What is a VMware Engineer? | VMware Certified Professional - VCP | MCSA | CCNA
About this video
An interview with the creator’s father, also named Chuck Keith, a VMware Certified Professional systems engineer, about what VMware is and what a VMware engineer does. The father says he had been in VMware for about seven years, first exposed around 2011, and has held VCP 4, 5.5, 6 and 6.5, recertifying every two years. He explains virtualization as running many virtual machines on fewer physical hosts — contrasting data centers that once needed 100 servers with 15 to 20 powerful servers — and covers ESXi as the bare-metal hypervisor, a free ESXi license with reduced management features, VMware Workstation for desktop virtualization, and vCenter for managing multiple hosts from a single pane of glass. Features highlighted include cloning, vMotion moving a running VM between hosts/data centers, and NSX, which lets systems/VMware staff do networking work. Getting certified differs from Cisco: a required VMware class costing upwards of $5,000 is discussed, with VMUG membership at $100 a year presented as a cheap way to get software trials, plus VMware Hands-on Labs for free practice and the exam blueprint for version 6.7 as the study starting point. Day-to-day work is monitoring hosts and VM CPU/memory, checking alarms, and watching resource overload; his largest host is described as a Cisco UCS server with one terabyte of RAM. For hiring he looks for certifications he can verify with technical phone questions, and notes the relevant job title is usually systems administrator/engineer rather than a VMware-specific title.
Key takeaways
- VMware virtualization consolidates many physical servers into virtual machines on fewer, more powerful hosts managed via ESXi and, at scale, vCenter
- The main credential discussed is the VCP (VMware Certified Professional, data center track), with higher VCAP and specialty tracks in cloud, automation and networking including NSX
- Unlike Cisco certs, VCP historically required an official VMware class costing upwards of $5,000, making employer sponsorship and currency (recertify every two years) valuable
- Low-cost ways to learn: free ESXi license, VMware Hands-on Labs for free, VMUG membership at $100 a year for software access, and studying to the official exam blueprint
- A VMware engineer’s daily work is monitoring hosts/VMs, alarms, and CPU/memory resources to prevent overload — and the job is usually advertised as systems administrator/engineer, so read the description
Episode details: published December 22, 2018 · 22:31 long. Summary written by Self Growth Videos from the episode itself. Business results and any income figures mentioned are NetworkChuck’s own claims, shared for education — they are not typical or guaranteed.
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