Last night I recieved an email from an IT professional, looking for some career advice when it comes to learning about virtualization and how to get started. I won't post the original email, but I am posting my response.
Hey *****,
First off, thanks for reading! It's always cool to see there is someone out there finding useful information. Thanks for the compliments, but I will preface that I'm in my "late" twenties, hah. I still have a long way to go when it comes in terms of my career. I won't lie and tell you that I know everything, heck, I still need career advice. :) But I'll try to give you some insights into where I see the industry trending.
Looking at your background, I think you would be a great candidate to start learning about virtualization. I started my career off in 2006 when I graduated college, working at a marketing firm and doing basic help desk stuff. I did that for a while and found out that helping end-users isn't the most fun in the world. I buckled down, got my CCNA, and wanted to get into networking. I was at my first company for 2 years, then I left to take a network engineer position at my last company. I was in charge of the whole network (5 cities, 250 users, 80 servers) and they threw me into virtualization. I'm so glad they did. They sent me to the fast track course for ESX 3.5 and I went and took the VCP3. While I was there, I focused on infrastructure and moving forward. I optimized the network, cleaned up the virtual environment, and had the place sitting pretty for a while.
The economy took a turn and I was let go. Luckily, they gave me the skills I needed to land a new job. I was only out of a job for 4 days before I was hired at my current company. I came in here as a network engineer as well and built their virtual environment from the ground up. In my opinion, having the networking background is huge! I completely revamped the infrastructure by replacing a router on a stick network w/ stacked Layer 3 switches so I could get the ground work ready to start virtualizing. Also, knowing how to administer windows is a plus to any resume, but like most IT pros, it's a task that alot of people can do. Being in the virtual world means having an overall strong skill set. The old saying goes, "Jack of all trades, but master of none", and that's how I picture myself. Being successful within the virtual world means having to know all you can about 4 major components: networking, high-end storage, operating systems, and computing (servers, blades, UCS, etc). I believe it's very hard to dedicate yourself to a particular technology because every piece is continually moving forward, much less trying to keep up with all those applications that businesses need to function.
Demand for VCPs is huge right now. There is a boom because everyone is starting to see the benefits. It's only a matter of time before the VCP is a commodity, but it's still 5-10 maybe 15 years away. The great thing about mid-size and large companies, is that the savings they achieve by virtualizing their infrastructure can easily pay for the salary of hiring VMware Engineers.
Ok, now to some of your questions.
What's the best way to get started? Wherever you currently work, do you have a virtual initiative? Is your infrastructure currently undergoing evaluation? Ask your superior to be a part of the team. Better yet, if you don't have an initiative, start one. Start learning about all the benefits of virtualization and what it can bring to your company. Make a proposal and see what happens. Build a lab to learn everything you can. There are plenty of blogs out there that talk about building white boxes and virtualizing ESX within itself so you can test out advanced features.
Do you feel VCP is the way to go? VCP is the starting point. Sort of like having a CCNA, there are more advanced levels to take your skills. VMware makes you go to a VMware course to get your VCP. I think the cost now is closer towards $5000. I would definitely have your company pay for this. This is something I wouldn't pay for out of my own pocket unless I was completely desperate. Your company will be glad they paid for it in the end. Having an in-house administrator to take care of the VMware environment is a specialized skill set.
Is there longevity in a Virtualization career? There is one huge plus to virtualization when it comes to your career. Once a server or application has been virtualized, it's VERY rare that it would ever go back to being physical. Businesses need people who can manage this new type of infrastructure. As I said before, it will only be a matter of time before the VCP is a commodity. Eventually, all businesses will be virtualized. But there is always the next step. Right now there is a huge push for the private cloud. VMware and other partners are pushing businesses to virtualize their most critical applications so they can have a taste of what's to come in the future. The future is going to be the public cloud. The public cloud is a still a long way away. Let me give you a few reasons why:
- Getting rid of the OS. Ok, you can't get rid of the Operating System, but the main focus of a business is not on the OS, it's all about the application! Seeing as how you're an Exchange dude, wouldn't you rather see a Microsoft OS that isn't bloated and only needs the components necessary to make it a functional Exchange server? This way you cut down on the attack surface and patching wouldn't be such an arduous process.
- Dedicated application engineers aren't needed. Think of an application you currently use in-house. How did you get that application? You had to purchase it, someone sent a CD or you downloaded an ISO, and installed it on your server. Now, there is someone that has to take care of that application. You have to worry about patching and if something will disrupt the application, upgrades to the application, backups, and reboots with downtime. SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) is going to be a big wave for application vendors. The end-user only cares about the application, they don't care about back-ups or the underlying OS and that's what application vendors are offering. Having a web-based ("cloud") application, allows you pay the application vendor directly without needing to ever purchase new hardware or worry about any other administrative task. If an end-user has a problem, contact the application support. Microsoft already has "Exchange in the cloud" products available, so why would a company need an admin that can handle advanced Exchange tasks? All a company needs is someone who can do basic add/remove mailboxes for administrative purposes. Performing 2007 to 2010 or future migrations would all be handled on the provider side, no longer is this an in-house problem. Don't hold me to this because there are lots of email solutions out there and I don't know how every application works. For most part, you are always going to need someone who can handle Active Directory.
- Getting companies comfortable. With everything listed above, it's going to take companies a while before they feel comfortable putting everything outside of their local data center.
Is the technology exciting to work with, or is it just boring, but complicated, so it pays well? Help desk, now that can be boring. Learning about BPDUs, that be can boring. Virtualization is about as exciting as it can get with IT. The 4 major components of virtualization has new technologies and features added to it almost everyday it seems. There is always something to read or a new technology to learn. It's a very fast-paced market with competitors bringing the heat. A few years ago, vMotion debuted with VMware by being able to move a running virtual machine from one physical host to another without even dropping a ping packet. The whole world freaked out! What an exciting technology! It took until this year that Hyper-V was able to get Live Migration to a point it was ready for production, so moving around virtual machines in your private cloud is almost looked at as a commodity. New features will always be on the horizon whether it's with VMware, storage vendors, hardware capability, etc.
I see there are companies like CBT Nuggets and Train Signal that offer vSphere courses, but I'm not sure how good they are. Even if you take the fast-track course, having something like Train Signal is still great to have. Train Signal doesn't prepare you to take the VCP, it prepares a person to be a VMware administrator. I know a few people on twitter that are VMware admins and they don't have their VCP. Having a certification means nothing unless you have the experience and capability to back it up.
Exchange Server is really my passion, I'm currently working on my MCTS for Exchange 2010, and hope to prepare for the MCITP for Exchange 2010. As I mentioned, it is my passion, but finding an Exchange Admin/Engineer role has been challenging. Learn virtualization NOW! Learn about virtualizing Exchange on VMware, Hyper-V, and Citrix. If you can master how to optimize Exchange for the 3 top hypervisors, you could easily market yourself as a Virtualized Exchange Expert. Being a consultant in this type of role would make companies feel more comfortable about having an expert such as yourself come in and virtualize their exchange environment to follow best practice and gain performance.
I hope this has helped a bit. I'm very passionate about this technology as you can tell and this is just the tip of the iceberg.
Kenny
Please post any comments that you think would help benefit!