Finally took the first step to get serious about this (VCA-DCV passed)

E

Eulogy

2[H]4U
Joined
Nov 9, 2005
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Well, for a long time now I've been messing around in VMWare products. I cut my teeth on 3.5, worked with 4.1, and have kept up through 5.5 (just signed up for the 6.0 beta 2 actually as well).
I've never had a job where virtualization infrastructure has been my core responsibility. It's usually been anywhere from 50% to 10% of my duties though. Right now I spend probably about 20% of my time with it. Much less than I want.
As I'm kind of sort of job hunting, I've decided to do something, and actively make changes to push myself into this career path, since it's what I really would like to do full time. Something along the lines of architect, principal engineer and so on.
I found a job posting for a vmware engineer job, and applied for it. This was step one. I "happen to" know a couple of guys at the company, and they'll put in a good word for me. I also feel I know enough that I can get in there and work. My resume backs this a little, but certification would certainly help! However, I need to convince HR and the hiring manager as such as well.
Yesterday, I decided to start working on certification. I jumped through the (few, and easy) hoops to register for the VCA-DCV exam. Just to be sure, I went ahead and ran through the recommended free e-Course offered by vmware. All of this was very familiar grounds to me, so I felt comfortable jumping in and taking the exam tonight. Went ahead and dropped the cash on it, and got a 500. I think it took me about 35 minutes in total - mostly because there were a couple of questions that I ended up super over thinking, so I marked them and went back to them at the end.
It's not a lot - the VCA-DCV is very high level, and from my standpoint very simple. I believe I could have done just as well without the course, but it was nice to take anyway. I don't even think the VCA-DCV will be a true resume padding cert to add, but it'll go on anyway.

Not really much to discuss here, but I thought I'd post my experience all the same. I'm glad to be finally taking control of this and moving it along in a direction I want it to go. Of course, the next step for me is the VCP level, but that'll be harder simply due to the cost associated with it.
 
Congratulations indeed! Nicely done! Overcoming inertia to actually do something is the hardest part since it's a lot easier to do nothing. Good luck on your job search!
 
Eulogy said:
Well, for a long time now I've been messing around in VMWare products. I cut my teeth on 3.5, worked with 4.1, and have kept up through 5.5 (just signed up for the 6.0 beta 2 actually as well).
I've never had a job where virtualization infrastructure has been my core responsibility. It's usually been anywhere from 50% to 10% of my duties though. Right now I spend probably about 20% of my time with it. Much less than I want.
As I'm kind of sort of job hunting, I've decided to do something, and actively make changes to push myself into this career path, since it's what I really would like to do full time. Something along the lines of architect, principal engineer and so on.
I found a job posting for a vmware engineer job, and applied for it. This was step one. I "happen to" know a couple of guys at the company, and they'll put in a good word for me. I also feel I know enough that I can get in there and work. My resume backs this a little, but certification would certainly help! However, I need to convince HR and the hiring manager as such as well.
Yesterday, I decided to start working on certification. I jumped through the (few, and easy) hoops to register for the VCA-DCV exam. Just to be sure, I went ahead and ran through the recommended free e-Course offered by vmware. All of this was very familiar grounds to me, so I felt comfortable jumping in and taking the exam tonight. Went ahead and dropped the cash on it, and got a 500. I think it took me about 35 minutes in total - mostly because there were a couple of questions that I ended up super over thinking, so I marked them and went back to them at the end.
It's not a lot - the VCA-DCV is very high level, and from my standpoint very simple. I believe I could have done just as well without the course, but it was nice to take anyway. I don't even think the VCA-DCV will be a true resume padding cert to add, but it'll go on anyway.

Not really much to discuss here, but I thought I'd post my experience all the same. I'm glad to be finally taking control of this and moving it along in a direction I want it to go. Of course, the next step for me is the VCP level, but that'll be harder simply due to the cost associated with it.
Click to expand...

PM me. Let me see what I can do to help get you in the door.
 
Thank you guys for the congrats and words of encouragement. I'm really hoping to somewhere get to my VCP level maybe in August - I'm going to look over the blueprint next week a bit to see what areas I need to get going in my lab to study/practice. So many things would have to line up just right for that. I'm still hopeful for the job I applied to as well, though the company is notorious for super-slow hiring practices (weeks with no contact, some even say a couple of months). Fingers crossed and we'll see how it goes, if anywhere. Competition for jobs like that around here is pretty fierce, with some very well qualified folks going for them.

Lopoetve, I sent you a PM as well!

Thanks again :) I may post more of my journey about it here as I progress.
 
Eulogy said:
Thank you guys for the congrats and words of encouragement. I'm really hoping to somewhere get to my VCP level maybe in August [...] Competition for jobs like that around here is pretty fierce, with some very well qualified folks going for them.
Click to expand...

I don't think that forking out thousands of dollars (course fee, plus taking 4-5 days off of work, plus potential travel) to get the VCP just to be more competitive in job applications is worth doing.

You have to decide what you want to do and then you can figure out how to get there. Since you used 3.5 you have been working with VMware products for 5+ years. Different people have different views on career progression. From my perspective you can only monkey around as sys admin for so long before you need to move up. To me moving up means leading teams, having budget responsibilities, advance through management.

Don't get me wrong, there are a lot of sys admins who retire in place, perhaps end up making a decent middle class salary and that's that. Folks who are post-sales engineers at our local VAR all make mid-six figures and they do not supervise people or have to develop organizational budgets, but they also don't deal with the complexity of running an organization.

So my advice is that if you want to spend your time implementing technology, then maybe the VCP is worth doing but probably not. If you want to spend your time leading organizations that implement technology then the VCP is definitely not worth doing and you should pick up ITIL Foundation, some PMP certs, and take an org comm or leadership college course instead because all those will be a much better use of the money.

At $250 ITIL Foundation is cheap: http://www.thoughtrock.com/theitilexam
Certified Associate in Project Management is $400 plus the exam cost: http://learning.pmi.org/course-detail.php?id=2400
Tuition for a class on org comm or org leadership is less than 2k.

If you do all three you still pay less than the VCP and you end up with a much better chance of getting a different/better job.
 
Oh, don't get me wrong, I definitely agree with all of your points. VCP is just a goal I have, and one I'll meet. I don't always put my personal goals into specific career advancement or getting higher compensation. It's a goal because it'll make me better at what I do, which in turns helps the people who depend on me to do my job well. I can't do that very effectively at my present job, and while I'm job hunting, the clearest path to achieve some of that goal is via vmware. There's others, of course, but I don't have quite the same drive for those other paths. In that, I'm still taking the path of lease resistance.
ITIL is actually on my radar as well, and I'm kind of hoping to do that one this year sometime.
I don't have career aspirations to move into any kind of management, supervise/manage people, or run any departments. I quite like being "feet on the ground" as it were. I wouldn't be surprised if this changes, especially since I'm still relatively young. I look at my present employer's org structure, and also job descriptions out there and I feel I'd like to just take the next step up and be not only feet on the ground, but also part that sets the standards, works on the big picture strategic initiatives, and works on the 3 year business plan from the IT perspective. Some of that definitely encroaches on the management aspect, so it could be that I get this and love it, or hate it. But, for me personally, I won't know unless I try :). VCP is just an enabler - I love VMWare products and working with it, so I am leveraging that passion to push myself out of my comfort zone even farther. Once it becomes habit from doing it with this, then ITIL, PMP, heck maybe even my MBA will just fall in line easier. This is almost as much an exercise in pushing myself to truly learn again and better myself, my work and my customers as it is a career, "make me stand out more" move :).

I hope that makes sense, and thank you again for your candid and thoughtful reply!
 
I will agree that it is generally true for most that a fork in the road occurs where you can either stay technical or start doing more and more management functions, leading teams, and being responsible for budgets and key decision making. However, I disagree that this is the only path.

You can decide to become much more in tune with using technology to meet the needs of the business without necessarily being a "manager" or "leading people", which to me requires a certain center of excellence, VMware being a great choice. NetJunkie has written that the days of being a single use-case specialist are over and I agree, in general, but it doesn't mean there isn't a center to the universe. Today hyper-converged infrastructures are requiring someone like myself to have breadth across storage, networking, and virtualization in a different way than ever before with SDN (in my case NSX), and software storage platforms like VSAN, PernixData and others. VMware is the center of my universe and I have no plans to change that.

My point is you can become a consultant / architect and still make a lot of money without necessarily taking your feet off the ground as you say. Myself as an example, I am almost 100% focused on the vCloud Suite. I work in a very large environment, which may be key as well. I get paid more doing this than I could imagine being paid to be in middle management, and probably the same as upper management.

For all that said, it is the sliver of the market, not the majority, which leads to the truth in the generalizations. If you want to go the purely technical route you have to put the time in and stick out from the crowd. I work easily 50-60hrs most weeks, not counting my personal time in my lab(s). In a management position, it is (typically) nice not having to change course very quickly and learn lots everytime you turn around. Technology can change with the wind. There is a vSphere 6.0 beta thread in this forum, and the release changes/adds an awful lot ... but I thrive on it, because I love it, as do many people here.
 
Congratulations, welcome to the fold. :)

My biggest suggestion to you right now is going to be to join your local VMUG and sign up for VMUG Advantage. The Advantage membership gives you very nice discounts on training and events like VMworld, and the VMUG meetings will introduce you to a very large network of peers to exchange ideas and knowledge with.

vmug.com
 
Thank you both for the thoughts, and the link as well. I'll look into joining the VMUG tonight or tomorrow for sure.
Lots of food for thought in this thread - I'm sure it's helping other people who are considering this as well, so again, thank you all for the input. I know its given me a fair amount to think about! :)
 
Congrats on the VCA, another thing to note about the VCP is you can take the test BEFORE the class if you would like, but you need both a passing score on the test and classroom attendance to receive certification.

If this helps at all you could study up for the test and take it, then if you pass simply fork over the cash for the online 3 day after hours course to receive certification.

Where are you located in Washington? I'm up in Mill Creek, might be hiring.
 
0V3RC10CK3D said:
Congrats on the VCA, another thing to note about the VCP is you can take the test BEFORE the class if you would like, but you need both a passing score on the test and classroom attendance to receive certification.

If this helps at all you could study up for the test and take it, then if you pass simply fork over the cash for the online 3 day after hours course to receive certification.

Where are you located in Washington? I'm up in Mill Creek, might be hiring.
Click to expand...

I didn't know that for certain, but thought it was the case since it seems like you just need both check marks. With the VMUG 20% off as well, that helps a little bit. I still do have a lot of studying to do - I've gone through the blueprint and some other materials I found online about the exam, and I'm definitely not ready yet. Worse yet, my C6100 is seemingly on its last legs (PSU is crapping itself - killed two of my nodes last night). I'm bidding on a new-to-me one on eBay so that way I can get back to it and try to learn. The bad part is some things on the exam I can't get a free trial on, and I'm having a difficult time finding a lab in the VMWare Hands On Labs for them.

I also sent you a PM. :)
 
Spent the weekend trying to keep my current C6110 running... and no dice. Three of the nodes are kaput entirely. At least I can easily "limp" along with all of the VMs on one host. I have another C6100 on the way, it should be here early next week. It's only 3 node, but that's more than enough. Two of them will be 5.5, and the last will be 6.0 Beta 2. Kind of stinks as I was hoping to get another Intel version, but they're crazy spendy now, so I went with one of the AMD ones instead... won't be able to vMotion between the two :p
 
Congrats on the VCA-DCV, I am also trying to get serious on the VCP5-DCV (VCP550), just started a free trial of CBT Nuggets to check out the videos they have on this exam (I wanted to use Pluralsight but I couldn't find anything recent that covered the 5.5 version of the exam!) and also going through the VMware PDF documentation.

I'm slowly building up a reasonable lab, just purchased a couple of Dell R410's from eBay, need 1 more for VSAN and to play around with SRM! (already have 2 x whiteboxes, 1 running ESXi 6 beta and the other my FreeNAS device for ISCSI based storage, was thinking of buying a Synology 1813+ as dedicated storage to free up the whitebox for the beginning of a Hyper-V lab also!
 
For anyone wanting to hit the ground running studying for the vcp5 just download Autolab and run it in VMware workstation. Super cheap and can be fully stood up in 2 hours or so.
 
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