Most desired certifications for sys admins

[Phantomaniac]

I've been working with Linux/UNIX for 13 years and still don't know it all.

It does make me fee good to stump a guy who interviewed me who has been in IT for 35 years though. ^_^

How do you even break in to the Linux job market? The words "linux" and "entry-level" are nearly an oxymoron of a job title, and most schools don't offer anything in the way of linux training.

 

[child of wonder]

I will look into vmware cert, I really like that program and what they can do with it.

Or you can get ahead of the curve and go after the MCSE: Private Cloud.

A lot of people have the VCP now and many, many more claim to be "VMware guys." MS has some exciting products in the virtualization space such as Hyper-V 2012 and System Center 2012. That's one of the next big things.

 

[JD50]

How do you even break in to the Linux job market? The words "linux" and "entry-level" are nearly an oxymoron of a job title, and most schools don't offer anything in the way of linux training.

Get your RHCE, it's one of the best and most respected certs in the industry. You can't cram for it, you have to actually know what you're doing.

 

[OutHouse]

I will look into vmware cert, I really like that program and what they can do with it.

Beware you have to take a vmware class to take a cert test. Vmware rules.

Last week I got a quote for the vsphere fast track training, it was $6100.00

 

[bearxor]

I actually have a 4 year CS degree. Just looking through job postings, even junior level windows sys admin positions are looking for 1-2 years experience with AD and Exchange. I have some knowledge of AD, but jack on Exchange.

For reference I'm trying to land a job in the Washington, DC area, which is probably one of the most competitive job markets in the US. I expect there are legions of others like me (recent to semi-recent CS grads) all going for the same thing. So I feel like I really need something to stand out.

What you should really do, if you're serious, is get on LinkedIn and look for regular meetings of whatever interests you. Say its VMWare. Most major cities have a VMWare group. Be social. Get out there. Make contacts. Make friends. That's how you'll find a job moving in to what you want to do.

 

[Red Squirrel]

MS certs are actually very hard now, and there are so many different tests you need to take before you become certified. Like at least 5 if I recall, but they keep changing it. They almost need a cert just for understanding how the certs work. :awe:

Cisco is easier (still hard) but probably holds less value as a system admin, unless it's a smaller shop and you are doing networking too.

The downside is these certs all expire, so you do all this work, spend all that money, and you have to redo it in 3 years.

If you think experience alone can get you up then work on that instead.

Linux is sadly rarely used in the enterprise market, so a Linux certs are probably not worth wasting time unless you know specifically that where you are applying is a Linux shop.

 

[ImpulsE69]

I run into the opposite. I work in a very large SAN/NAS environment so I end up touching just about everything and I've found even with my (and my teammates) limited linux/unix administration experience, we usually end up telling the admins how to fix their issues. Most of them don't even know how to check mount paths (and these people are supposed to be the experts). They are just so clueless where I work it is scary. On the other hand though, the Windows admins are pretty sharp. I don't know if it's just hard to find good unix/linux people or if people just bs their way through interviews (or if they have all these certs).

No amount of schooling or certs can make up for good old experience.

 

[Phantomaniac]

Get your RHCE, it's one of the best and most respected certs in the industry. You can't cram for it, you have to actually know what you're doing.

Hmm, you really think one could land a linux job with that despite NO prior linux experience?

 

[GT1999]

To answer the question on how I learned Linux -- it was because it was a passion of mine. It all started when I worked for a small ISP and a really weird guy (who also happens to still be a great friend of mine) took the time to explain to me how it all works. These were in the days when custom kernels were the norm.

Then I setup my own Linux Counterstrike server and started to get into scripting with things like Admin Mod. The server was practically build from scratch with Slackware (a decently difficult distro, though there are worse!)

You can go get your Red Hat Cert, sure, but everybody in the Linux market knows the guys who really know there stuff aren't necessarily certified. Linux geeks tend to be rebels. We believe in open source software, and many times we are political radicals as well.

And when you think about it, Android runs a Linux variant, and iOS is a BSD variant.

As I type this on my MacBook Pro it's also based off of Unix.

My advice is if you want to get into Linux, go find a friend who uses it... buy him a beer, and go setup some test clustered servers inside VMs. Have one of you break it. Then try to fix it.

A Linux admin with DBA skills will have next to no problems finding a job. When I got laid off from my last job, it took me 2 weeks to find this one. And it pays 15k more. Was that luck? I don't know...

 

[Juddog]

To answer the question on how I learned Linux -- it was because it was a passion of mine. It all started when I worked for a small ISP and a really weird guy (who also happens to still be a great friend of mine) took the time to explain to me how it all works. These were in the days when custom kernels were the norm.

Then I setup my own Linux Counterstrike server and started to get into scripting with things like Admin Mod. The server was practically build from scratch with Slackware (a decently difficult distro, though there are worse!)

You can go get your Red Hat Cert, sure, but everybody in the Linux market knows the guys who really know there stuff aren't necessarily certified. Linux geeks tend to be rebels. We believe in open source software, and many times we are political radicals as well.

A lot of shops require redhat as it's one of the few Linux variants that actually can be hardened using established government guidelines. Under NSTISSP #11, government customers must prefer products that have been certified using a US-approved protection profile. The Redhat cryptographic modules are actually validated, which is why it is in more widespread use for companies that work with a lot of sensitive data, e.g. ePHI.

So basically organizations doing business with the government favor RedHat vs. openSUSE, Ubuntu, etc..

 

[GT1999]

A lot of shops require redhat as it's one of the few Linux variants that actually can be hardened using established government guidelines. Under NSTISSP #11, government customers must prefer products that have been certified using a US-approved protection profile. The Redhat cryptographic modules are actually validated, which is why it is in more widespread use for companies that work with a lot of sensitive data, e.g. ePHI.

So basically organizations doing business with the government favor RedHat vs. openSUSE, Ubuntu, etc..

Where I work, we have 1200+ RHEL VMs. Some of which deal with financial data, HIPAA, and the like. No Red Hat cert required. And there is some government data in there as well (also financial), though I wouldn't exactly call it top secret. 🙂 I actually deal with the PGP/GPG/SFTP encrypted transfers...

 

[Juddog]

Where I work, we have 1200+ RHEL VMs. Some of which deal with financial data, HIPAA, and the like. No Red Hat cert required. And there is some government data in there as well (also financial), though I wouldn't exactly call it top secret. 🙂 I actually deal with the PGP/GPG/SFTP encrypted transfers...

Sounds like you work at a bank.

 

[GT1999]

Sounds like you work at a bank.

Negative but I do deal with banks. 🙂

Just had a conference call earlier today with them... talk about UPTIGHT folks!

 

[MiniDoom]

Beware you have to take a vmware class to take a cert test. Vmware rules.

Last week I got a quote for the vsphere fast track training, it was $6100.00

You can take the test before the class. You just cannot receive you vcp cert until after you take the class.
I did test > class > cert.