / certify our staff.

Also, please do not assume I have all the time in the world. I don't believe you have any knowledge of my obligations to be able to make that kind of determination.

bishop7

Daniel333 wrote:

First off, it's great that your company is going to be doing such a migration and is willing to take you with it! Some places would be just as inclined to contract out the migration, and hire a skeleton staff to maintain it.

How many on your staff are they planning on training? And why do you think they are considering the MCSE? Is this a business need?

Well, we already have the skeleton staff to maintain our existing infrastructure. They are probably going to hire a consultant anyway, IF they decide to migrate.

They are planning on training 4 people. The key word is 'planning', no actual decision has been made yet (don't get me started -- it's a mess.) We have 2 people with intermediate knowledge of 2003 and the other 2 (me, being among them) has barely touched it. My boss is banking on the training assisting us with some of the migration steps and maintaining the environment afterwards. I'm not sure if that qualifies as being a NEED or not -- i'm sure we could get by, but it's a matter of just getting by versus doing it well.

sprkymrk

ilcram19 wrote:

i really dont think is up to their boss to decide; you as and It professional should decide what is best in your career plus if you are to lazy to study having all the time in the world imagine under presure omg...you should be preparing your self for mcse instead of putting xcuses

Excuse me, but where did this come from? It kind of looks like you just made things up as you went... Did you even read his post?

ilcram19

my point was to take advantage of that i wish i could go to boot camp and do MCSE i'll dedicate all my time specially since my company is giving me the time to do it, and one thing im sure everyones knows here u cant remember everysingle topic that is invlove on the mcse track experiance will teach you all u didnt learn at the boot camp so go for it, or not up to you again

sprkymrk

ilcram19 wrote:

my point was to take advantage of that i wish i could go to boot camp and do MCSE i'll dedicate all my time specially since my company is giving me the time to do it, and one thing im sure everyones knows here u cant remember everysingle topic that is invlove on the mcse track experiance will teach you all u didnt learn at the boot camp so go for it, or not up to you again

Well then I can agree with you on the point that if the company is willing to pay for it, go for it.

It sure didn't sound like that's what you meant in your first post though.

ilcram19

oh i was just saying that becuse he want the whole course i mean they arent like a degree you know they are just gonna give you a base knoledge and thats all you dont need to spend a year on one cert pointless waste of time u know

famosbrown

*Sigh* It took me two years to finally get MCSE *Sigh*

sprkymrk

famosbrown wrote:

*Sigh* It took me two years to finally get MCSE *Sigh*

Show off. I'm 10 years and counting.

famosbrown

sprkymrk wrote:

famosbrown wrote:

*Sigh* It took me two years to finally get MCSE *Sigh*

Show off. I'm 10 years and counting.

Hehe

. You got me beat!!

blargoe

Unless you already pretty well versed these 2 week MCSE boot camps are complete crap if you want to obtain actual skills. If your manager wants you guys to get some real skills you need to take the time for actual training. Period.

From the way it is sounding I would say you don't necessarily need the full MCSE training anyway if you're just replacing Novell with Windows. Take a look at the objectives for the MCSA, I think they will track pretty well for what your company's needs really are, and *doing it right* would take about half the time of doing the full MCSE right.