Jason Nash’s Blog

Back in December EMC announced a new set of certifications, the EMC Cloud Architect (EMCCA) and EMC Data Center Architect (EMCDCA).  I think it’s still too early to know the value of these types of certifications.  They are broad yet still have a vendor focus.  Is that good?  Bad?  I honestly don’t know yet.  Given the momentum of cloud computing I’m sure we’ll see similar certifications from other vendors as well as some “industry standard / non-vendor” type certifications.  Only time will tell which of these will provide value to customers, vendors, and partners.  But until then, we have the new EMC offerings!

They are broken out as follows:

• EMC Cloud Architect Virtualized Infrastructure – Provides information architects, designers and consultants with the knowledge and skills to effectively converge and manage storage, servers and networking environments that are critical to building virtualized data centers and cloud infrastructures.
• EMC Cloud Architect IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) – An expert-level certification for cloud architects, designers and consultants who are EMCCA Virtualized Infrastructure certified. This program helps IT professionals evolve virtualized infrastructures into cloud-based, IT-as-a-Service environments.  Note that this certification builds upon the Virtualized Infrastructure EMCCA.  It is an additional, as yet unreleased, exam.
• EMC Data Center Architect – Enables IT professionals to deploy the foundational information infrastructure technologies that comprise both the traditional and virtualized data center. Individuals who achieve this certification can specialize in Storage Networking, Information Availability, Information Storage Security and Storage Service Management (based on ITIL best practices). Virtualization is also a fundamental component to EMCDCA training.

I’m not going to talk too much about the EMCDCA as I don’t have any current plans to pursue that certification.  The gist of it is that it’s a more specialized certification than the EMCCA.  You choose a specialization, such as Storage Networking, and focus on that.

To be honest, this whole certification offering has been a bit confusing and there hasn’t been a lot of information on exactly how you obtain these until recently.  So, to make it simple the EMCCA Virtualized Infrastructure requires two exams:

• E20-001, Information Storage and Management (ISM) – This is a standard EMC exam that they require for many different certifications.  Think of it as a base level storage, backup, DR, and storage networking exam.  I took this over two years ago as part of my EMC Technology Architect (EMCTA) certification that is required for many partners.  Note that this exam is also a requirement for the EMCDCA certification.
• E20-018, Virtualized Infrastructure Specialist Exam for Cloud Architect (Long name!) – This exam just went live today (3/28/11) and makes up the second half of the EMCCA certification.  Training for this exam isn’t publicly available yet.  I was invited to take the class and still plan to do so in May.

For the EMCDCA you take another exam, depending on your focus, instead of E20-018.  So both certifications really consist of a minimum of two exams.  As mentioned above, the third exam for the EMCCA IaaS certification has not been announced.

After a couple months wait the E20-018 exam for the EMCCA went live today so I thought I’d give it a shot.  As I said earlier I have not gone to the course yet so I went in blind without much information on this test.  The information on EMC’s site is the usual vague blueprint, and even more so than usual for this one.  It was an interesting morning.  I take my exams at a local community college and this morning when I got there I found out they had lost power last night and were in the process of rebooting and bringing up the entire Vue testing system.  That set me back 45 mins to an hour but in the end everything worked fine.  I was worried since this was a brand new exam and I wanted to make sure their systems had downloaded it in time.

The good news is that I passed!  The exam consists of 60 multiple choice questions.  No simulations or lab type questions are given.  There is some time limit but I don’t remember what it was.  I’m firmly in the “I know it or I don’t” camp so I never agonize over questions and rarely run out of time.  Right or wrong, I push through certification exams!

Of course, I can’t tell you what was really on the exam.  Look at the information on EMC’s site.  This is one of those exams where the class will probably be helpful, mainly so that you sync up with EMC’s terminology and acronyms.  One thing I hate is seeing an acronym used before it is defined.  Even on certification exams that is bad form!  Lately I’ve been doing a lot with Cisco Nexus 7000 switches so right now my head sees VDC as Virtual Device Context, not Virtualized Data Center.  It took me a second reading of a question to click over to that train of thought.  Overall it does help to have real world design experience on this exam.  It’s not as specific as say the VMware Design exam (VCAP-DCD).  If you look at the blue print PDF I linked to earlier you’ll see that it’s fairly  high level and I won’t argue with that.  There is nothing I saw today on the exam that isn’t touched on in the blueprint.  This exam is really about why businesses are moving to cloud.  Think business drivers.  Think governance.  Think process management.  Think about the whys not really the hows.

As I said, I passed the exam.  Since there are no labs or other “loose” questions you get your results immediately.  This afternoon I received this is an email:

Congratulations on your achievement. You have successfully completed all of the requirements for Cloud Architect, Virtualized Infrastructure Specialist Version 1.0.

Another nice benefit right now is that the first 50 people to obtain this certification get a free pass to EMC World.  I expect to receive that though I’m unsure if I’ll be able to attend due to my schedule.  I’ve never been to EMC World so maybe this will help me get there.

My plan is still to attend the training in May.  The purpose of that is to see EMC’s thoughts on cloud deployment and methodologies.  I would love to say I nailed this exam and walked out with a 98% but I didn’t due to some terminology differences and other disconnections.  My primary reason for taking this exam was to get a feel for how the training would be and the target audience.  I expect it to be good.