AS400, RS6000, HP, AIX, etc Certifications?

snadam

A few of my co-workers are, for lack of a better term, 'complaining' that there are no "formal" training/certifications on the mid-range platforms such as AS400, RS6000, HP3000/9000, AIX, IBM Mainframe etc. While Microsoft has the MCSA/E track, Cisco has the CCNA/P track; whats the equivalent on the platforms mentioned above, if any?

This is really more for my curiosity than anything. Also to expand my useless knowledge


Oh, and I will go ahead and put JUST F'ING GOOGLE IT here so nobody else has to. I would have done so, but I wanted feedback from my TE colleagues.

mikej412

IBM Professional Certification Program

Claymoore

Prometric dropped the programs due to difficulties scoring the punch cards on which the exam answers were recorded.

Hyper-Me

Claymoore wrote: »

Prometric dropped the programs due to difficulties scoring the punch cards on which the exam answers were recorded.

But really, AS400 and some of the others is annoying junk that I couldnt see anyone actually taking pride in knowing, but rather being forced to work on at as part of their other responsibilities.

eMeS

IBM has quite a few certifications for Power systems and System z. All available at the link that Mike provided above. Don't know about the AS400 stuff because I've really never touched it other than some simple monitoring, and I've never known of anyone holding a cert for it.

If some of you guys would step out of the amateur-league Microsoft stuff you'd learn that there's a real world out there populated with vendors that make products and software that are scalable, reliable, secure and actually work.

MS

astorrs

Hyper-Me wrote: »

But really, AS400 and some of the others is annoying junk that I couldnt see anyone actually taking pride in knowing, but rather being forced to work on at as part of their other responsibilities.

Do you have any idea how ignorant this makes you sound...? Next thing we know you're going to start pushing Hyper-V.

eMeS wrote: »

If some of you guys would step out of the amateur-league Microsoft stuff you'd learn that there's a real world out there populated with vendors that make products and software that are scalable, reliable, secure and actually work.

Every Global 2000 company I've worked for always had p Series or i Series running some key components of the infrastructure, be it SAP, Oracle RAC, JD Edwards, Oracle E-Business, or numerous line-of-business applications.

Like eMeS said, there's a reason why companies keep Solaris, AIX, HP-UX, etc. around and it's not because they like paying the maintenance contracts, it's because its proven itself to be rock solid year after year and they'd rather bet the business on those platforms.

I've implemented rock solid Windows installations in strictly controlled critical process control environments and had great successes there (with uptime measured in months/years), but in your average IT department Windows admins are too often casual in the way they approach administration. By using UNIX where appropriate for critical apps, many companies seem to feel a higher level of comfort with the those admins.

I shoudl also mention that the clustering capabilities available, along with LPARs, VIO and other technologies have made them far more competitive with Windows/Linux than in the past.

eMeS

astorrs wrote: »

Do you have any idea how ignorant this makes you sound...? Next thing we know you're going to start pushing Hyper-V.


Every Global 2000 company I've worked for always had p Series or i Series running some key components of the infrastructure, be it SAP, Oracle RAC, JD Edwards, Oracle E-Business, or numerous line-of-business applications.

Like eMeS said, there's a reason why companies keep Solaris, AIX, HP-UX, etc. around and it's not because they like paying the maintenance contracts, it's because its proven itself to be rock solid year after year and they'd rather bet the business on those platforms.

I've implemented rock solid Windows installations in strictly controlled critical process control environments and had great successes there (with uptime measured in months/years), but in your average IT department Windows admins are too often casual in the way they approach administration. By using UNIX where appropriate for critical apps, many companies seem to feel a higher level of comfort with the those admins.

I shoudl also mention that the clustering capabilities available, along with LPARs, VIO and other technologies have made them far more competitive with Windows/Linux than in the past.

Well said.

The majority of my direct employee experience was with a company that had and has an annual IT budget of between $1 and $2 billion. In my time there I had increasing responsibility for significant portions of that spend. I've continued to complete work for them and others that size since going independent several years ago. When you've worked in shops of that size (and a few people here have) much of what many companies call "IT" is amateur and casual by comparison.

I can tell you this, one of the toughest things about running any amount of the business on Microsoft technology was definitely not the cost of the products. They're mostly cheap by comparison. It was always the support cost. I could bring in 1 of any average Microsoft admin or technician for $50k per year or less. An IBM WebSphere or skilled AIX person would always command $100k plus, even 10 years ago. However, in order to support any significant Microsoft implementation we would need 25 of the Microsoft people, but only 5 skilled WebSphere people for a comparable WebSphere solution. It's simple economics, and it's backed by countless statistics, labor studies, etc... that we did to control these costs. Any of you who have ever been in management know that the more people you have the more communication channels you get, which dramatically complicates things and exponentially increases transaction costs.

The other major problem we always had with Microsoft was that problems are never pursued to root cause. At one point we had a team of people that basically had to stand on Microsoft's neck to get things done, and often times the best answers that you ever get are "reboot" and "reinstall", which are not acceptable in an environment such as that. I'm not going to say that every vendor is better, but some notable standouts were always IBM and Sun; they will always pursue problems to root cause, and then follow-up with corrections to root cause.

I could go on forever, but the only other thing I would mention is scalability. At one point I worked closely with a team in this environment that administered the Exchange solution implemented for ~50000 users. This was back in early to mid-2000's. The solution was never scalable, and the answer from Microsoft was always of the form "throw more hardware at it". My recommendation was that they migrate away from Exchange as quickly as possible, which for political reasons didn't happen.

All of these reasons (and many others) are why core (and most) business activities were never and are still not run on any kind of Wintel platform. You simply can't run trading and pricing systems and other things that deal with billions of dollars per day on systems that aren't scalable, reliable and have a sustainable support model. It's not just financial services either. I spent this past week with a customer in the steel industry that has mission-critical equipment that keeps their steel mills running. None of it runs on Wintel; some of it runs on z-series some of it runs on POWER and some of it runs on Tandem.

Personally I'm not really for or against one technology or another. It all has its place. However, I don't make my money doing anything related to Microsoft. The biggest business mistake that I've made was pursuing the MCT and seeking CPLS status. There's simply no money in it, as there are an abundance of people out there that do Microsoft work (many of them very half-assed) for $40 per hour or less. Fortunately the mistake was really only a waste of time.

I've only done one batch of Microsoft work since breaking out on my own, but have had other stuff on the table that didn't pan out. It was SQL Server 2005-related and was completed one summer in a very short period of time. We won this work because the low-bidding amateurs that attempted to do it before us totally screwed it up. It resulted in approximately $75k in revenue in a short period of time. Comparatively, the ITIL, WebSphere, Tivoli, PPM and Rational consulting/training that we've done is over the past few years is at least an order of magnitude higher in terms of revenue. That's not including all of the stuff I turn away mainly because I'm a prick and don't tolerate jackasses, which this industry is infested with at the moment.

My point of this rant is that those of you chasing the Microsoft dream really should consider the experience of others. In a best case scenario you're not going to make any serious money in that world. You would be wise to find something that is highly in demand and specialize. In fact, it's often easiest to make the most money doing things that either people 1) don't know how to do, or 2) don't want to do.

For the record, I don't see Cisco in the same light that I see Microsoft. Cisco is clearly a company that operates primarily in the enterprise-level market, has a clear vision, and makes stuff that works, is scalable and reliable. My limited experience with Cisco from a vendor management standpoint has been roughly equivalent to what I've seen from IBM, Sun and others.

I could tell you a tool right now, that you could learn if you could get a copy of it, and you could easily bill yourself at $200 per hour; provided you want to break out on your own, make your own sales, etc... However, it's rare, not especially sexy, and pretty ugly to deal with. It's was acquired a few years ago by HP.... I'd also add that people who can do Assembler and are involved in systems programming and automation on mainframes easily command in the $125 to $200 per hour range, sometimes higher. None of these people perpetually chase certifications.

I'll close with this: How many of you saw the post on Gizmodo about how Microsoft earns it's money. Here it is: Where Microsoft's Money Really Comes From - Microsoft profit - Gizmodo It's a telling graph, look at the size of the "Server and Tools" component compared to other divisions. This confirms for me what I already thought; Microsoft is largely a consumer company that sells some products into enterprise markets. Those products are primarily desktop and office-related in nature.

MS

dynamik

FWIW, nearly every bank or credit union we work with has AIX or HP-UX as their core processing system, even the ones that only have a handful of people (although some of the smaller ones are moving to or using hosted solutions). They still used AD for their client workstations or thin clients though.

We're also setting up an AIX box in our test lab, given the prevalence we see of it.

eMeS wrote: »

I could go on forever, but the only other thing I would mention is scalability. At one point I worked closely with a team in this environment that administered the Exchange solution implemented for ~50000 users. This was back in early to mid-2000's. The solution was never scalable, and the answer from Microsoft was always of the form "throw more hardware at it". My recommendation was that they migrate away from Exchange as quickly as possible, which for political reasons didn't happen.

While Exchange, and Microsoft Server products in general, have made enormous strides in that department, I agree with the point you're making. I think it is possible to make the kind of money you're talking about with Microsoft products, but only if you're one of the few people that can make it to the upper echelons. I think Royal would be an example of someone like that. He's an MS MVP and is probably one of the more knowledgeable and experienced Exchange/OCS guys in the world. He also does consulting work as opposed to working in-house. The vast majority of Microsofties (myself included when I was in that position) will be nowhere close to that.

eMeS wrote: »

That's not including all of the stuff I turn away mainly because I'm a prick and don't tolerate jackasses, which this industry is infested with at the moment.

I was fortunate enough to be privy to one of these incidents. Hilarity ensued.

eMeS

dynamik wrote: »

I think it is possible to make the kind of money you're talking about with Microsoft products, but only if you're one of the few people that can make it to the upper echelons. I think Royal would be an example of someone like that. He's an MS MVP and is probably one of the more knowledgeable and experienced Exchange/OCS guys in the world. He also does consulting work as opposed to working in-house. The vast majority of Microsofties (myself included when I was in that position) will be nowhere close to that.

Yep, I totally agree here. However, the MVP Program is not a certification. In fact, however unlikely, one doesn't even need to be certified in any Microsoft technology to be an MVP. Where the standard certification program seeks to be objective in nature, the way the MVP is awarded is much more subjective. Another point that could be made is how many MVPs are active here? I might be wrong, but I think it's only Royal. I'm sure over at INETA it's a different story....

One of the reasons that I keep the MCT active ($400 per year) is that it gives me access to all of the private MCT newsgroups. I don't contribute there, but they have some really great discussions and good information. I've even picked up a random bit of ITIL work there. One of the best discussions that occurs frequently is when someone brings up to the topic of MVPs in comparison to most of the MCTs.

I would also hypothesize that a significant portion of the MVPs and upper echelon Microsoft consultants spend a fair amount of their time and make a lot of money correcting problems created by the mass of amateurs out there doing things incorrectly and pushing Microsoft products well past their design limits.

I think it can be said that anything worth doing is probably challenging. In order to move to the upper echelons of any discipline you will most certainly have to challenge yourself well beyond the standard certifications, like the MCSE and MCITP. To quote Niven,

Niven wrote:

Mother Nature doesn't care if you're having fun.

Back to the comment of pride in the work that you do.....Personally, pride has never come from anything that I consider "work." The things that I'm most proud of in life are the things that I've created, foremost my son. In fact, I would say that I never knew true pride until my son was born (I think he's mine). I was somewhat proud this morning at spinning class on the bike next to that hottie. I also take pride in creating revenue out of thin air. However, if I could create the same revenue out of thin air by say reading pointless junk on the Internet, I would happily do that. Sadly it is my experience that most of the direct work happening in organizations is very much NOT creative, and thus seems much more like "work" and is nothing in and of itself to be proud of.....

dynamik wrote: »

I was fortunate enough to be privy to one of these incidents. Hilarity ensued.

Yep, and that's part of how I ended up with custom-built Powershell courseware that's still sitting on the shelf, unused.....

I do regret any impact that this had on you, and hope in the future to have something for you that's a better use of your time. For everyone elses' benefit, here's the deal with that situation; when people (not dynamik) ask (expect?) me to violate copyright I run in the other direction. Also, in fairness, when I abandon something I have no problem passing it off to someone else, and I think I cleared you to work directly for them. Wisely though, and for what I expect was the same reason that I abandoned it, you chose to not do this work. So you're a prick too!

Seriously though, in addition to the copyright stuff there were simply too many moving parts in what they wanted to do....

That same group did get the copyright message and ask me to do both some Microsoft and WebSphere work after that last year, but even after approaching you about it again and another well-respected member here, I couldn't find anyone to do the Microsoft stuff for them. However, we did pull off some WebSphere Transformation Extender and REXX programming work, on their behalf; but guess what, that work commands a higher price than Microsoft-related work..... You can't win it all.....

MS

Hyper-Me

eMeS wrote: »

I could go on forever, but the only other thing I would mention is scalability. At one point I worked closely with a team in this environment that administered the Exchange solution implemented for ~50000 users. This was back in early to mid-2000's. The solution was never scalable, and the answer from Microsoft was always of the form "throw more hardware at it". My recommendation was that they migrate away from Exchange as quickly as possible, which for political reasons didn't happen.

Interesting. I designed and deployed a domain for 60,000+ users that spanned over 85 sites and it ran perfectly fine, on all Microsoft systems. The only concern for tying exchange into this infrastructure was cost (not hardware, but licensing), not scalability or anything else.

MS products arent scalable? The largest AD domain in the world is one for the government of South Korea. Every single citizen of SK has an account in the directory. The population of SK is over 48 million.

Hyper-Me

astorrs wrote: »

Do you have any idea how ignorant this makes you sound...? Next thing we know you're going to start pushing Hyper-V.

I did say some of those, not all.

I've never known 1 person who has had to work on AS400 that actually enjoyed it. In fact most despise it pretty bad.

Hyper-Me

And, one more (and important) thing, eMeS.

I dont exactly plan on being the guy that consults to fortune 50 corporations and tellign them about buisiness models and producivitiy models and this and that certification for this and that and sigma six/ITIL jazz. I dont enjoy that kind of stuff.

I will tell you that I work with MS systems because I find it extremely enjoyable. I love certain aspects of technology and love to work with it, and that is why I choose to work on what I work on, not because of the money. I think that for where I live, my age, and other considerations that I make a pretty fair wage. I'm not Bill Gates, but I make enough money to live a comfortable life and when the time comes, take care of a family. What more can someone ask for?

I realize there are better systems than others for certain tasks, and I realize that a lot of those systems I dont know the first thing about. But I think that in my few years in the industry, I have built solid systems for my employers and have left them all very satisfied with my work/end product. Pretty much all of it consists of MS products. No, i havnt worked with fortune 100 companies, banking industry or financial industry so I cant speak to that.

I respect your knowledge more than I could probably ever convey on an internet forum, but in the end we are two different people after two different things in life.

snadam

Very interesting responses. Just for clarity sake, I am fortunate to work in an environment where I deal with these platforms I mentioned above (indirectly for the most part) on an everyday basis. I also have the unique experience where I see multiple customers (dare I say >200 annually) that are multi-platformed. Whats funny is that my coworkers that work on these platforms (AS400, RS6000, HP, AIX, SUN, etc) LOVE working on their platforms and have no thoughts coming over to the x86 side of things. In fact, a lot of them are x86 transplants! Like dynamik, many of our customers are banks, and their at their core infrastructure is "mid-range". Windows is usually used for AD, Exchange, and SQL.

The main reason for this topic was because management recently mandated training/certification on all platforms. While to me that seemed to directly follow my personal cert path and a no-brainer, the other platforms seemed to struggle or actually be upset about it. Their main complaint was that "there really are no certs or training for what we do". I found this extremely hard to believe.

It's funny because you can tell who has worked with the platforms other than Wintel and who hasn't. Personally I think that the "platform_X sucks because I don't use it or haven't seen it" mindset is one of the most ignorant things you can do in your career. I will admit that my exposure outside windows has been somewhat minuscule in comparison to the more seasoned members here, I have the utmost respect and appreciation for any platform in IT. It would be stupid not to.

I rather enjoy the interesting turn this topic has taken, and encourage it

Hyper-Me

snadam wrote: »

It's funny because you can tell who has worked with the platforms other than Wintel and who hasn't. Personally I think that the "platform_X sucks because I don't use it or haven't seen it" mindset is one of the most ignorant things you can do in your career. I will admit that my exposure outside windows has been somewhat minuscule in comparison to the more seasoned members here, I have the utmost respect and appreciation for any platform in IT. It would be stupid not to.

If thats directed at me, I can say that my experiences have not beeing directly with the systems in question but with colleagues that ***** and moan about having to work on AS400 almost every time I see them and we talk work. Now that may mean that they dont know it and therefore find it moer difficult than it is (i dont know).

Im never a proponent of sticking with one vendor or one product just "because". I will say that in my personal experience its easier for me to learn a MS product vs something else because I am accustomed to their ways. That does NOT imply that the MS product is the best solution for the job, though.

phoeneous

Hyper-Me wrote: »

But really, AS400 and some of the others is annoying junk that I couldnt see anyone actually taking pride in knowing, but rather being forced to work on at as part of their other responsibilities.

You'd be surprised how many of the major hotels and casinos on the Las Vegas strip run their entire operations on as400. I'd say its close to 50% if not more.

arwes

Hyper-Me wrote: »

I did say some of those, not all.

I've never known 1 person who has had to work on AS400 that actually enjoyed it. In fact most despise it pretty bad.

Then you don't know me. The hospital I worked for used an AS/400 for their lab system, and there just wasn't any comparison with other lab products available. It was rock solid, and the only times I ever had to call support was to replace failed drives on the array (over a course of about 3.5 years of working there). Had no complaints from end users either.

eMeS

Hyper-Me wrote: »

And, one more (and important) thing, eMeS.

I dont exactly plan on being the guy that consults to fortune 50 corporations and tellign them about buisiness models and producivitiy models and this and that certification for this and that and sigma six/ITIL jazz. I dont enjoy that kind of stuff.

I will tell you that I work with MS systems because I find it extremely enjoyable. I love certain aspects of technology and love to work with it, and that is why I choose to work on what I work on, not because of the money. I think that for where I live, my age, and other considerations that I make a pretty fair wage. I'm not Bill Gates, but I make enough money to live a comfortable life and when the time comes, take care of a family. What more can someone ask for?

I realize there are better systems than others for certain tasks, and I realize that a lot of those systems I dont know the first thing about. But I think that in my few years in the industry, I have built solid systems for my employers and have left them all very satisfied with my work/end product. Pretty much all of it consists of MS products. No, i havnt worked with fortune 100 companies, banking industry or financial industry so I cant speak to that.

I respect your knowledge more than I could probably ever convey on an internet forum, but in the end we are two different people after two different things in life.

Please don't take this as patronizing, as I don't mean it that way, but this is probably the most respectful and well-thought out post I've seen you make since joining here.

We all form our opinions and thoughts based on what we know and experience; simple as that.

I agree, we all choose what we do for different reasons. I've been extremely clear in my time here that any work-related choice that I've ever made has been because my foremost goal is that I want to maximize the earnings that I make in the limited amount of time that I am able/willing to work. Personally I don't equate any of this (whether it's direct hands on technology work, which I do, or higher-level ITIL, Six Sigma, etc..., which I also do) with "enjoyment". What I get the most enjoyment out of are things that don't involve work. I've been clear throughout my time here that work is simply a means to an end, and I've always felt that the "enjoy what you do" line that we hear from primary school on is largely bs. I think we have common ground here; I simply don't enjoy it either, and I'm pretty sure that I'd enjoy other things even less.

I truly believe that whatever we're all seeking, we will find. However, one of the biggest problems that people have is figuring out what they're seeking. You seem to have done that, which puts you a step ahead of many out there.

Honestly, I came to this board because I was seeking to expand my business by moving more into Microsoft-related consulting/training. That was in early 2007. I figured that they had such a large exposure that I'd be able to charge the rates that I wanted to charge, and generally deliver work beyond what was currently available in the marketplace. I quickly found that that's not the case. There truly is a rate ceiling, and it gets hit early in that market. I think this is largely because the barriers to entry in the Microsoft product line are low, which leads to a lot of low quality work that gets done for really low rates.

I stayed because I like the people here, and I've benefited from the unintended consequence of learning a lot about the Cisco stuff, simply by reading the posts here. I also stayed because I can provide something here that's not readily available in terms of ITIL, Six Sigma, PMP, etc... The volume in those areas is about the amount that I have time to keep up with....

About financial services and other large-scale companies, they're great places to be from. The last several years of my direct employee work in that environment was largely as an internal salesman/politician of sorts. I spent the majority of my time fighting with people to get simple things done. The way I became involved with any of the Microsoft-related stuff was because I had a strong vendor management track record. Even today, people don't generally secure my or my partner's services services necessarily because of any specific technical knowledge we have (e.g., I know really nothing about Exchange, and knew very little about SQL Server 2005 until we were contracted to do some work in that area); rather, they bring us in because of general technology knowledge and because we'll persistently beat down any vendor until we get what we want.

To close, I agree, there is technology that is better at some tasks and not others. I don't walk into a place and hit every nail with my WebSphere hammer. IMO there has to be a return on investment for any of these technical decisions. People would be wise to make their career decisions in the same way.

MS

eMeS

arwes wrote: »

Then you don't know me. The hospital I worked for used an AS/400 for their lab system, and there just wasn't any comparison with other lab products available. It was rock solid, and the only times I ever had to call support was to replace failed drives on the array (over a course of about 3.5 years of working there). Had no complaints from end users either.

There's a lot of AS/400 shops out there. I was coming into IT in the late 80's when AS/400 was becoming very popular. I went a different direction, and never really touched any of that stuff frequently enough to develop any strong feelings one way or another about it.

I do know this, almost everyone that I know that did significant AS/400 work also had a ton of RPG experience. I think for the most part these people enjoyed it, as it kept them from having to chase learning new programming languages.

Operationally, at one time in my life we monitored some AS/400's, and the techs really never had to do much with them...rock solid as you say. Same thing with Tandems, Stratus', etc.. However, when those things did break it was a complete sh*tstorm.

MS

snadam

Hyper-Me wrote: »

If thats directed at me...

If you feel that you have that type mindset, then it was. If not, then don't worry about it.



In other words, it was a generalized statement that didn't apply to one person.

eMeS

Fair to throw this in...it was asked of me in a PM today how one can get experience in some of this technology.

I agree with the sentiment, there is a much higher barrier to entry in these areas than there is with Microsoft and Cisco.

However, there are some things that people can do if interested.

First, IBM periodically offers full versions of products that can be used for a period of time for educational purposes, along with online courseware, etc.. This changes from time to time, so the best bet is to look at what they're offering on their website. They also periodically offer online labs, etc....

The IBM Software Access Catalog goes for about $2k per year (maybe a little less). It gives full access to every piece of software they sell. The $2k includes reimbursement for any certification exams taken on IBM technology, and includes reimbursement for IBM training. I know $2k is a lot, but this is a really good way to spend that amount of money.

It is also possible to emulate various mainframe OS's on pcs. That is available here:

The Hercules System/370, ESA/390, and z/Architecture Emulator

There is also an ISPF clone called RPF that's available out there can be found through the Hercules website.

Regarding AIX, it is possible to get low cost equipment from leasing companies, and there are often AIX capable machines for sale on eBay starting anywhere around $200 and going up from there. It goes without saying, but caveat emptor.

Another interesting piece of technology are the DataPower appliances. These are way cool, and periodically you'll see some of these come up on eBay.

Perhaps one of you iSeries guys can post something about emulation in that area....

MS

bradtechonline

There is TONS of material on zOS, RPG, Cobol, I Series, and Z Series.. I am more interested in RacF, and DB2 though. I had to turn up, and develop a database for a Mainframe presentation server (Attachmate Reflection for the Web). Just from my observation, I am not a fan of the Mainframe environment or being in bed with IBM in general. I like Tivoli, IBM Sans, and even their hardware. The cost of ownership of the mainframe, and how much money we pour into IBM every year is disgusting, and wasteful IMO. The cost of dealing with IBM, and having to find people, and pay them to manage it is ridiciulous when compared to what you can find, and pay people to manage Linux, Microsoft, and a good programming staff in C# Web Services. That 3270 Terminal is a very ugly thing.