back to article VCDX: The elite certification just 105 people hold

On 28 February next year in Las Vegas, a group of brave IT professionals will go before a jury of their peers and spend half a day defending themselves and their technical skills. The inquisitors will pull no punches and the process will be brutal. Many of those on trial will be defeated, rejected and fly home chastened. Others …

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  1. Mayday
    Stop

    I've heard this before

    I remember hearing a similar huff and puff centred around the CCIE certification. Sure, since I've got mine my prospects have changed and it's all good, but I am not conviced that the benefits have outweighed the commitment of both time and money invested.

    Two points:

    If anything, wages in the industry have gone down steadily in recent years, mine have that's for sure. When the buzz dies from this one and world + dog has it, then it will wind up being a pre requisite for a mid level role (like CCIE is becoming/has become) as opposed to a measure of who the "elite" are.

    Second, NOTHING beats experience, not even the most hard certification in the world. End of story.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: I've heard this before

      "NOTHING beats experience, not even the most hard certification in the world."

      As one of the panelists who is on the other side of the desk, contributing to the decision of who has or doesn't have the skills required to attain the VCDX certification I can say that without experience you will not pass. That's the one of the reasons for the defense process - to sort those with book-smarts from those who have learned from experience across a wide range of scenarios. You could present the best design on the planet and still fail if you aren't able to clearly articulate the decision making process that went into your design and how that design would change given different requirements, constraints etc.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: I've heard this before

      I recently passed CCIE too. Was it worth the time and money invested? Not sure. It cost a lot (paid for it all myself), and it took a massive amount of time. No raise at this point, but I think it will stand me in good stead should I go out seeking other opportunities. If my employer paid for CCIE, then it would be a no-brainer.

      Sounds like these guys are pretty clued up - they talk about spending "over 100 hours" on their proposal, but that doesn't really sound like all that much, if you're used to CCIE-level study. I think that in their cases, they have a LOT of background experience, and so didn't have to put in the same study that I would if I tried to take this on. I' just a lowly VCP, and I think I'll stay there.

    3. RICHTO
      Mushroom

      Re: I've heard this before

      So same idea as a Microsoft Masters, except without the 2 weeks at Redmond (or VMWare...)

  2. Lunatik

    Nice advert...

    ...for VMware's certification racket!

    1. asdf
      Trollface

      Re: Nice advert...

      Yep lots of publicity and all they have to do is throw out a few pieces of paper to the Porsche driving type A everyone look at me douche bag crowd.

  3. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
    Devil

    “It is a completely transferable skill that goes across all boundaries”

    Right.

    Why dontcha help me clean the office fridge, appease the tax collector, then manage the grumpy IT cats in the dev bunker for whom everything is "easy peasy" until they actually have to deliver when it suddenly becomes "extremely complex". Meanwhile their latest construction is throwing bugs left and right which they don't care about, but hey the boss thought "better go downmarket on developer costs". Yes, we will do debugging in the afternoon.

    1. Mussie (Ed)
      Happy

      Re: “It is a completely transferable skill that goes across all boundaries”

      Its not a bug its a feature

  4. seven of five
    Thumb Down

    Helpful advice from El Reg:

    "...and his air miles balance is sky high."

    Thanks for the warning, will stay clear.

  5. John Tserkezis

    Grab it while it's still worth something...

    ...before it turns into what Certified Netware Engineers became.

    I used to know a few who weren't certified to operate a can opener.

  6. amanfromMars 1 Silver badge

    Great Game Spooks R US Advert ..... Plainly Hiding Invisibly in Transparent Sight

    In reply to Lunatik's "Nice advert......for VMware's certification racket!" comment

    And who and/or what is to say that VCDX is not also intelligence head hunting territory‽ It is certainly the sort of field in which it is necessary for one to be able to excel in, in order to effortlessly rule with demonstrations of absolute reign in ..... and with remote virtual command of all manner of empowering physical control with metadatabased cloud servers provisioning smarter phantom agents with leading non-state actor event portfolios, how ever would it be countered and/or bettered without intelligent heads hunting in searching territories?

    And for runners of rackets, is it and IT a novel invaluable tool without which one will always struggle and spectacularly fail, battling against that which one thought worthy to conserve and preserve, rather than change and expand in a fundamentally different leadership direction?

    Three questions there which you have no need to answer for there is no doubt that they are actual facts which shape realities with phormed virtual realities phished from information shared freely in space for satellite collection and virtual machine grooming.

    1. Field Marshal Von Krakenfart
      Facepalm

      Re: Great Game Spooks R US Advert ..... Plainly Hiding Invisibly in Transparent Sight

      <stick head above parapet >

      All certification is a racket

      </stick head above parapet >

      Certification is like an IQ test, it only proves one thing, your good at doing IQ tests/certification exams.

      I'm Java certified but I wouldn't let me near any production Java code, I'll leave that to the experienced Java programmers instead.

      How come nobody ever ask for COBOL or PL/1 certification? How on earth did all those mainframe sites manage for the past 40 years without "certified" COBOL, DB2 and PL/1 programmers.

      • Java SE 6 Associate Certification Value Package - € 2321
      • Java SE 6 Programmer Certification Value Package, € 2347
      • Oracle Database 11g Administrator Certified Associate Certification Value Package € 3023

      You may have 30 years experience in the IT industry, but that doesn't mean you will get past HR's box-checking exercise as happened to me once... "Yes, you do have a lot of IMS experience but we were looking for someone with DL1 as well........." see icon.

      Anyway who on earth wants to be VCDX certified, it sounds like a sexually transmitted disease.

      1. amanfromMars 1 Silver badge

        To be able to concur is a view squared and reinforced and most likely then also cubed in power.

        I wholeheartedly agree with those sentiments and observations, Field Marshal Von Krakenfart.

  7. batfastad
    Headmaster

    “Being a VCDX means I've not had means there has not been any downtime even during the recession,” Webster, who blogs here, told The Register.

    Webster should have skipped the VCDX and gone for GCSEs instead.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      I think you're mistaking the author of the article from the person being quoted. A little grammer check or review wouldn't have hurt.

      1. diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

        Apologies; the article was revised soon after publication to iron out any remaining typos.

        C.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          "revised ... to iron out any remaining typos"

          " the article was revised soon after publication to iron out any remaining typos."

          It may have been revised. But not all remaining typos were eliminated:

          E.g. "VCDXs some in three flavours – cloud ..."

  8. Tom 7

    Difference engine driving licenses

    anyone?

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    What a bunch of...

    ... Certified Universal Network Technicians.

    1. Mussie (Ed)
      Happy

      Re: What a bunch of...

      shouldn't that be " Certified Universal Network Technical Specialists...".

  10. onyxruby
    IT Angle

    Rare certifications aren't as useful as you might think

    I used to travel as an AAC, at the time there were about 200 of them worldwide. The process involved base level certifications, a background check and a you submitted your resume showing appropriate experience just as if you were applying for a job - and you had to be sponsored by a partner that was willing to put their name on the line. That was just to be accepted into a week long training course followed by a day long test.

    I've discovered in the years since then a lot of explaining what that meant to people that had never heard of it. If you were in that particular field it mean something, but otherwise it just didn't seem to have any weight. I've since learned to change my resume to emphasize the skills I used as an AAC instead of the certification itself.

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    VMWare products - its not rocket science

    Builds servers, add multiple shared networks and storage and manage with vCenter tools, and p2v stuff with vmware converter. I can haz payrise?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: VMWare products - its not rocket science

      There's a VMWare setup in RBS that, when it finally works properly, will be incredibly efficient and fast.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: VMWare products - its not rocket science

      No, you need to get a clue first. Your theory is fine for a small deployment - but I wonder if you could scale up to 1000 ESXi hosts and 15,000+ VM's?

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: VMWare products - its not rocket science

      Oh look, someone who doesn't know enough to understand his limitations.

  12. Justin Stringfellow
    FAIL

    proof that the software is too complex

    Sorry but this is an own goal. If the product was properly documented and easy to use, then this level of training wouldn't exist. Either that or they're hawking unncessary training to idiots who'll pay. Either way I don't want in.

    1. JDX Gold badge

      Re: proof that the software is too complex

      Some things are inherently complicated. Enterprise-level virtualisation centres sounds like one of those things to me.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Coffee/keyboard

        Re: proof that the software is too complex

        I disagree. I believe the complexity (which is inherent and necessary) is exacerbated by their poor documentation.

        Unfortunately, they're not alone in this.

      2. Christian Berger

        Re: proof that the software is too complex

        Why is Enterprise-level virtualisation seen as something complex? What makes it so complex?

        From my naive view, it seems like it could be very straight forward.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: proof that the software is too complex

          "Some things are inherently complicated. Enterprise-level virtualisation centres sounds like one of those things to me."

          I don't agree, it doesn't need to be this complex. I know IBM mainframe specialists who manage incredibly large systems. They are highly skilled, but no one needs to spend years learning zVM, IBM mainframes VM layer. There are not nearly as many variables are there are in the x86 space. I think a lot of this is an open systems problem. "Everyone just do whatever you think is right at the time that makes sense for you" does not lead to bulletproof reliability or simplicity. IMO, there are too many vendors with little coordination in the x86 world. That is why it is complex.

        2. Mr Tumnus

          Re: proof that the software is too complex

          "Why is Enterprise-level virtualisation seen as something complex? What makes it so complex?

          From my naive view, it seems like it could be very straight forward."

          Right. Ever done it? Virtualized thousands of servers and made them work, resilient, scale, stress tested them, geographically separated them and had them replicate etc etc etc

          You've not, have you. It is complex. Honestly, it really is. Sorry if you don't like that, not many of us do, but that doesn't mean it's any easier because we'd like it to be.

          1. Ticl

            Re: proof that the software is too complex

            Then why virtualize?? If the resulting architecture is far more complex and harder to maintain than the existing bare metal setup? (*honest question*)

            1. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              Re: proof that the software is too complex

              "Then why virtualize?? If the resulting architecture is far more complex and harder to maintain than the existing bare metal setup? (*honest question*)"

              I'm not sure anyone said it was "more" complex or "harder to maintain" than bare metal. In some ways it's more flexible, more resilient, faster to deploy (compare rolling out 5000 identical spec hardware servers vs virtualised equivalents). That doesn't mean it's straightforward, or that you can't make a complete arse of it if you don't know what you're doing.

              I'm not getting why this is contentious. If you're doing something on a massive scale, you want to do it the best you can, because any mistakes get magnified many times over. So knowing how to deploy those kind of virtualised scenarios to best practice(s) is actually a cracking idea, when compared to getting in someone who thinks they know how to do it to take a crack at it.

            2. Jon Press

              Re: why virtualize?

              That's an extremely good question.

              If you were looking at abstract ways of solving the issues of scalability and reliability, you wouldn't start by running multiple copies of an operating system on a single piece of real hardware in competition with each other for resources.

              It's really only the relative absence of other solutions (particularly for Windows) that's moved virtualisation out of its traditional role in development environments and support for legacy systems. Though, to be fair, there are also a lot more legacy systems around.

              It's also a lot easier for a third party vendor to offer a solution below the OS level from the (vendor's) licensing point of view.

              I wonder whether virtualisation might be less popular if Microsoft had something (of their own) more akin to mobile WPARs.

              Short answer: there are products that can be bought today that solve problems today, even if they're not perfect.

            3. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              Re: proof that the software is too complex

              "Then why virtualize?? If the resulting architecture is far more complex and harder to maintain than the existing bare metal setup? (*honest question*)"

              I think it makes plenty of sense to virtualize provided you have one company testing and managing that platform complexity (as there is in IBM mainframe and Unix). The difficulty and complexity in x86 comes from having one company doing CPU, another doing DRAM, another doing every other hw component, another putting the hw system together, another doing OS, another doing VM, another doing system management software, etc. They all are only responsible for their component, no one is responsible for the system. When you have thousands of potential configuration x86 combinations, there is no way to test them all for interoperability. The system is going to get mangled every now and again because you are running a configuration which has, in all likelihood, never been tested as set up in your environment. The providers of your x86 tech all hate each other. They are not in the mood to help... and, because the financials have been broken up in so many different directions, none of them probably have the financials to become "master system integrator and tester."... It is as simple as this: If you go x86, you are on your own. Sure, you can buy support from various providers, but if you have an interop issue between say Oracle DB and VMware, who owns that?... You do.

          2. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: proof that the software is too complex

            "You've not, have you. It is complex. Honestly, it really is. Sorry if you don't like that, not many of us do, but that doesn't mean it's any easier because we'd like it to be"

            If you have been around for awhile, would you not agree that it has become much more complex in recent years? Mainframe was/is easy, relatively speaking. You can scale-up a wacky large system with hundreds of large VMs all running from the same counsel as the OS, HMC, storage management, etc. About as easy as it could get to run big scale. Unix made it at bit more difficult as there were new variables added, many more adapter providers, many more storage providers, many more apps, system management, etc providers. Still, the VM layer is baked into the OS with AIX or Solaris and you have the ability scale up a single system pretty well to hundreds of cores. x86 came along and it all went sideways. Now we have a million hardware OEM possibilities which every provider needs to account for, OS doesn't know anything about VM, system management doesn't know anything about OS or VM (other than some light integration). You have no ability to scale up as 4 sockets and even with that you don't want to run 40 VMs on one server because they are not all that stable and fail over still isn't a breeze even with VMotion. It turns into this massive scale out environment, in large shops, with some clustering software required across all of the nodes. Also, all of these x86 vendors compete with each other, so they are not putting all that much effort into creating a seamless system or support process.

      3. This post has been deleted by its author

  13. Michael H.F. Wilkinson Silver badge
    Joke

    Somehow

    VCDX sounds like a nerve gas.

    Maybe its just me

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Somehow

      I thought it was that 'stick people' comic strip ;-)

  14. Dakuan
    Pint

    Great

    I'm an MVP and I feel GREAT!

    1. Timmay

      Re: Great

      My mum says I'm a VIP, does that count?

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Great

      MVP = Forum spammer

  15. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    CWGX (Certified Walled Gardens Expert)

    Pity there is no widely recognised certification for people who can design and run things in a large heterogenous environment and have no affiliation with any big vendor (and its agenda). Not that it would be possible in reality (too broad), but it's sad that even to-the-gills certified people (CWGXs) with experience sometimes default to telling people that their organization's IT is bad, because their square peg they know doesn't fit in the round hole of the org. No one around has round holes, right?

    As an aside, every top level certification has in its history a point when there were only a handful of its owners (and not insignifcant part of them were employees of the vendor). Nothing new.

    1. JDX Gold badge
      Joke

      Re: CWGX (Certified Walled Gardens Expert)

      You could feel free to set up a body issuing such certification.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: CWGX (Certified Walled Gardens Expert)

        "You could feel free to set up a body issuing such certification."

        You mean the Cupertino Spaceship doesn't already have one? Quick, do it now before they do!

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: CWGX (Certified Walled Gardens Expert)

      There' are BSD certifications that requires knowledge of a variety of BSDs and Linux.

  16. RainForestGuppy

    So...

    Like CCIEs believe that the answer to everything is adding another CISCO product. A VCDX will just assume that the only solution is VM related.

    These high level certifications are just for vendors to use them as unpaid salesman for their products.

    A real world Solution Architect assess the business requirements, investigates multiple solutions for different vendors and then proposes the best solution for the customer, not just for their preferred supplier.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: So...

      And you think these people will only have experience of VMware? To deploy entreprise class VMware solutions? They won't know any other systems, the pros and cons?

      Riiiiiiiight

  17. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Commercial 'qualifications'

    ...are not worth the paper they may be printed on.

    1. GitMeMyShootinIrons

      Re: Commercial 'qualifications'

      To technical people, yes, to an extent you're right. There are quite a few book/bootcamp MCSEs out there proving that.

      However, there are quite a few HR drones, bean-counters and under-qualified IT managers (emphasis on 'manager') who do attribute value to those pieces of paper and that value can transfer to a tastier contract.

      Not to mention that I find vendor multiple-choice exams strangely therapeutic.

  18. Magister

    The beginning of wisdom...

    Qualifications are extremely valuable (not just for the extra money that they might earn you). Undertaking a recognised course with an examination should show that you have been tested to prove your skills and that you can demonstrate the ability to look at a situation and offer a sensible solution to a given problem. It should also show that you have the ability to think critically about your own work; and confirm if what you think you know is correct.

    Experience is what you gain as you work in a given area; and it can be highly valuable. However, experience does not always mean that someone is working to the most practical or efficient method. All too often, people find a way that works and then they use that same method whatever the situation. It can be very effective; I've seen experts look at an issue and quickly identify the problem. But equally, I've seen people leap into fixing a problem and just make it worse because they thought that they knew what the issue was without actually bothering to check all of the facts (because they "knew better than anyone else").

    Personally, I would be happy to listen to anyone based upon both experience and qualification. But I would still reserve judgement until I was happy that what they said was proven to be accurate. I'm probably biased; I have some qualifications and many years experience; but that doesn't mean that I think I'm always right.

    There is an old saying; "The beginning of wisdom is the statement 'I do not know'"

  19. Joe Harrison

    not again thankyou

    Vendors always claim "this time it's real" for their certification programs but honestly they are a treadmill delivering value only to the vendor itself. Any decent syllabus will by definition be time-consuming to complete and by the time you finally do get there you will find that the industry has moved on to the next thing.

    I did absolutely tons of Novell and Microsoft exams but always no sooner had I got the latest shiny badge than it would be obsolete and back to square one. Comes a time you have to draw a line and ask yourself is this a good investment of your time.

  20. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    KISS... Or else.

    I think I've spotted the problem with this qualification:

    "All has to be enterprise class and sufficiently complex for large enterprises".

    Surely a good architect makes it as uncomplicated as possible... Unless he wants to earn enough money to afford a Porsche I suppo... Oh.

  21. Ross K Silver badge
    WTF?

    A Doctorate, You Say?

    Chief Technology Officer Steve Herrod has likened it to attaining doctorate in VMware.

    I'm sure anybody who's put in a LOT more than 350 hours obtaining a real doctorate in something useful like education, nursing, or engineering would be highly insulted at having their qualification compared to this nonsense. Utter wank.

    1. Crisp

      Re: A Doctorate, You Say?

      I'd rather have the doctorate. At least then I can go around calling myself Doctor.

      1. Rukario
        Headmaster

        Re: A Doctorate, You Say?

        "At least then I can go around calling myself Doctor."

        As long as you can wave the sonic screwdriver.

        Personally, I'd prefer calling myself Master and have the human tissue compressor.

    2. Ross K Silver badge
      Facepalm

      Re: A Doctorate, You Say?

      Downvoted by a Porsche driver? Ouch.

  22. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Chief Technology Officer Steve Herrod has likened it to attaining doctorate in VMware.

    Any bets on how long before it becomes a mandatory requirement for a job stacking shelves at Grotco?

  23. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Err...

    "Chief Technology Officer Steve Herrod has likened it to attaining doctorate in VMware."

    In which case, he doesn't know much about the process of obtaining a phd. You have to study a subject to a level deeper than anyone else has ever done before. It typically takes at least three or four years, having seen what people who have done chemistry, philosophy and sizemology phd courses have gone through, I can't say that this would fit with their experience.

    I would also make a note that the couple of computer science phd/masters people that I know or have worked with suggest that they wouldn't be the people you go to for real world problems. They're very intelligent, highly skilled, but just don't really get how you would really do something in a large company.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Err...

      So they are saying this product needs someone with a PhD level of ability to get it to work? Sounds like they have fundamental design problems!

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Err...

      "sizemology " - the study of how big things are?

    3. Ross K Silver badge
      Joke

      Re: Err...

      having seen what people who have done chemistry, philosophy and sizemology phd courses have gone through, I can't say that this would fit with their experience.

      Reminds me of a joke I heard once...

      What do you say to someone with a philosophy doctorate?

      "Large Big Mac meal with Coke please"

    4. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Err...

      "In which case, he doesn't know much about the process of obtaining a phd. "

      Are you sure about that? I think he might have some idea of what's involved.......

      http://www.vmware.com/au/company/leadership/stephen-herrod.html

      "Herrod holds a Ph.D. and a master’s degree in computer science from Stanford University, and a bachelor of arts degree from the University of Texas, Austin."

    5. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Err...

      Given that the CTO of VMware is a PhD I'd say he knows about the process. Also the time required before you're ready to attempt to become a VCDX could be very similar, i.e. multiple years of study / experience.

  24. Jame_s

    certs are a racket.

    unfortunately, most big companies buy into the racket wholeheartedly.

  25. Rebajas
    Facepalm

    XKCD

    Oops, thought that said XKCD...

    ...wondered why the article wasn't funny :)

  26. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    VCDX.. just image what it’d be like for a whole OS.

    Sorry, but “I wonder if you could scale up to 1000 ESXi hosts” is a ‘codpiece in a gay bar’ scale-up is more about heat/power/cabling/security/management than any slither of software slipped in between a real OS (with real applications) and the hardware.

  27. Chris Collins

    Bad car choices

    A Carrera? Really? Could he not get a better 911, like the Turbo? Or a totally different car all together?

    1. Lusty

      Re: Bad car choices

      Doesn't even say NEW Porsche!

      1. TangD
        Thumb Down

        Re: Bad car choices

        I wondered about the Porsche thing, it's hardly a mark of wealth. I bought an older one to potter around in on sunny days, cost considerably less than the Ford F150s that seem to ferry every man and his dog around here in TX. There are expensive Porsches but the base Carrera? We're not talking mid 6 figures income here are we?

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Bad car choices

      Bear in mind uninformed people often think any and every 911 *is* a Carerra. Sometimes people don't know they own a 911, like a certain small oil-related company manager guy I used to bump into.... they simply call it a "Carrera". Probably because it doen't say "911" on it.

      The fact that you used to get 924, 944 and 928 Carreras is completely fresh news to them.

      I once knew another guy who had the 911=Carrera blindspot, he once spent days hunting for coffee called "Parisienne" until I pointed out to him that most likely, Parisians didn''t grow coffee ;)

      Perhaps someone sold our tech-guy the Carerra at a sky-high price having figured he wouldn't know any better, he probably never will, and will therefore be happy :P

      1. Matt Bryant Silver badge
        Devil

        Re: Re: Bad car choices

        ".....924......" Ah, the fun we used to have winding up 924 owners! They used to get so upset when you let them into the secret of the 924's heritage - a rejected VW project, passed over for the Sirrocco, using a VW van engine and built by VW workers on the old NSU production line! About as far from a "real" Porsche as you could get.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Coat

          Re: Bad car choices

          A virtual Porsche on a volkswagen bare metal hypervisor?.

  28. Lars Silver badge
    Coat

    Vocabulary

    Even if I have nothing to do with this particular (what ever letters) thing, I have learned it‘s more or less always about the vocabulary. It‘s a bit like every car manufacturer had a different word for "spark plug". And even if you feel you know what and why, you are pants if you don‘t know the right word for it. So what. Hats and coats.

  29. Arachnoid
    Trollface

    Re: A Doctorate, You Say?

    So maybe a Virtual Doctor

    1. Ross K Silver badge

      Re: A Doctorate, You Say?

      So maybe a Virtual Doctor

      drwatson.exe ?

  30. Willie T
    Windows

    This is news?

    Microsoft has a similar certification for some time now, the Microsoft Certified Architect. All of the details listed on the VMware cert are nearly verbatim what is required for the MCA: years of experience, multiple lower level certs, a major project that you can present and defend to a screening panel, etc. It is also a very rare cert only held by the top level folks in these specialties it is offered in.

    I guess their PR department isn't as good as VMware when it comes to getting articles posted in El Reg.

    1. Simon_Sharwood_Reg_APAC_Editor (Written by Reg staff)

      Re: This is news?

      Hi Willie, no PR involvement in this one mate. I met a VCDX at a function, investigated and here are the results. VMware PR helped with some data, but this story was NOT pitched to me by VMware.

  31. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Failed it already

    So it is tough, but the key issue that nobodies heard of it is huge. I'm stunned that they've only reached 105 guys certified and already split it into 3 tracks, they needed to get > 500 before that.

    I did CCIE >10 years ago, and have never regretted it, but that does have some name recognition, I'm not in any hurry to find the time and money (from my own pocket as my employer hasn't heard of it either) to try again.

  32. Matt Bryant Silver badge
    Facepalm

    Just in time!

    What with Hyper-V getting ready to eat it from below, I suppose VMware need to to push the product into the "enterprise" level, and what better way than an "architect" qualification.

  33. Herby

    As for Porsches...

    There is only ONE real Porsche, the 356, preferably a Cabriolet!

    Get a Carrera version of that an you have something (no I never saw one, but they were available). Of course it will attract tickets from the local gendarmes but driving on the 280 freeway at 90MPH with the top down on a clear summer night is a wonder to behold.

    As for certifications, most of them prove that you can get certified, and not much else. I suspect that there exceptions (and VCDX might be one) but you get the picture.

    If you want REAL certifications, try flight training or medicine where you don't really have time to look up things (blood pressure over 200 is really bad for instance). To get these, you need to train, and go through a "real life" test of your knowledge.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: As for Porsches...

      Pah! I can do that in my Vauxhall Tigra...

      1. Matt Bryant Silver badge
        Coat

        Re: Re: As for Porsches...

        "....I can do that in my Vauxhall Tigra...." Probably not without serious doubts as to your sexual orientation.

        /Yeah, OK, quit pushing in your politically-correct manner, I'm going

  34. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Who Cares

    Is it also a mandatory requirement that those applying for this certification have their humility removed? It sure seems that way as VCDX seems to be synonymous with arrogance beyond this world.

  35. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Some clarifications......

    Some of the wording within the article as well as the comments here seem to indicate that there are some misunderstandings regarding the VCDX certification so I thought I would provide some clarifications based on my experience as someone who has gone through the certification process, and who is now on the VCDX certification panel.

    1. The defense process is not an 'interrogation' or 'inquisition', nor is it a ‘brutal process’. My experience was that it was about the same of level questioning as you would expect when presenting a design to a team of customer architects.

    2. I suspect the hours of prep time mentioned in the article is a reference to the time taken to put together the design and certification application that you intent to defend. It is not the total hours experience and learning that the candidate has undertaken. (I'm not aware of any VCDX holders with less than 5 years experience with VMware products in an enterprise environment) 350 hours does seem high for this step. My personal experience was around 30 hours (in addition to ~10 years experience with the technology) but it will depend on whether or not you have an existing design you can present.

    3. Once you have your VCP certification there are no compulsory training requirements to attain the higher levels of certification (VCAP or VCDX) so this is definitely not an exercise in pushing VMware's education offerings. There are 'suggested' courses available, but these will only get you so far and are not mandatory. Without extensive real-world experience you won't succeed. This certification is designed to weed out those who only hold theoretical knowledge.

    4. ‘Complexity’ is not one of the criteria for this certification and unnecessary complexity will definitely hurt your chances of passing.

    5. The correct name for the certification targeting desktop virtualization architects is "VCDX-Desktop", not "VCDX-EUC"

    5. I'm VCDX certified and I don't own a Porsche

    6. The manager running the VCDX program drives a (rusty) '91 Jeep.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Some clarifications......

      The requirements for the design from the blueprint state the following:

      The design you submit must be for an infrastructure…

      - where business requirements drive design and implementation decisions

      - suited for mission-critical applications

      - in a managed environment.

      The design should definitely not be unnecessarily complex. But try and produce a design that meets those requirements in an enterprise managed environment that does not have some complexity.

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