So my company wants to get me certified. So I dug around and saw a class in Dallas, the 5 day course which I would prefer cause well, online courses to me are not as effective as having a real live instructor to answer questions and having the ability to do more hands on excercises.
Plus being a System Administrator, I'm staring at a monitor all day so the thought of doing my job and then going home to do an online course is not what I'm looking forward to for 5 days.
So my question is: Has anyone taken the online courses for Netbackup and would you recommend them over the in person training? I can think of a few pros and cons of each but my cons outweigh the pros, which I want to send off to my boss to consider.
Thanks to any input, suggestions, pros or cons, experiences.. etc!
Seriously, I think it is good to get away from the daily routine and I therefore suggest attending the class. BUT! I wouldn't rely on it to help you pass the test. I spent time in the manuals and it was well worth it. The process flow chart and the trouble shooting guide were indispensable. The manuals are lengthy but they do help if you bother to take the time to read them and think about what you have read, if you can stay awake. Highlighting and underling will help. I also highly suggest reading the command line manuals not for certification but for better understanding NetBackup. Also many of the commands can be done on your active system without causing you any grief. True learning will happen when you actually apply what is taught either online or in a classroom. I know that the tests are being re-written. I hope they are not easy enough so that a one week course would suffice to be able to become certified. I was offered a chance to take the beta exam since I'm already certified. Perhaps I should. Anyway, I wish you well.Message was edited by: Bob Stump
Passing the test I'm not worried about. I started my current position as a System Administrator about 10 months ago and one of the admins was doing all the Netbackup duties. When I got hired on, he slowly passed the knowledge off to me, so I was dealing with it on and off, etc.
Then at the beginning of January, he moved on to another job so he dumped all of his knowledge about Netbackup into me in a two week period. They sent him off to get trained and he trained me from the Netbackup 4.5 training books he acquired when trained.
So since his departure, I've taken over backups fully. No one else knows them probably as well as I do at my job. Since his departure, we've installed a new tape library and are migrating the old library to our office location.
I've also heavily modified some of our backup policies to suit our new library, lower number of drives it uses and so on.
But now I feel getting certified will help me fill in any gaps or holes of knowledge I might be missing. Work is willing to get me certified but as I would rather take the class in person for many reasons, hands on along with an instructor to ask questions to and get immediate responses/answers, my boss has already asked why I can't take the online courses over the in person class. My only assumption is they want to save money on travel and hotel, and probably also feel I can take the classes online while working each day, which is not going to happen as if I were to take the online classes, I'd either stay home to do them or make sure I have no interruptions while at work. In order for me to focus, I'd prefer to be in a class with other people and instructor to interact and discuss, instead of being all alone in front of a computer screen trying to basically read and teach myself.
I don't think there is a way. I also think that the assesment tests were harder than the actual exam. The questions on the assesment were more pointed and the actual exam were more broad. I think they do this to try to get you to spend money on their training :)
Guys, I was wondering if you could tell me how much weight there is on status codes on the exam? I keep hearing that this is a substantial component on the exam. I am a little distraught by this seeing as there seems to be well over 500 of them. I am not asking you to disclose specific information, just want to see if it's worth focusing on. Do certain ranges of codes pertain to certain problems, components?
Just the normal ones.... 1,2,6,12,14,41,54,57,58,59,71,81,84,96,156,196,219 maybe some more but they are ones that a practicing netbackup admin has seen in the course of their daily functions.
