Microsoft Technet and MCITP Training..

[MrEgo]

I've been working in IT for the past 4 years. I started out troubleshooting hardware and software (mostly MS Office) for our users, but the past 2.5 years or so, my employer trusted me enough to dabble around in Active Directory and some of our other Windows Servers a little bit.

Among some of the things I've done is upgraded our domain controllers to Windows Server 2008, implemented a WSUS server and changed the group policies to reflect it, rebuilt our print server - which now has other network services running on it as well, and I've also successfully deployed Microsoft Forefront Client Security across the enterprise (about 400 desktops and 33 servers).

I realize these tasks are fairly easy, but I want to expand my horizons even more. I'm looking ahead a few years here, but the current network administrator is getting close to retiring. I would love to have his job. I think it would be beneficial for me to obtain the MCITP Enterprise Admin certification.

So my questions are these:

Does Technet or Technet Plus offer quality training for these certifications? My local community college offers these courses, but they are during the day, and I cannot skip out on 20 hours of work per week to attend. If there are any other resources available to help, that would be good, too. I'm not interested in simply memorizing the answers to the test - I actually want to understand and comprehend the material and get an in-depth understanding on how to problem solve it.

Has anyone obtained this certification, and how beneficial did you feel the training was?

Thanks in advance for the help.

 

[RadiclDreamer]

If this is for your employer, they may just let you go, some may even pay for it. It makes you that much more valuable to them.

 

[MrEgo]

While it may make me more valuable, I'm 99% sure that with our budget crunch, they will not be paying that much money for me to get this training at the school. Like I said, our network admin is still working, and he hasn't hinted toward the idea of retiring, but he just turned 60, so.. yeah.

It is possible that they MIGHT pay for it upon hearing about his retirement, but I don't want to count on that happening.

 

[RebateMonger]

If you don't have money for training, you can buy Microsoft's training books, read them and do the exercises, and take the exams on your own. That's how I do it. The book set for that exam was about $120 on Amazon when I bought it last year.

 

[seepy83]

In my area, a lot of IT VAR's (Value Added Resellers) offer MS/Cisco/VMware/etc classes. If I were looking for MCITP training, I would be checking with them to see if they have any Bootcamp's scheduled. We have a couple that run them at night, so I usually don't need to miss work. Your other option is doing something Online. I haven't used them, but have heard pretty good things about Global Knowledge's classes.

Your employer should have some policy regarding Tuition/Educational Reimbursement. Continued IT training isn't something that should suffer a big cutback because of budget concerns. The systems that you are running continue to evolve and falling behind the curve can end up being very costly. Your employer shouldn't want to end up in a situation where they are running Server Operating Systems that are no longer supported by Microsoft, but they also shouldn't want to implement new versions that their Administrators aren't familiar with.

 

[MrEgo]

Your employer should have some policy regarding Tuition/Educational Reimbursement. Continued IT training isn't something that should suffer a big cutback because of budget concerns. The systems that you are running continue to evolve and falling behind the curve can end up being very costly. Your employer shouldn't want to end up in a situation where they are running Server Operating Systems that are no longer supported by Microsoft, but they also shouldn't want to implement new versions that their Administrators aren't familiar with.

Heh, not receiving reimbursement for IT training is a direct result of the company letting go of the IT director, and all IT-related financial decisions are made by a bean-counter. I can see it now - "Oh, you need more training? Maybe you aren't the one we need.. we can find someone who already has the training that doesn't need us to pay extra money".

Another reason that I would like to get certified is because of that situation right there. I'm afraid of where the company is headed, but I do like my job - for now.