Discounted VCP-NV – It’s Never Been Cheaper

Discounted VCP-NV Bottom Line Up Front

There’s a discounted VCP-NV promotional package right now; $2,200 gets you:

• An exam prep course for the vSphere Foundations course
• An exam voucher for vSphere Foundations
• NSX Install, Configure, Manage On-Demand E-Learning course
• A separate NSX exam prep course
• An exam voucher for the VCP-NV 6.2
• 6 CPUs of NSX Enterprise for non-production personal use (training)
• A full year of VMUG Advantage, including eval licenses for almost all VMware products.

If you’re an individual contributor who’s been thinking of furthering your virtualization education by investing yourself, the cost just dropped by $1,800. This is an amazing way to help support those in the professional ranks with a goal to gain VMware certification. Remember, if you’re playing your cards right, this is the only class you ever have to pay for to gain and maintain VMware Certification. If you’re in charge of a team charged with virtual infrastructure and networking, you can now train two people in network virtualization for the price of one. Your ability to invest in your team just got magnified. Normally just the NSX ICM course is $4000 (perhaps with a coupon for an exam if you’re careful about who you buy it from). The two prep courses aren’t even available a la carte.

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The Details

When one of my colleagues pointed out this promotion to me, I was blown away. Read the original post at The NSX Mindset. I wanted to make sure there wasn’t a hidden cost; The details do matter, so here they are. VMware is running this promotion in conjunction with the VMUG Advantage program. The individual needs to:

1. Join VMUG (that initial step as a “Member” is free)
2. Join the VMUG NSX Community (still no cost)
3. Get VMUG Advantage with EVALExperience (This is $200)
4. Get the VMUG NSX Training and Certification Package (This is $2,000)

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VCP-NV Training Plan

There’s a published, detailed VCP-NV Training Plan that’s worth perusing. It lays out an aggressive plan for getting the certification in less than 40 days, start-to-finish. Again, that’s aggressive, but achievable by a motivated individual. Remember that the on-demand training class needs to be completed in 30 days, but the rest of the benefits are linked to the VMUG Advantage membership.

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… Profit!

What will you do with a VCP-NV? A good manager would make this a management objective and justification to give an individual contributor some kind of professional recognition. Perhaps it’s part of a professional development plan for the individual to gain a new title and more salary. As a manager have you set up a system whereby relevant education and certifications gets the department more budget for salary from the director?

At times managers feel like investing in certifications for their reports is a first step towards those reports finding a better job. I suppose you could set up a system where the report has to pay back the cost of education if they leave within a year, but that’s actually backwards thinking. It’s much better to have positive motivation, and be known for running a team that invests in training and rewards those who take advantage of gaining relevant skills for the team. It’s much more poisonous for the reports to sense that they aren’t valued enough to invest in.

Managers have to think about their reputations for managing teams. If you’re managing a team at a company that doesn’t want to invest the skills of the teams, perhaps you’re at the wrong company. If budgets are too tight for technical training, that’s a red flag.

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Your Career After Certification

Remember, certification should generally act to validate a level of knowledge and experience. Network virtualization might be a little different as it’s a relatively new paradigm. Coming out of the certification process, individuals will be ready to assessing and planning for the core NSX use cases: micro-segmentation (security), network overlay and automation, and simplified networking for disaster recovery.

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Let me know if you take advantage of this offer. I might study and sit for the VCP-NV myself and the idea of a virtual study group is pretty appealing!

Photo by 401(K) 2013