Cost Benifit Analsys of a VCA?

[Leifd]

I just went through the free "training" and it felt very sales oriented. Is it a sales certification? Or something for management?Its lumped in with the VCP like its a stepping stone, but from my experience there is a big gap between the VCA-DCV and VCP5-DCV. My boss expects me to have a VCP5 and MSCA by the end of the year(no pressure and no training time). After watching the VCA and some of the VCP5-DCV I feel like I am something missing between the two certifications. I get no financial gain from the more certifications just a better performance review. Should I just skip the VCA and concentrate on the VCP5-DCV? Is a VCA-DCV worth spending a $120 dollars on? How much would you pay for a VCA?

[lilesj]

The VCA is a knowledge-oriented certification, so it's good for managers, sales, project managers, etc as well as new technologists who maybe don't have a lot of hands on experience yet. VCP is much more hands-on requiring experience actually implementing the solutions.

If your day-to-day work is on vSphere and you've been doing that for a while, and are working towards VCP5-DCV then VCA-DCV may not have much value for you. However, we have seen people who already have a VCP take the VCA for an adjacent track - for instance, getting a VCA-Cloud or VCA-WM to show you have exposure and knowledge to those other areas.