VMWare Certified Professional Update - VCP

At VMWare TSX in Sydney this year, there was a presentation on the VCP certification and where it was headed. This information included how to upgrade the certification, how to get a new certification and how VMWare plans to keep the value of the VMWare Certified Professional program. Seeing as there was not much information on the internet about this, I thought I would summarise the knowledge from this session for people who need or want to know.

VMWare Certified Professionals are people who have completed a training course on VMWare and passed an examination. The value of this certification is currently very high and VMWare hopes to keep it that way. The worst fear is that a certification program becomes a paper certification, and the steps that VMWare are taking to stop this is excellent. The first thing is that in order to do the exam you need to have paid for a professionally run VMWare course. Many people will tell you different things about the exam as well, some people say it is hard and others say it is easy. It is all about skill and knowledge and is definately targeted at the right difficulty level.

To get the current VCP certification on ESX 2.x you need to attend the ESX Server 2 and VirtualCenter 1 Course. You then need to pass the *current* VCP exam, which will no longer be available after December 31st 2006. If you want to gain certification in Virtual Infrastructure 3 and you are currently certified you need to pass the VCP on VI3 exam. There is an upgrade or "what's new" course for current VCP's but this course is not a requirement. What if you have done the ESX 2 course but not got the certification ? Then you need to sit the upgrade or "whats new" course and pass the exam, this is the only situation where the "whats new" course is a requirement.  If you are not currently certified and you want to be certified on VI3 then you will need to sit the VI3 course and pass the VI3 exam.

The VCP certification on VI3 is also tested on different categories than it was on the old VCP certification. They have dropped sections like "Understand VMWare products" and "Differentiate between VMWare products". An unconfirmed list of objectives tested is listed below. The new exam should be available soon, the initial estimate was 12 weeks after the VI3 release.

Virtual Infrastructe
Installation of ESX and VirtualCenter
Networking
Storage
Virtual Machines
Access Control
Resource Management
Resource Pools
Monitor Environments
Data Protection
Troubleshooting

The VCP certification also looks like it will break into certain categories which you can specialise in. While these have not been annouced there have been suggestions that these categories would include tech support, consulting, system engineer, system administrator and sales. This not only works to towards maintaining the value of the certification but allows you to specialise and identify peoples expertise. VMware has also suggested that they are working on increasing VCP benefits, and events for VCP's.

There are currently over 5200 VCP's worldwide that span across 80 countries and 2300 companies. Many more people than this have attended the training courses. Due to the current exam's retirement not until the end of the year, I will post some study and training notes for people who wish to pursue the current certification down the track. Once I have done the upgrade course or the exam I will also try and post some details for others in the same situation.