For those of you who do not know me, my name is Matt Elias and I’m the Product Team Manager here at Train Signal. I was very excited when I was asked to update you, our loyal fans and readers, about new product developments and what you can expect from us in the coming months.

We hear from customers on a daily basis asking about what we’re working on and what new products are being developed. Hopefully you will find these monthly updates as an easy way to keep up with the extremely busy Product Team at Train Signal.

System Center Data Protection Manager 2010 Training

So, what are we working on? There are some amazing new products in development right now. I’ll start by highlighting our latest release, System Center Data Protection Manager 2010 Training.

Most of you are probably familiar with Scott Lowe by now. Scott is the instructor of our other two System Center courses (Configuration Manager and Operations Manager) and has put together yet another fantastic training.

In this new course, you will learn how to install and implement Data Protection Manager to protect your critical workloads (Exchange, SharePoint, SQL, Hyper-V and more). Scott has used the “building block approach” to give you a strong foundation of Data Protection Manager knowledge before teaching you how to perform the myriad of tasks available.

Exchange Server 2010 Backup and Recovery Training

Next up is J. Peter Bruzzese’s Exchange Server 2010 Backup and Recovery Training, which will be available in a couple of weeks. Peter’s Exchange courses have all been received with high praise from our customers and the community alike. He has such an impact on the Exchange community as a whole, he was recognized by Microsoft as an Exchange MVP last October. Quite an achievement!

But back to the course … Peter has put together another must-have training for Exchange admins. He takes you through the day to day challenges of maintaining a reliable Exchange 2010 environment. He’ll show you how to use both the backup functions native to Exchange Server and some of the most commonly used third party tools.

Whether its sharing best practices for disaster recovery, discussing how virtualization can impact your high availability strategy or any of the other concepts taught in the course, Peter will help you become a more complete Exchange admin.

Citrix XenDesktop 5 Training

We are also pleased to share that we will have a full-length course on the recently released Citrix XenDesktop 5 product! Anyone who is working with virtualization or VDI needs to get ramped up and Elias Khnaser will help you do just that.

Elias taught our last XenDesktop course, the Citrix XenDesktop 4 Training and the new course, Citrix XenDesktop 5 Training, looks to be more of the same excellent instruction. Elias brings his real-world knowledge to the course and shows you how to use desktop virtualization effectively in your environment. Whether it’s planning your environment, farm administration best practices, provisioning server high availability or any of the other concepts taught in the course, you’re sure to learn what you need to know and more.

Questions? Suggestions?

There are many more projects we’re developing as this post is being typed and I could go on and on about each and every one of them, but I thought this would be enough for this month’s update.

If you ever have any questions about what we’re working on, how we can help you achieve your goals or what’s next for us, please do not hesitate to reach out. You can call us (847-776-8800), email us (info@trainsignal.com) and use our forums as a resource for answers. Tell us what products you want developed, what we can do better and what we should do more of! We want to hear from you.

Until next month, best of luck in your studies and careers!

We also know the IT industry. In IT, certifications are how professionals quantify and demonstrate mastery of subject matter. In many companies, certifications are even tied into bonuses, goals and advancement criteria. Knowing this, we feel that it’s critical to provide exam prep for our customers.

As many of you know by now, we are not a brain dump. We create courses that teach you everything you need to know for the exam, but our focus is on building real-world skills that you’ll be able to use on the job. We also make sure that all relevant exam objectives are covered thoroughly during the course. The result is that you may not even know you’re studying for an exam — but you are.

Back to the original purpose of the post … a few weeks ago I put out an informal internal poll here at Train Signal. I wanted to show our customers, fans and readers that we don’t just talk about the value of certifications for marketing purposes. We believe that certifications are incredibly valuable for our team and we strive to achieve them just as you do.

We have 25 full time employees (plus one college intern) all working hard on various projects. We need each and every team member to be a valuable resource for those around them. Certifications are a great way to obtain and measure that knowledge. This quarter alone we’ve added six new certifications and more are on their way before the end of the year!

The results from my certifications poll blew me away! The Train Signal team holds over 100 certifications. Keep in mind this list only includes our 25 full-time team members and many of these certifications require multiple exams (I did not even attempt to add up the number of exams we’ve taken). The vast experience and wide-ranging specialization found in the results is astonishing.

Train Signal Team’s 100+ Certifications

I thought it would be really cool to share this list with you, so you can see for yourself that we practice what we preach when it comes to certifications.

Here are our 100+ certifications:

In the course, taught by David Shackelford, you’ll learn anything and everything you want to know about Microsoft Small Business Server 2008.

Watch Our SBS 2008 Training Demo!

In this video you’ll learn how to create document libraries and wikis in SharePoint.  In addition to SharePoint functionality, SBS has tons to offer:

• Exchange
• SQL Server
• Active Directory
• Plenty of practical uses for small and medium businesses looking to lower their costs.

Here’s a quick clip from the new SBS 2008 course.  We hope that you enjoy the video and the other 17 + hours of training we’ve put together for this course.

As always, if you have any questions or comments, please feel free to do so by calling us or commenting below.

Matt

We wanted to use this forum to encourage everyone to wish one of our own good luck this weekend.

Train Signal’s David Davis has been hard at work training for the Dallas Marathon (officially titled the MetroPCS Dallas White Rock Marathon Presented by Nexbank).

To those of us up at Train Signal headquarters in suburban Chicago, the idea of doing anything outside right now sounds crazy. Luckily David is based in Dallas and does not have to contend with the elements as much.

The fact that this marathon falls smack dab in the middle of holiday season further demonstrates the determination and commitment put forth by David. Most of us have been stuffing ourselves with holiday goodness while David has been getting up early to squeeze in his runs and has continued recording the best VMware training on the planet.

Running a marathon is certainly a physical test which requires months (if not years) of preparation. We know that this Sunday represents the culmination of tons and tons of hard work on David’s part. We’re incredibly proud of him and wish him the best in the race.

If you’re a friend, colleague, customer or anyone — please leave a comment below for David. Despite our confidence in his ability to finish the marathon, I’m sure he could use the support!

Good luck David!

At the time, Terry was helping lead CLI development and training as a Cisco consultant, and when he found out about the CCIE program he took the two day hands-on test to become CCIE #1026.

Now you might be wondering why he’s not CCIE#1 since he’s the first CCIE.

The truth is that the CCIE certifications actually start with the number 1024 — which is a common binary number, and not number 1.

As Terry describes on his blog, the lab was assigned the first number: CCIE #1024; Stuart Biggs, who created the CCIE exam, was awarded the second number: CCIE #1025; and Terry, being the first person to take and pass the CCIE exam, was awarded with CCIE #1026.

Terry Slattery on Cisco Certifications, Careers, Training and More

Q. What certifications do you see as the most valuable to someone just getting started in IT or hoping to advance their career?

A. The Cisco certifications have good market acceptance and recognition, which makes them valuable when you’re talking with employers. Because of this, they are likely to provide more value in a generic sense, such as in a job search. But if your employer is using Juniper equipment, then the Juniper certifications will be more valuable to your short-term career.

Q. What changes, if any, have you seen in the certification process since you became the first CCIE? Where do you see changes being made in the future?

A. There have been quite a few changes in the certification world since the CCIE was created. The Novell certification that preceded the CCIE used only a written test and gained a reputation as a “paper certification,” implying that you didn’t need any hands-on experience to become certified. The CCIE demonstrated that there was value in a hands-on cert. The lower-level Cisco certification tests now contain configuration exercises, adding an element of hands-on evaluation to their qualifications. I see the trend towards more real-world testing.

I also see a trend towards higher level certifications like the new Cisco Certified Architect. We may eventually see a certification suite that is similar to what doctors and lawyers use. I think it may be similar to the Professional Engineer licensing that you see in the Civil, Mechanical, and Electrical engineering professions.

Q. What types of training do you use or recommend to someone just getting started on a certification?

A. No single source of training is sufficient for everyone. I recommend that you research the various programs and find a style that works for you.

Join some of the online forums and study groups. Learn from other people. There are also a lot of good blogs where people who are studying are sharing what they have learned. A benefit of working with others is that the relationships that you develop will become beneficial later in your career.

Q. How did you get started in the field? What was your first certification? Your first networking job?

A. I started in networking while working at the US Naval Academy. It was a way to connect multiple Unix systems together. I did some of the first fiber optic over Ethernet in the region. There were no books or training available. I learned networking and TCP/IP from reading the RFCs and from people I met in the industry. One example was meeting and working with Mike Muuss, the author of Ping, and the people who were working with him at the Army Research Lab.

My first certification was the CCIE in August, 1993. My only other comparable qualification of merit is my Vanderbilt Electrical Engineering degree. In talking with the Cisco Certification team, they like to think of the CCDE as equivalent to a Masters degree and the Cisco Certified Architect as equivalent to a university doctorate degree.

Q. What are your thoughts on the new Cisco Certified Architect certification? Are you considering getting the new certification?

A. I think that it is the right direction to take the certification track and that more of the industry will begin to follow. It will allow employers and customers to validate whether the staff they are hiring meets certain basic knowledge requirements. However, it won’t replace doing an interview and making sure that the candidate knows the specific technologies that are being implemented.

I am considering whether I want to tackle the CCDE and Cisco Certified Architect. They each have a certain appeal to me and I know that I would learn a lot along the way to attempting the certifications, regardless of whether I pass.

Q. Do you think the CCIE is still as valuable as it was a decade ago? Do you think Cisco did the right thing adding a higher level of certification above the CCIE?

A. The value of the CCIE has fluctuated over the years. For a while the program focused on increasing the volume of certifications and the quality suffered. The test has been improved since then and the quality is much better. They have had to revise how the testing is performed in order to allow it to scale better and still retain the quality of the test.

The recent introduction of troubleshooting into the test takes us back to the two-day lab test in which the proctor broke your network during a break and you had to find and correct the problems. Bad cables, bad boards, software bugs, and configuration changes all made the lab test a real evaluation of a candidate’s ability to troubleshoot problems. The written test has improved and is more difficult, so the more qualified CCIEs are staying certified and the less qualified tend to drop out.

As I said above, I think that the newer certifications are the right direction. What will be interesting is to see what the industry does in another 15 years and whether someone decides that they need another certification and why. It will also be interesting to see how Cisco manages the testing process for the new certifications and whether they make it easier to achieve in order to get more people certified.

Q. What are you up to these days?

A. I am currently doing network management consulting with Chesapeake Netcraftsmen. It is a bunch of people from the old Chesapeake Computer Consultants (CCCI) training company that did Cisco training and consulting from 1990 through 2001.

My main focus is on network management designs and network assessments. I’ve also done consulting on QoS design and network troubleshooting to keep things interesting and to get some exposure to other aspects of networking that I don’t get when doing network management. I’m looking forward to the day when network management systems remove a lot of the drudgery and tedium from running enterprise networks.

Terry, thank you for taking the time to talk and answer some questions for TST readers.

About Terry Slattery

Terry Slattery is a Principal Consultant at Chesapeake Netcraftsmen, an advanced network consulting firm that specializes in high-profile and challenging network consulting jobs. Terry is consulting in network core switching and routing. He is the founder of Netcordia, inventor of NetMRI, and has been a successful technology innovator in networking during the past 20 years. He has a long history of network consulting and design work, including some of the first Cisco consulting and training on the east coast. As a consultant to Cisco, he led the development of the current Cisco IOS command line interface. Prior to Netcordia, Terry founded Chesapeake Computer Consultants, which became a Cisco premier training and consulting partner. At Chesapeake, he co-invented and patented the v-LAB system to provide hands-on access to real hardware for the hands-on component of internetwork training classes. Terry co-authored the successful McGraw-Hill text Advanced IP Routing in Cisco Networks, is the second CCIE (1026) awarded, and is a sought after industry speaker and advisor.

This issue has been bugging some of our customers, so our own David Davis went ahead and created a video which walks you through the necessary steps (and even attached the necessary .dll) to accomplish a vSphere Client install!

I have the pleasure of watching David’s videos on a daily basis, so his expertise is nothing new to me. Given the success of our vSphere course, it’s probably not news to you either. In any event, I thought I’d share this video.

If you find this video as cool as I do, drop a comment for David below.

Thanks and enjoy!

Note from David: Special thanks to those who have posted on this topic before me as I couldn’t have created this video without your help!

• XtraVirt – Running VMware vSphere Client on Windows 7
• Techhead
• VMware communities – running vSphere Client in Windows 7 topic

I thought that this would be a good place to introduce myself and share some random (and not so random) observations made during my first week at Train Signal. Below, in no particular order, are just a few of the things which stood out as I organized a week’s worth of notes from meetings and discussions with almost everyone here.

Customers are at the forefront of everything we do

There are plenty of reasons why I am so excited to be a part of the Train Signal team and the importance and respect that we have for our customers is a big part of that excitement.

In meeting and talking with team members in various roles, it became immediately apparent that the customer experience is the single largest motivating factor for just about everything we’re doing. Whether it’s the production team polishing the fantastic training videos they get from the instructors, or the lengths our customer support team will go to ensure we have ecstatic (not just “satisfied”) customers – customers drive our day to day actions in a very real way.

Train Signal Instructors are incredibly talented

Having spent the better part of the last ten years in the training industry, I have seen Instructors at both ends of the spectrum. I’m happy to report that our Instructors are incredibly talented and amazing at what they do.

As I type this, each and every Train Signal Instructor is hard at work on a new product. The range of technologies covered and the diligence which is on display in each of our products is simply amazing. I’ve spent time in classrooms, read tons of certification and training books and seen nearly every type of training available.

I now realize why we say that Train Signal products are “The Best Computer Training on the Planet!” It’s true.

The future is bright

In my role at Train Signal, I have an opportunity to work with our Instructors and product team on future releases. Reviewing some of the products we’ve got lined up for not so distant future makes me even more excited to be a part of the team.

A perfect example is Coach Culbertson’s What’s New in Windows Server 2008 R2 Training that we will be releasing soon. This course is fantastic and I’m sure that in a matter of weeks our customers will agree.

I am looking at all of the product release schedules for the technologies our instructors specialize in and starting to realize that there are big things ahead for Train Signal.

We have fun

In the past week …

I have met three dogs (two of which liked me). I have helped unload a van overflowing with snacks, drinks and other assorted good stuff. I have argued the merits of Chevy Chase films and preached the brilliance of Spies Like Us. I have eaten four Italian beefs from Johnnie’s. I have been a participant in foot race while holding 40 lbs of recycling.

I’m probably missing something here, but you get the idea. Aside from the fun stuff, the Train Signal office is a place which encourages quality work and the open exchange of ideas – all of which provide our customers with an experience unmatched elsewhere.

Thanks for taking the time to read this! I look forward to sharing more updates and release information as we get closer to launch dates!

Feel free to ask questions in the comments or join me on Twitter @matt_elias.

Matt