My Current Certifications - Part 1

Sorry for not posting yesterday, I am having to setup my desktop system at home to aid me in studying. Last night I started backing up my data so that I could reinstall my system and setup it up for this. I am hoping that for some of the posts that I will be able to put videos and screenshots of some of the things I did.

In the meantime, I decided that today's post would cover the certifications that I currently hold to give you some background on my technical knowledge. Up until 7 years ago I did not have any certifications until I moved to the US and started working for a call center as my first job. I found that getting certifications in what I was working at made the day go faster.

The first certifications that I worked on was to become a Dell Certified Systems Expert (DCSE). As you can imagine, Dell has a number of these certifications. I set out to get as many of them as I could using the resources that I had at my disposal. This meant that at one point I was certified in all Dell desktops, laptops, printers, networking and servers that they were currently shipping.

Then I started working for a company that required that I got either my CompTIA A+ certification or Microsoft Certified Professional within 3 months of starting work. I took the A+ exams back when the A+ covered hardware in one test and software in another. I took both tests on the same day and without any study prep as I was confident with my knowledge that I could pass it. I did not find anything in it particular hard other than the fact that the content seemed to be extremely old.

I am not a real big fan of the format of the test as I believe that it tests book knowledge versus testing your actual skills. About the only good thing is this certification does not expiry.

After I moved departments in the company I was working with, I got the opportunity to work with a lot of alternative operating systems from Novell NetWare to different distributions of Linux. A lot of what I worked on was VMware products too. This gave me a lot of scope as far as getting certified in a number of different technology. Anyone that knows me, knows that I am not very keen on specializing in one technology but would rather have a broad skill set.

The company that I worked for also valued self-improvement through the gaining of certifications. To get any sort of promotion required different levels of certification. They were even willing to pay for any required training and the exam for each of the certification. As such, getting a certification or two, was always on the list of my goals. My goal in the position was to achieve and maintain what the company considered an engineering certificate.

As my main focus in the job was split between Linux and VMware, it only made sense to go after certifications in both areas. My options in these areas were LPIC-2 Advanced Level Linux Certification from the Linux Professional Institue, RedHat Certified System Engineer, or VMware Certified Professional. I wanted to try and get all 3!

Anyway, since it is going to take me a bit of time to setup my desktop at home, I am going to split this post into a couple of posts over the next few days to cover all the certifications I have gotten. The follow up to this will cover the LPIC-1 and VCP.

Graham Burgess

P. S. Please feel free to comment on these certifications. Do you have an A+? Did you take it before or after the last major change to the test? What do you think about the format of the test?