First the Good News!

Take a Risk-Free Exam with Cisco’s Come Back Program!

Cisco and Pearson VUE have partnered to give networking professionals the opportunity to re-invest in their careers with the Cisco “Come Back” program, but this offer expires soon. You may have let your Cisco certification lapse, but now’s a great time to come back.

Register now to take any Cisco certification exam at the regular price, and—if you need it—you’ll get a retake exam for FREE!*. Both exams must be taken before this offer expires on October 15, 2008, so it’s important that you schedule your exam soon, in order to allow adequate time for you to take advantage of the free retake.

Visit www.pearsonvue.com/cisco/comeback for more details or to schedule your Cisco exam.

Wishing you the best on your career investment,
Cisco Career Certifications

*Both the full price and free “Come Back” exams must be taken between April 15, 2008, and October 15, 2008.  The free exam must be the same exam number as the exam you failed.

And for the Bad News….!

You’re going to need it.

It’s one thing that in September of 2007, Cisco raised prices on the exams above what they were at the time – Account for the 09/2007 changes of:

• CCNA Composite – $150
• CCNP/CCDP Composite – $225
• ICND 1/2 – $125
• CCIE Written – $315
• CCIE Lab – $1400

But now this they drop this bomb shell on us, in June 2008 of this year!

• CCNA Exam – $250 —– 67% increase
• CCNP/CCDP – $300 —– 34% increase
• CCIE Written – $350 —- 12% increase

This leads me to wonder if this is the price of security in their certification process.

It’s nice to see they’ve introduced this "Our exams are expensive so you have a chance to retake if you fail for a few months"  It’s a shame they didn’t take a page from Microsoft’s book and give you a TAD more time for this Second Shot at an exam.

Special thanks to Steve for the laughter he induced in me here!

Here at NetApp we have a number of veterans, experts, masters and well – extremely knowledgeable and smart people.

Now without having to sort through the text and descriptions of the NetApp blog page – You can just click on a random picture and get to the goods! :)

I like this approach myself, because that visual journey makes decisions that much easier! :)

And one more to the docket – Recently added!

The word is out!

It’s official! SQL Server 2008 has gone RTM!

And I expect in short-order a full support for SQL 2008 with SMSQL – as things are certainly inline with this paper published in February of this year:

MICROSOFT SQL SERVER 2008:

DECISION SUPPORT WORKLOADS -1TB DATA WAREHOUSE ON IA64

So, coming soon to a test lab near me (at home) I’ll be upgrading to SQL 2008 with RTM, instead of the RC0 release I’ve been running!

Good luck upgrading, planning and sizing your environments!

So, there have been a number of changes around here.

• I’ve switched from default numeric posting names to ‘named and dated’ events. 
• I’ve attempted to start using LiveWriter again, which can be a challenge when you find a complicated manual process of editing files directly to be so much more appealing!
• I’ve added some additional blogs, with some more to come.
• Primarily filling out my fellow Microsoft folksies, special respect to Dan Rey, Ariel, and the new Microsoft Beta Blog (Thanks Trika!)
• I’ll be adding a number of NetApp blogs for some good close friends and folks who have a lot of indepth knowledge to share, and read respectively!
• I’ve taken some additional betas and will be providing further obscure "non-violating NDA" details of the exams in depth
• I have a number of broken things, which I haven’t been bothered to fix such as ATOM RSS feeders, carriage returns for that "ShareThis" app – and who knows what other SEO violations I may be under!

I think that is a fair coverage of some changes that have occurred – As for things to come:

• Indepth posting of Exams, Certifications, Betas – Who takes them, who should, how you can be that person, and being a master on a novices diet.
• Performance assaults, differences, metrics and other insanity
• Super cool NetAppy stuff, the likes of which will shock and amaze you
• (Yet, you’ll eventually be of the understanding as I am – of accepting that as how things OUGHT to be ;))
• More CWUG Updates! Yea you heard me!
• More Beta exams and Post-Mortems, and perhaps a review of tests of the past.
• And perhaps insight into the mind of a Pekingese!

See you soon!