Last week, I passed the EMC Implementation Engineer, Isilon Solutions Specialist exam.

I actually did the EMC training for it in Franklin, Mass, back in March, but at the time EMC did not have a certification test within their Proven Professional program I could take. Normally I don’t waste time after coming back from a class to get the associated certification. But since there wasn’t one, it got put on the back burner. The class was actually one of the first partner level Isilon classes that EMC had offered, and the whole thing was video taped for future use in video learning. I had the option of taking the older exam that was presented by Isilon Systems (the company before EMC bought them) but because of our partner agreements with EMC, I’d still be required to take the proven professional version later. I’m not a fan of extra work, so I waited.

Isilon is a scale out NAS product that EMC acquired in late 2010, and have since been incorporating it into their offerings. AOS has started to sell a lot of Isilon recently, which meant that I needed to get signed off on it ASAP. I actually did my first solo install of an 4-node X200 cluster on Saturday, and am booked through next year installing a lot more (in addition to my other projects featuring products in my wheelhouse, like the VNX, RecoverPoint, and VMware View.)

In addition all of that, I’m still working on getting my CCNA finished up, adding the VCAP-DCA to my resume, and once CommVault gets their implementation engineer certification program finished, get signed off on that (from training done in July.)

It never stops.