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Permalink Reply by Edward van Leent on February 18, 2009 at 0:01

Hi Ken

EPI is delivering a range of Certified Data Center Courses. They are available on pretty much all continents. You can have a look at the website: www.epi-training.com

Regards
Edward

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Permalink Reply by William F. Slater, III, PMP on February 18, 2009 at 3:36

Ken,

Here are two programs. I have participated in both:

1) www.idcp.org - The Institute of Data Center Professionals (Online) at Marist College, Poughkeepsie, NY (This is the link to the curriculum that I completed between March 2006 - March 2008. I completed this program while working 50 to 60 hour weeks at a full time job, and teaching technical classes 15 - 20 hours a week, so it was quite a chore to take two 12-week classes each session for 24 months.

2) www.datacenteruniversity.com - Data Center Education from APC (I did this one online and the seven classes in this program require about 1.5 to 2 hours each.)

For more cool Data Center information, click here.


Best regards,

William Favre Slater, III, PMP, CISSP, CDCP, MCSE
Program Manager / Data Center Manager
Chicago, IL
United States of America

slater@billslater.com
datacentermanager@live.com
http://billslater.com
http://billslater.com/WFS_Business_Card_Front_2009.JPG
773 - 235 - 3080 - Home
312 - 758 - 0307 - Mobile

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Permalink Reply by Jan Wiersma on April 6, 2009 at 21:32

Ken,

What kind of training are you looking for ? entry level, medium, or expert ? Design or (just) day to day operation / management.

Larger datacenters are run by multiple people with multiple skill sets. In general they all should know something about computers (like CompTia A+ / Server+). For a high skilled datacenter architect/designer the BISCI RCDD is pretty good. It covers all the basics, but you will need an engineering degree before attempting the course because you should have knowledge on transmission principals (laser, radio frequency) and power (how are watts calculated, and what is power factor) for example. It’s an ‘heavy weight’ course and exam.

Coming from an IT back ground, the APC Datacenter University does a good job of educating IT people on the basics of datacenter management. It’s kind of vendor neutral also: www.datacenteruniversity.com

Other courses my team has done:

Anixter has a Data Center College: http://www.anixter.com/AXECOM/US.NSF/ProductsTechnology/SolutionsAn... (vendor focus, not in-depth )

Cablenet U.K. has the CDCDP™Certified Data Centre Design Professional: http://www.cablenet-training.com/home.htm (very basic, and little out dated)

EPI has Certified Data Center Training: http://www.epi-training.com/training.html (basic)

In the Netherlands: Kannegieter Data Centre Design Engineering See: http://www.kannegieter.nl/data/files/f710_Kannegieter_DataCenter_fo...

The problem with all these courses and exams is like “having an MBA from an online university based in Africa”…. It will never stand out on your resume like an “MBA from Harvard”.

In the Netherlands the Dutch Standardization Committee on Datacenters is combining effort with the Dutch universities to have a better push and backing.

I prefer to have my staff: started their education with an engineering degree in electronics or so.. then spend about 5 years working in IT (systems administration) and then switched to the pure datacenter facilities field.

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Permalink Reply by Ken Carroll on April 6, 2009 at 21:38

Excellent. Very helpful.

Thanks Jan.

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Permalink Reply by Alfons Biegstraaten on April 6, 2009 at 22:36

There are two courses, CDCD for 3 days and one with a real certificate (CDCDP) 7 days. These courses are provided by Tunix in Nijmegen (www.tunix.nl). This the link to the explanation for the professional course. Link

Greetz,

Alfons

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Permalink Reply by Grant Sauls on April 14, 2009 at 1:34

Hi Ken,

The Data Center university online course is good and the independent exam through Prometric is tough so atleast you know there is a really good foundationally level. the CDCP is good as well.

You can check out the following link as well from BICSI https://www.bicsi.org/DC110.aspx

It all depends how educated you want your engineer to be but most of the time you will have to find the right combination of course and studies to reall have expert level knowledge.

Hope this helps.

Grant Sauls - CCDA, Comptia Project+, CWNA, CWSP, MCTS, MCITP
Cisco Data Center Specialist

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Permalink Reply by Gene Magerr on April 6, 2010 at 15:14

Hi Ken,

I just finished the Data Center University from APC, took the test at Prometric and passed. It was a pretty tough exam. I did learn quite a bit watching the videos. I think it's a great resource for learning about the data center in general, covers a lot of stuff.

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