HP Storage Certifications

I am currently studying for the first in the series of HP storage qualifications so thought this was a good chance to look at what’s available on the HP Storage track in terms of certifications. A good place to start exploring HP certifications in general is http://www.certificationexplorer.com, this website lets you choose what track you ’re interested in e.g. servers, networking, or storage for example and see what learning routes are available. When you find a course you are interested in you can also use this website to register for it.

 

The HP Storage track like lots of vendors starts off with a single exam no matter which path you want to go down, this certification is HP ATP – Storage Solutions V1 (HP0-J73), and is the one I am currently studying for. The certification name its self doesn’t give much away but the course title; Designing HP SMB Storage Solutions gives a bit more of a clue. Essentially the exam looks at the broad range of HP Storage products their use cases, the tools to assist you and a basic overview of storage technology in general. The course itself had interesting elements, the best bit being a look at what tools are out there to help you with designing and supporting HP products, however in general it came across as having quite a strong pre-sales feel to it.

 

Where HP’s approach differs a little from other vendors is when you start to move onto the next stage. Whereas with other vendors you normally study around a specific product and specialise in that, HP’s courses are much wider requiring a knowledge of all their major products. I think this has both positives and negatives you’re certainly not going to get bored but how many people are really working in 100% HP environment and will have the necessary detailed knowledge of all the products required. Also it could be a little taxing on the brain.

Once you have the first exam out the way you can go down 2 separate tracks shown below, the HP ASE – Storage Solutions Integrator being more hands on and the HP ASE – Storage Solutions Architect V1 more for the architects who like to draw pretty pictures. Both the solutions integrator and solution architect consist of 3 exams, again you will find all the details on certification explorer. Finally once you have all that done there is the master qualification which is a single exam available only on the architect track.

There is a 3Par exam HP0-J70 Implementing HP 3PAR StoreServ Solutions which is a requirement of the solutions integrator route.

 

Anyway less chat and more studying, see you on the other side.