Hi,
I am planning to get certified in Solaris 10 for my own interest.
Although I don't have much experience in sys admin, I have got some background in scripting and some sort of beginner level administration.
But I have read in many places that one must have a good amount of experience in sys admin in order to go for this exam, which has been quite a heart breaker. So, just wanted to ask whether I am going for a futile exercise. I am sorry for asking this extremely stupid question, but I just needed some guidance from u gurus.
Thanks.
Anybody can take and pass the exams when given proper training or doing proper preparation.
But I recommend you get experience first..then the certification will be easier (or not necessary at all).
I don't know what the exams are like now, but when I took them back in the 90's they were tough. Fair - if you are going to BE an admin you should be able to pass, but they definitely were not easy.
Take some practice exams and see how you do. See my Unix/Linux Skills Tests-Certification Exam Resources for some resources.
I wish that I could get such an opportunity of core sys admin. But those chances look quite bleak. So I was thinking of going for it all alone.
Thanks a lot for your encouraging words :).
King,
I have a Sol9 certification. But I have been a SysAdmin for more than 10 years and on a few flavors of Unix systems most notably HPUX 11.0 and Solaris 8/9 and some 10.
IMO getting certified requires some work. Job experience is not a must but if you have some experience it will help because "doing is believing" LOL. I really od not see the need to get cert for the heck of it but if you are going to pursue work as a sysadm then a cert will help you get started but you will be on the bottom of the totem pole whether you have the cert or not. Just be prepared to work on the bottom and working up. I see no reason not to get certified.
Also watch SUN's website closely in the promotions links. They often offer exams where when you buy one exam you can retake for free but its offered like 1 or 2 times a year and offered in a 1 or 2 month timeframe. So you have to catch this promotion. Not too bad to get a free retake within a year of the first failure.
I should caution you that getting this Sol10 cert if not going to land you any jobs...you'd do as well as without the cert. Experience counts as far as sysadm goes...
Good luck!
Thanks Bluridge. I have got some sort of preliminary experience on this. But I am quite interested to pursue this as a career. At this moment, since my career is headed nowhere, I thought of going for a cert so that I can gain more knowledge and I can at least give some sort of shape to my profile.
And hey thanks for the free exams tip. Free exams would really help me given my current financial situation 
(God when will this recession end ?!)
By the way, I was just referring to this book for my cert objective:
Sun Certified System Administrator for Solaris 10 Study Guide
Brief and typical exam book.Hope it will help lost souls like me 
Thanks a lot again :).
Im not a fan of certificates. Ive been an SA for well over 15 years and have one to my name, i.e. Solaris 2.6. Ive interviewed so many `certified` people, that I thought were awful.
Comands, location of files, deugging can be earnt easily, but its the ability to work under pressure, the art of understand what the application / OS are doing together, and communication skills which matter most to me.
Also, certificates were valved more a few years ago, but now you can buy offical question sheets on ebay, etc etc. So, what do certicates were prove ?
Dont get hung up on certificates, but find a good trainees position, like a junior SA role, where u learn about Solaris in a working evironment. You will see that half the time its how you do something, than the command to do it with.
SBK
Im still trying to understand why you want to be certified if you dont want a career in the field.... its like saying I want to pass my driving test but I never want to drive.
You might as well just learn how to drive without taking the test and you could still become a good driver its just not officially written down.
What makes more sense is if you take a good course in some form or another and then get the paper to say you completed that course... like learning tree for example..
Thanks mate. But the situation that I am in right now is quite horrific. Just having a decent amount of experience in shell and Perl scripting and some other programming languages like Java doesnt seem to be enough to impress people. So I was thinking that maybe a certification could sorta boost my position in an interview. But of course if I fall in the hands of someone like u in the interview room, then I guess I wont be able to make any kinda impression at all :). If I am not given a chance to do any extensive administrative work then how can I prove myself? Hence I was thinking of going for this.
Thanks a lot again for ur invaluable suggestions.