Roughly six weeks ago I received an invitation to participate in the item development workshop to update the NetApp Certified Implementation Engineer Data Protection Specialist exam. The premise was to take the exam from its current state and bring it up to date as in the last 2 years a lot has changed within NetApp ONTAP and its associated protection methodologies. To get a good idea of how much has changed simply look at the ONTAP 9.1 release notes, even in the data protection section it talks about NVE, RAID-TEC, SnapLock just to mention a few, so it was a honour to be invited to help update the exam and something I was looking forward to.
Sign greeting my arrival at RTP building one
Just over a week ago was the time to undertake this workshop and on a lovely sunny Sunday morning I boarded a plane to head to NetApp’s Research Triangle Park (RTP), North Carolina USA campus where the workshop was to be held. The following morning at 9am sharp we started the week long activity of modernising the exam to the most recent GA release of ONTAP. The workshop was run by an independent company who specialise in writing exams for certification. Their job was to lead the workshop making sure we kept to the exam blueprint, kept it to the right level of difficulty and asked the question as directly as possible. One of the first things we covered was the difference between assessment and certification and for those of you who may be unaware the difference is probably two fold. For assessment all the information required to pass is contained with a structured course material (e.g. PowerPoint; pdf course notes) whilst a certification draws on many various pieces of information ranging from course notes to technical reports to documentation and even industrial knowledge. The other main difference is that a certification needs to be able to stand up to any legal challenges to the content within. So with that we got down to work.
With all the changes going on with the portfolio and even within ONTAP it was great to get together with 9 other individuals who also shared a desire to update this exam and see not only how they viewed ONTAP had changed over the last two years but also the use cases and deployment models being adopted for the technology. Over the next few days we reviewed the current question pool and then set to work writing new ones. These were then assessed as a group to see if they were relevant and of the right difficultly, to name just two of the measurements we judged each question on. It was also good to see that the questions proposed for the exam were honest and fair with no intent of trying to trick candidates.
It was both a long and rewarding week where I’m sure all in attendance learned something new. It also shone a light on the amount of work and effort that is put into constructing a certification exam by NetApp, as they understand the benefit to the candidate in undertaking the hard work preparing for, taking the exam and also the badge of honour received for the certification. I have often felt that by obtaining a certification it shows that you have a desire to know and understand the technology in question and also that you have taken the time to learn its best practices. They can help differentiate you within your company or when you apply for a new role. Just to make sure I’m up to date with what is going on I usually take an exam during NetApp Insight for my own personal benefit mainly but it helps reinforce the value I have to offer to the team when I am back at my day job.
Before we knew it Friday afternoon had rolled around and we had completed all the tasks required from the workshop, which meant that in a few weeks from now the update exam NS0-512 will go live. A big thank you goes out to NetApp Certification Program for inviting me to the workshop and also to the nine other individuals and the independent test company I had the pleasure of working with for the week. I left ready to talk SnapMirror and MetroCluster with anyone who wanted to listen. So if you get the opportunity to help write or update an exam I would highly recommend it, and before you start to contact me for help the answer is “yes it’s on the exam.”
NOTE: For more information listen to the upcoming Tech ONTAP Podcast Episode 78 – NetApp Certifications NCIE featuring the NetApp A-Team
Ruairí McBride 