Re: IBM System administration certification.

Rob,

The certification authors (mostly industry people with some IBMrs in the mix) write the tests so experience will be important when taking the tests. Also the test is set up so that while you may be weak in one area, such as topics like VIOS, if you are strong in other areas, you will still successfully navigate the test. As you have done already check out the web site for the objectives. On that tab you'll see the object area (Journaling and Database Administration is the second one) and the percentage of questions of the overall test on those 8 topics. 11% of 87 questions is about one question per topic in that objective. Since there is no assesement test for the System Admin test you can use the objectives and the topics in each objective to gauge your skill level.

While I did not work on this specific version of the test I have worked on the previous version to this one and many of the others and I know the SME authors spend a great deal of effort to be sure the questions are relevant, technically correct, and can be answered by the qualified candidate without too much trouble.

As of now, I am not aware of any activity to update the administration test, so I'd go ahead and take it now if your ready.

Jim Oberholtzer
Chief Technical Architect
Agile Technology Architects


On 8/30/2011 4:05 PM, rob@xxxxxxxxx wrote:

I am not interested in the debate of whether or not certifications are
worth a bean. What I want to know is that, for someone who is NOT going
to be selling systems and who wants to be certified more on the
administration end than the developer end, what are the steps I should
pursue?

About all I could see here
http://www-03.ibm.com/certify/certs/ps_index.shtml
is "IBM Certified System Administrator - IBM i 6.1". Ok, I don't have
systems as old as 6.1, but I'll go with that perhaps it's not that big of
a jump to 7.1.

Are the next steps:
- find out if there is an assessment test to prepare you
- take it
- based on it then find out what additional education I need and take it
- take "real" test?

Let's say it is decided that I need it all (I suspect I'd be real weak in
VIOS). What should I budget for?

Any heads up that I should wait two months for new certification stuff
would be appreciated. Domino is nice enough to post that.


Rob Berendt
-- Group Dekko Dept 1600 Mail to: 2505 Dekko Drive Garrett, IN 46738 Ship to: Dock 108 6928N 400E Kendallville, IN 46755 http://www.dekko.com
--