Becoming a VCP4 will be tough

I remember all this kind of thing back in the 90s when I was into MCP and MCSE, CCNA and CCNP, CNA, and LP1 and 2 certs. I recently burned abut half a ton of 4” thick hard-back books on these subjects (£35 a piece, and some). Goodness knows what kind of life people like Mark Minasi have. What I’ve learned over the years is that much of this is hype to create credentials for the products, wallpaper for the loo, and an industry that provides added value for the vendor, oh yes, and the pack of training companies that will charge an arm and a leg for a boot-camp weekend or two, not to mention the self-promoted gurus that appear from time to time waxing lyrical about some deeply technical trick they’ve figured out. However, with cynical hat off, I can understand that an employer might like to know that a person has made an investment in their development. From a practical perspective, you’ll learn more working with the products than you ever will swatting up for these kind of exams. If you haven’t got a proper server and some software to do this, then you should have as it’s a far better investment than certification. Certification doesn’t cut it when you have to go into the server-room. I, for one , can find more interesting things to do than surf the exam sites, download endless PDF files, work through Exam-Crams and Brain-dumps and so forth. I did that already with Microsoft, Cisco and Linux certs, don’t think I will be bothering with VMware simply because VMware’s business case is constant change, and that means endless exam upgrades. I don’t think I’m up to that any more. Sad isn’t it. No offence intended, this is my personal, and grizzled, view, like it or not. I’m sure that there will be many breathless, and bright-eyed young hopefuls, lining up to torture themselves. Now, where did I put that NetApp command-line manual?