Microsoft and other Certifications

[Bugbait]

I'm mainly talking about people wanting to get into IT as the intial expense in gettin up to speed and getting some certs behind you is expensive. Unless your very very lucky then a lot of employers simply won't fork out the money to provide you with expensive training or equipment. My VCP cost £1600 plus 3 HP ML115 servers to setup a lab, 1 technet account and other equipment like a switch for VLAN's came to around £2600 so it's not cheap. A lot of IT professionals like me agree that you should have a home lab and possibly a technet account (if working with MS software) and that costs money hence the statement it's an expensive career to be in. Also as a contractor if your going through an Umbrella than usually they have a limit of £500 and if your a ltd company then it's still only the tax relief you get so it still costs you money money to progress your career.

I agree that if you’re new to the IT profession or changing careers then the initial re-skilling and education can be pricey, but that would apply to most professions in this scenario. Although employers are unlikely to provide you with equipment, most medium to large IT employers would send you on a course every 1-2 years at a minimum, else you’re probably doing something wrong.

Once you start getting into “real” contracting (ie. Multiple simultaneous clients), I don’t see the appeal of an Umbrella over a Limited company. Sure, in the Limited case the money is still coming out of your gross earnings, but let’s be honest, how many IT technicians wouldn’t buy the same toys to play with anyway? I’m on the software side so the “necessary” outgoings are arguably less but my hardware (network and AD) friends love to tinker with VM’s and what not. Usually it’s on older hardware which would’ve been replaced anyway.

The people who are serious about keeping on top of their profession should be making enough that £5k+ a year on hardware and training should barely phase them. Most IT professionals I’ve worked with don’t spend beyond some books from Amazon and free information on the Internet. Although they may not be making a six figure salary, they’re happily employed. I just don’t feel that the cost of entry or up-skilling in IT is as high as you have suggested. Sure, you CAN spend a lot but it’s arguably not necessary.

[pardal51]

ouch you went for the expensive way on a homelab - I've got mine running in workstation , was good enough for my VCAP stuff , apart from pvlans. I was also lucky enough to have an MSDN sub via work which helped out a bit, although you can do a lot with eval licences.

Although running on Workstation is okay, I have also invested in a lab with 3xML115+ Procurve 1810G-8 which is far better, if you are willing to spend some dosh (around £1K). Still working hard to sit the VCP410. Luckly employer paid for the course + technet subscription. Lab is also great to configure your MS AD domain and test loads and loads of things.

[Moby-Dick]

It was good enough for my VCAP-DCA exam (one above VCP410 - due for launch in July ) , however I also have a really large production environment (900vm's+) to "play" in I didn't use a lab for my VCP3 & VCP4 study.

[slypie]

ouch you went for the expensive way on a homelab - I've got mine running in workstation , was good enough for my VCAP stuff , apart from pvlans. I was also lucky enough to have an MSDN sub via work which helped out a bit, although you can do a lot with eval licences.

Yeah it wasn't cheap but I figured that in the long run it would be worth it. I needed 1 server for an openfiler SAN and the other 2 to install ESX to play with Vmotion and other features that need clustered servers and a SAN to test on. I have a Dell T105 but my RAID card doesn't work on it so had to buy an extra ML115 which was a pain in the wallet

[Moby-Dick]

I installed openfiler as a VM so could still play with vmotion , the only thing you can't do with nested ESX is run x64 guests or fault tolerance.