There are no more VCP4s in the world

As you read this, there are no more VCP 4 certified people. VMware have introduced a controversial new policy to make VCP certifications expire after 2 years, and March 10th marks the date that the VCP Expiry takes place.

VCP Expiry

The qualification of VCP was in three stages – first, sit a 5 day instructor led course. Second, obtain hands-on and real-world experience with vSphere and associated technologies (because, the training course does not prepare you for the exam). And finally, sit the 2 hour multipe-choice exam to obtain the VCP qualification.

In previous years, when VMware released new versions of vSphere, people who were already qualified as VCPs could take the exam on the new version (within the first 3 months) without needing to spend $3000-$5000 on a training course. This means that there are some people who obtained a VCP2, then upgraded it to VCP3, VCP4 and then VCP5 – all without doing a new training course.

By expiring the VCP certification, this means that only people who have recent and relevant experience can hold the VCP qualification. In theory, people with a VCP3 from 2008 could have still been able to claim that they are VCP certified and be seen by the industry as qualified in VMware products.

Industry impact

One one hand, this is a good move to add weight to the VCP qualification – you can only claim to be VCP certified if your experience and skills are recent and on the current (or in coming years, n-1) version.

However, there will still be people who have officially had their qualification expire, but hoping that no-one checks up on them. As having been an employer in a small to medium sized business, we never really checked up on certifications or qualifications, we just trusted if they held a certificate, this was enough – a degree certificate, MCSE, CNE, certification on other products – just trusted by seeing the certificate.

Furthermore, there are many small businesses with small IT functions, where the recruiter may not know about the new expiry policy – and hire a person with expired certifications.

Engineer impact

This is particularly true for people who already hold a VCP5 which is now expired. VMware’s approach is that engineers & administrators need to re-take the exam for VCP5 in order to retain their certification. This, to me, is the biggest point of contention and disagreement from people. If VMware had expired the VCP4 and below, and required people to certify on VCP5 – then this would be more pallatable because the vSphere 4 products are End of Life and so it makes perfect sense to expire those.

Does a VCP5 that is over 2 years old mean that you have forgotten it all? In order to pass the VCP5, you need hands on and real world experience – the training course is most certainly not enough to pass the VCP exam. So, people who are trusted and skilled administrators and engineers who spend all day with vSphere 5, are suddenly considered by VMware to need to prove their skills again. This does not add up.

Just re-do the exam?

What’s the problem then? If you use vSphere 5 every day, just spend the $300 to do the exam again, a pass should be no problem, right?
Well, for those who have done the VCP, you may agree with me that the exam covers areas that you may never come across in your regular usage of the product. For example, if you are an iSCSI house, then you need to re-study FC (and vice-versa), and what about if you don’t use, (or only use) NFS? I’ve never had to make manual firewall changes at the command line (I always use the GUI, Host Profiles etc.), but you need to know the syntax intimately to pass the VCP exam. To pass the exam will most definitely take re-study.
From personal experience, I used vSphere every day, I was the go-to person in a 40 host multi-site, multi-SAN environment, and I even worked for VMware in a technical role – but I still found the VCP5 exam to be one of the hardest exams I have ever done. I have 14 certifications, so exams are a regular occurence for me. In my career, I have come across many people with (for example) Microsoft certifications, where their entire knowledge on the subject was simply what was needed to pass the (relatively simple) exam, and no real-world experience. This is where the VCP is really worth more than other certifications.

The cost of the exam is of course an issue. Many employers’ policies state that they will either not pay this and expect the candidate to do it, or only pay if they pass. Employers, who have not budgeted for it or have tight allowances, might simply refuse to allow their employee to take time off to study, or to pay for the exam.

Alternatives

VMware’s advice is that you should re-certify as a VCP5 before 10th March 2015, or take one of the VCAP exams. This will retain all previous VCP certifications. I don’t really see why you should do that unless you really want to keep VCP4 or older versions as “valid” certifications.

If you take the VCP5 (or the VCP6) or a VCAP exam after 10th March 2015 (and pass), then you only get the certification that you just passed, and anything you had before (i.e. VCP3 etc.) has already expired, so you can only use the new certification you hold.

You can’t get authorisation to do a VCAP exam unless you are already VCP certified – so doing the Advanced exam only implies that you have a VCP, but you don’t actually hold a VCP as well. Weird, huh?

What now?

I think it’s valid that VCP2 is now obsolete, that VCP3 is now invalid and VCP4 has expired – and that no-one should claim that having one of those certifications makes them valid as an administrator or engineer in a virtualised environment.

However, I think that employers and engineers/administrators should discuss what the expired VCP5 qualification means to them – my advice is to certify on vSphere 6 later this year, or do a VCAP. Oh, by the way, did you get authorisation for the VCAP before your VCP expired?