Toughest certifications

I hear a lot of how hard certian cert tests are. I am just asking the opinion of everyone "What brand of cert tests on average are the toughest to pass?" Cisco, Microsoft, CompTIA, and any others I am leaving out. Let's hear 'em.

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electricity

Dont have anything useful to do on a Friday night?

networker050184

electricity wrote: »

Dont have anything useful to do on a Friday night?

I guess about as much as me and you if we are both on here reading this lol.

In my defense, I'm about to start a maintenance in 15 minutes. Whats your excuse

kevozz

electricity wrote: »

Dont have anything useful to do on a Friday night?

Do you?

rsutton

electricity wrote: »

Dont have anything useful to do on a Friday night?

Pot, kettle, black? It IS Friday though, if only I could find that bottle of Canadian Mist.

jeanathan

I had to work. So I don't. Cisco Lab Test & Red hat Lab Test get my vote.

dynamik

electricity wrote: »

Dont have anything useful to do on a Friday night?

Wait, after convincing women to leave the bar with you, you don't bring them back to your place and attempt to win them over by showing them your post count?

mikej412

Deathgomper wrote: »

"What brand of cert tests on average are the toughest to pass?"

I'm not sure if there's a specific brand.... but I'd say the hardest certification exams are the ones on subjects you have no interest in.

And the 2nd hardest certification exams are the ones where you have no talent or skills in/with the technology being tested and no capability to ever acquire the talent/skills.

And 3rd are probably the ones where you may have to sit for 6 hours answering vague multiple choice questions on a large number of different subject domains. I like Cisco, but there's no way in heck I'd ever sit 3 CCIE Written exams back-to-back -- so I'm not sure how people make it through the CISSP exam.

At least in an 8 hour CCIE Lab exam you get a nice lunch -- plus they've made it easier by breaking it up in a 30 minute open ended question portion, 2 hour troubleshooting sections, and a 5-1/2 hour configuration section.

Forsaken_GA

rsutton wrote: »

Pot, kettle, black? It IS Friday though, if only I could find that bottle of Canadian Mist.

Canadian Mist.... <shudder> *that* brings back memories.

So glad I can afford real liquor now hehe

veritas_libertas

mikej412 wrote: »

I'm not sure if there's a specific brand.... but I'd say the hardest certification exams are the ones on subjects you have no interest in.

I agree, I can't imagine studying for the SCJA, or any programming exam for that matter.

earweed

I agree with you VL. I have to take the CIW Javascript exam next week and I see no use in it and hopefully I pass it the first time. If it weren't required by WGU there is no way I would take it.
Certs you have no interest in are definitely the hardest.

SephStorm

Agree with the above CCIE & CISSP= Not likely. CIW database design= have to, but no interest.

earweed

My program at WGU dropped the CIW Database and Web Design courses. They say because it makes their program match up more to a regular 4 year program. IMHO it's because students had so little interest in these courses and did poorly.
The degree program should be well rounded but should be more rounded in the areas of written communications and less in the area of having a few certs which are not worth much and basically take up more of the students time.
Big plus to WGU dropping a few requirements is I'll be done with BSIT in the next year!

SephStorm

written communication?! *cringes* You had better not be talking about pen and paper!

petedude

earweed wrote: »

. . . IMHO it's because students had so little interest in these courses and did poorly. . .

I've WGU dropped those sections because they were were redundant, e.g. Oracle Database Administration exam and CIW Database. Although I'd have to think Oracle is the more rigorous of those two exams.

Why students did poorly on these? Because they were too tough-- I doubt most were disinterested.

Paul Boz

CCIE (any of them), GSE, and high-end Juniper exams represent what I would consider personal technical challenges.

dynamik

Paul Boz wrote: »

CCIE (any of them), GSE, and high-end Juniper exams represent what I would consider personal technical challenges.

Maybe adding RHCE onto that list, or MCA/MCM, but those are almost too obscure to even be relevant.

Certifications that test your knowledge in written and lab-based exams are definitely where it's at.

Plantwiz

The certification NOT taken is the toughest

Forsaken_GA

dynamik wrote: »

Maybe adding RHCE onto that list, or MCA/MCM, but those are almost too obscure to even be relevant.

Certifications that test your knowledge in written and lab-based exams are definitely where it's at.

I honestly don't think the RHCE is all that tough. Someone left the Robert Jung book laying around the NOC last week, and I started skimming through it out of curiosity, and all they really expect you to be able to do is be a config and break/fix monkey. It's just not that hard. I'm absolutely certain that with a month of study, I could pass the exam, and I probably would if it wasn't for the $800 price tag associated with it, since I have no desire to return to the ghetto of system administration

Paul Boz

Forsaken_GA wrote: »

since I have no desire to return to the ghetto of system administration

This made me chuckle - well played

CCIEWANNABE

surprised no one has said the CCA yet. Cisco Certified Architect. It is actually above the CCIE. Check the link below:

https://learningnetwork.cisco.com/community/certifications/cisco_certified_architect/syllabus

The prerequisites:

1) You have to be a CCDE

2) You have to apply and Cisco has to accept your application

3) You have to take a board exam and pass.

Oh yeah, did I mention it costs $15,000.

Don't think there is any other cert that comes close to this.

CNE

Novell CNE 5 was my toughest certification!

Paul Boz

CCIEWANNABE wrote: »

surprised no one has said the CCA yet. Cisco Certified Architect. It is actually above the CCIE. Check the link below:

https://learningnetwork.cisco.com/community/certifications/cisco_certified_architect/syllabus

The prerequisites:

1) You have to be a CCDE

2) You have to apply and Cisco has to accept your application

3) You have to take a board exam and pass.

Oh yeah, did I mention it costs $15,000.

Don't think there is any other cert that comes close to this.

GSE is the only one I can think of with anywhere near that cost. You need three SANS certs at $4k a pop plus two gold papers at $500 a pop, then you have to pay the $1000 to sit the GSE multiple choice test, THEN pay for the lab. That and there are 12 people on earth with it.

Forsaken_GA

CCIEWANNABE wrote: »

surprised no one has said the CCA yet. Cisco Certified Architect. It is actually above the CCIE. Check the link below:

The CCA also isn't really intended for tech types. It's more of a meta-cert, in that you're a nerd, but you're also really good at playing the executive game

RouteThisWay

CCIEWANNABE wrote: »

surprised no one has said the CCA yet. Cisco Certified Architect. It is actually above the CCIE. Check the link below:

https://learningnetwork.cisco.com/community/certifications/cisco_certified_architect/syllabus

The prerequisites:

1) You have to be a CCDE

2) You have to apply and Cisco has to accept your application

3) You have to take a board exam and pass.

Oh yeah, did I mention it costs $15,000.

Don't think there is any other cert that comes close to this.

Microsoft Certified Master exams cost $18,500.

There are five MCM certifications:

Microsoft Certified Master: Microsoft Exchange Server 2007
Microsoft Certified Master: Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007
Microsoft Certified Master: Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007
Microsoft Certified Master: Microsoft SQL Server 2008
Microsoft Certified Master: Windows Server 2008: Directory

I believe you have to attend a 3-week training class at Redmond on the Microsoft campus, and then pass the multiple exams and lab while you are there.

RouteThisWay

Forsaken_GA wrote: »

since I have no desire to return to the ghetto of system administration

Touche!

But you know, sitting around in a NOC, staring at lights all night, with the spare time to read through books that are left behind sounds exhilarating!

I do hear Network guys are the playboys of IT though.

networker050184

RouteThisWay wrote: »

I do hear Network guys are the playboys of IT though.

You hear correct

Forsaken_GA

RouteThisWay wrote: »

Touche!

But you know, sitting around in a NOC, staring at lights all night, with the spare time to read through books that are left behind sounds exhilarating!

It beats working for a living

I do hear Network guys are the playboys of IT though.

Network engineers are like that insurance company in The Rainmaker. Step 1 is to deny all culpability. Can't be the network, it's a server problem! Then after you make the admins spend hours scouring the server to prove it's a network problem, you spend a few minutes executing your idealized tests to prove it's not a network problem.

Eventually, when your boss gets around to telling you to fix the network problem, you roll your magical neteng excuse dice and tell your boss that it's:

1 - Cisco's fault, and you have a TAC ticket open
2 - Juniper/Force10's fault due to interoperability bugs with Cisco, and you have a ticket open
3 - It's a peers fault, and you have a ticket open
4 - It's a provider's fault, and you have a ticket open
5 - It's hardware failure, and you're having a replacement overnighted in
6 - It's the customers fault, they need to open a ticket with their provider

Hyper-Me

I would love to do an MCM Directory Services rotation some day, but im not anywhere that good yet, and I dont have 20 grand to blow on it.

On and Forsaken; Networkers are just the grunts, something of a technological janitor. (kidding of course).

But for me, I didnt want to pave the roadway (network), i wanted to drive the sports car (servers) on it.

mikedisd2

Hyper-Me wrote: »

On and Forsaken; Networkers are just the grunts, something of a technological janitor.

Networkers are the plumbers of the Internet. That's why they're always blocking access and performing DNS flushes (push, push those packets through).

laidbackfreak

mikedisd2 wrote: »

Networkers are the plumbers of the Internet.

Funny you should say that way back in time when I first mentined I wanted to be a network engineer, my colleague at the time said smmit along the lines of "the world will always need plumbers." Pretty fair analogy I guess.

As too the original question I'd probably agree with Mike and say the ones you have no interest in.