AS/400 System Admin Cert worth it?

LBC90805 · June 2008

Im planning out my career certification path. Currently I'm about to finish up Cisco's CCNA in mid July, hopefully, and then a couple of Microsoft Cert concerning Server 2003 and MS Networking. After that I was thinking about focusing on a certification that few rarely have. I always see a good number of jobs that have AS/400 as a requisite though I have yet to see anybody here have a certification in AS/400.

I know for a fact that in Kern County there is this one fellow who has been administrating AS/400 for the County for the better part of 15 years. He is retiring, put in the paperwork about 12 months ago and they have yet to find anybody who is qualified to take his place. I imagine when they do find the right candidate they will have to compensate them just north of $100k.

Would having a Professional level AS/400 cert be worth it?

Mishra · June 2008

The OS400 is a dying OS. Basically studying for this would be a waste of your time. There are usually not many cross jobs where you 100% administer a AS400 as well as MS/Linux/Cisco products.

Lots of applications are moving over to the Unix version anyways so I would not worry about this certification and go for higher level standards certs like MCSE/CCNP/application level certs

astorrs · June 2008

It's not worth looking at getting if you don't have any hands on experience with it. This isn't going to do anything for you if it's just a paper cert.

Mishra, I'm not sure I completely agree with you. While iSeries isn't exactly gaining market share, it's heavily invested in by some companies and will be around for many years to come. Case in point one of my clients just spent about $500k on 2 new iSeries servers just to relocate a single application from one datacenter to another, rather than replace the app.

With that said I wouldn't be looking at "getting into" that market. Like Mishra said, your returns are going to be way better with Linux or Microsoft intermediate/advanced certification paths.

tiersten · June 2008

You still need the experience and thats not going to be easy to get. Administration of an OS/400 machine isn't that clear cut either since you're going to have some sort of bespoke application bolted ontop. The way OS/400 works is totally different to how UNIX or Windows works.

I used to administer a few OS/400 boxes with a customised banking application coming from a UNIX background and the learning curve was pretty steep since I needed to learn both parts.

tiersten · June 2008

astorrs wrote:

Mishra, I'm not sure I completely agree with you. While iSeries isn't exactly gaining market share, it's heavily invested in by some companies and will be around for many years to come. Case in point one of my clients just spent about $500k on 2 new iSeries servers just to relocate a single application from one datacenter to another, rather than replace the app.

OS/400 and System i (damn IBM and renaming the thing so many times) are both extremely reliable. You paid a premium for it but it is one of the few platforms where if done correctly was nearly bulletproof. Banks and large corporations loved it because of this.

They used a p-code translation system so you could actually move your application binaries between the various generation System i machines and you'd just need to tell it to retranslate. The CPUs used have changed over the years and it is transparent to the application.

Mishra · June 2008

Yeah I'm not really bashing the platform. It's definitely stable if you know what you are doing.

I just know that when we hired for our billing system there were a lot of older applicants that applied and were looking for their previous internet boom salaries (at least 80K) and wasn't able to get the job. But most of them were pure bred many years of experience kind of guys. So the market is tough and you have to be very specialized (these 400 guys will never have any other kind of jobs).

Thats why I advise against it.

But if you enjoy it then there definitely are jobs out there.

LBC90805 · June 2008

Thats why I advise against it. But if you enjoy it then there definitely are jobs out there.

For sure a few jobs. I see it come up often and `am discouraged from applying for jobs that have some AS/400 experiance needed. Its not like I can just go get a copy of the OS and run it on my 2500XP Athlon box at home and figure it out. That is why I was wondering if it was worth while to get a cert.

I really want to focus like I said before on getting a few MS certs where I will be qualified to work on Domain Controllers and MS Networking. Though I really don't posses the initiative to get a Full MCSA or MSCE after getting my CCNA. I want to focus on something that other techs rarely get so I can make myself more valuable in the market.

So far career path as follows:

1 CCNA
2 Some MS Certs
3 Was AS/400 but maybe not now.
4 Unix/Linux Administration
5 CCNP

Also was thinking perhaps the CWNA in there somewhere, might make it #3 if I drop AS/400.

Finally, how valuable is it to have a Bachelor's Degree, from a real school, in Computer Science or Business Administration with a conentration in M.I.S. which I have. I know for a lot of jobs out there having a Four year degree can really be the "DEAL BREAKER"!

AS/400 System Admin Cert worth it?

Comments