Where can I get the knowledge without going broke

[Don911]

I have gone through the fundamental online trainings and would like to know if it is necessary to sign up for those 4k classes.  I do not have alot of money and I am looking to make a career change to better my life, can someone please help me with this?

[rcporto]

There is a lot of free leaning from VMware, including Hands On Lab: VMware - NEE

If you want make a real change in your career, you will "may" need take the VMware certification, and the prerequisite is take the official course... but if you don't want take the certification for now, you can still find some additional training from PluralSight and CBT Nuggets.

[Don911]

Thank you for helping me and pointing me in the right direction.

[JLackman]

If you want the VCP certs, (or higher) you have to take the training. It's a mandatory requirement. You can get the VCA certs WITHOUT paying for training classes.

Also, there is a lot of good stuff right on YouTube.

[Don911]

So to get the VCP there is not avoiding the 4k classes?

[JLackman]

no; it's a mandatory prerequisite.

[Don911]

Again thank you for your help, I did see that now when I clicked on the certification.  I hope I will be able to get my foot in the door with the VCP cert.

[Alistar]

If you have some money to spare on a great, long book with extensive chapters, I strongly recommend you Mastering VMware vSphere 5.5: Amazon.co.uk - this helped me pass my VCP exam and also expanded my vSphere knowledge a lot.

[Don911]

I was looking at job posting online and could not find anyone who was hiring for VMware Cloud.  This is what I was interested in, can you guys tell me if there is a demand for this or more for Vsphere?

[Alistar]

vCloud is rather an extension for VMware vSphere, so it is imperative you know how ESXi works (storage, uplink combos, CPU/RAM internals), how their connection with vCenter Works (clustering and all vCenter Features), and most of all virtual networking for cloud solutions because you would be providing private networks/VLANs on a daily basis.

The best thing I could advise to you is to start with smaller ESXi deployments, get your hands-on experience and then start searching vCloud experience.