Microsoft is retiring its MCSA, MCSD and MCSE certifications | Hacker News Reader

Microsoft is retiring its MCSA, MCSD and MCSE certifications

zdnet.com

110 pointsterenceng201080 comments

As an IT college teacher for 21 years, I can tell you that educational institutions are very angry about this change. We often have courses that map to Microsoft certificaion. Students write them, and employers want them. They are a general benchmark that allows organizations to narrow the list of candidates they interview for a job related to one or more technologies. Most college grads get jobs in small-to-medium organizations where Azure is not a common requirement. Moreover, many small organizations that moved their stuff to Azure at the request of an MSP are current moving it back on premises to save cost now that they realize it's much cheaper to do so. Together with Microsoft's abrupt replacement of the Win10 certifications last year (they gave no notice to colleges or publishers), it looks like the trust colleges have placed in the Microsoft certification program is disappearing fast.

I do think this is for the best. Education, whether traditional or applies technical, shouldn't be locked to a single vendor. This may make hiring harder, but other certifications will arise, and in the mean time qualified but uncertified applicants might have a better chance at getting employed.

That depends, there is absolute a place for Vendor Certifications. There should also be general and non-vendor certifications.

I dont believe MS doing away with all OnPrem Certifications is "for the best"

Nearly all colleges are not locked to a single vendor - CompTIA, Cisco, EC-Counsil, LPI, Red Hat, etc. are taught equally. The point I was hoping to convey earlier was that Microsoft is now going to disappear from that vendor and organization list.

I beg to differ, I went to a community college and everything was locked in to Microsoft; certs, software, and MS approved coiurse guidelines (MS had given them some sizable grants to push the students to leave and use their products. I know work for our states biggest university and it’s still the same way. Literally out of thousands of employees our small group in IT are the only ones using macs and building/deploying products in a Linux environment. Being in the position I’m in allows me to get a look at the other Colleges/Universities across the state and it’s pretty much the same process across the board. A fair enough chunk of CS students coming in are disappointed about the M$ based CS tracks. They came in expecting to learn Linux, Python, Ruby, JS, Docker, and k8s. I’m hoping in the future in the CS guidelines will diversify and let people choose either a OSS/programming, MS, and Cisco/Networking tracks to be a little more open to real world needs.

I'm surprised there's any emphasis on Windows in a CS course. I'm a C#/cloud dev and I use Windows as my daily driver, but we were allowed to use any OS we wanted. Only catch was that for some courses our final projects had to run on the school's Linux server, which we could SSH into and compile and run our code on.

Good riddance. I say that as the owner of an MS Partner! I want potential consultants, not people with one trick up their sleeve.

Blow Red Hat: I want an applicant describing how they installed Arch or Gentoo and only use say RH or whatever to tick supportability boxes for something. Someone who can install Gentoo already knows how to fix all other broken Linux boxes, without breaking into a sweat. A completely broken Linux box does not faze me because I spent many years repairing the fallout of running emerge.

Cisco. Hmm well at least it is reasonably easy to translate into Dell or HP. Juniperese on the other hand is rather different. Given that Cisco invented nearly everything including some horrendous security exploits, I'll let that slide!

What do you mean by, "Blow Red Hat?"

Sorry, en_GB. "Blow" something here does not mean what most people would translate it to, ie a sexual act.

"Blow that" or in this case "blow RH" here means the object of the phrase is not wanted. It is a reasonably polite way of putting some emphasis on saying "that's not for me." A more aggressively emphatic idiom could be "fuck that" or "fuck RH".

If you heard me actually speak it, instead of type it would probably make sense! I should probably lay off the idia and fall into line with generic en_*.

Bugger that!

Haha, no worries, thanks for the explanation :-)

It’s very much anecdotal that corporations are moving back on prem. All statistics show other wise.

I’m very much in the “Enterprise Development” space and not the “learn leetCode and work for a FAANG” category, but I haven’t seen any indication that employees care about the development focused certifications. Maybe the TSYS type warm body shops but that’s about it.

I think industry certifications are a mostly pointless idea. If I'm looking at learning something, my criteria is "will this information still be relevant 10 years from now?" If the answer is no, I either don't bother with it, or I invest the minimum necessary effort to learn what I need to do to solve the problem at hand.

Technologies that certifications focus on tend to have a limited lifespan. I place far more value on more general, conceptual knowledge that will be applicable to a multitude of implementations, mixed with some practical hands-on stuff. I've gotten far more out of learning about things like relational databases, compilers, multi-threaded and message passing programming, distributed systems, and experience with a range of different programming paradigms than I believe could ever be gained from certifications. Focusing on generic topics like this is going to be far more valuable to your career in the long run.

If I see a company specifically looking for someone with a certification or experience with a particular library/framework, I take that as a sign that they don't fully appreciate the value that a well-rounded engineer can bring to the table. Furthermore, certifications have the effect of tying your advertised skill set to a specific vendor's products, and expect you to keep up to date every three years or so as they change the specifics of their training and certification requirements.

My company, a contracting firm, recently ran some AWS training sessions and offered to cover the costs of the exams for employee who wanted to do them. I went along to a couple of sessions but ultimately concluded it wasn't a good use of my time, relative to other things I could be doing to advance my career. While I'm fortunate to mostly work for clients who understand that, I wish there were a wider appreciation of general knowledge rather than people investing themselves so heavily into skills that have a short lifespan and are tied so heavily to specific vendors and the current flavor of the month.

Lol. Yeap, that's about it. Most certs are mostly a scam to let non-technical hiring managers and HR people give themselves some virtue-signaling brownie points.

I was an AWS Sr. Systems Engineer consultant with a preferred vendor working on-prem for Fortune 200's. No certifications other than a BS CS/EE, was an undergrad (unusual) security researcher at a top lab, VMware and the intro MCSA exam; but no A+, CCIE, ITIL, PMP and no MCSE.

One of the top *nix/Windows sr. sysadmins for the US MIL's DMDC has only VMware certs.

Security researchers and offensive security folks: few, if any, certs beyond (usually) university.

I dont think you understand what it is like in some job markets. Once you are in an industry you might be able to sustain a career without certifications but how is someone supposed to break into an area when people only hire candidates with "experience" or certifications? Certifications were proof that you got off your ass and learnt and passed an exam. People that hire do not trust resumes anymore because candidates can put anything in a resume to make them sound good. You could construct a lab at home and write about your learning activities but in my experience no one trust such "evidence" since people can just copy and paste other peoples work.

> candidates can put anything in a resume to make them sound good

This is true.

However it's not like Certification is a good measure for competency or skill, either.

A lot of the big name certs have major issues with either being passable via brain-dumps, and/or they test for bad and outdated practices.

Certifications are unfortunately a contraindication to competency and skill.

Disclaimer: I work for Red Hat and hold several certifications, so I have a clear conflict of interest here

I agree with your analysis there regarding outdated and passable via brain-dumps, which is why I both respect and pursue Red Hat certs (before I went to work there). They are damn hard and there's no way to pass them unless you have practiced your ass off. The cert transcripts also specify exactly which version of the tech you took your exam on (e.g. RHEL 7 or Ansible v2.7), so an employer can see if your skills are outdated. IME they are well respected in the industry.

No test or cert if perfect of course, but they're not all equal IMHO.

Some certs like A+ are a game to get the candidate to memorize useless, obscure trivia that is found in someone's test prep materials.

The exploitative training/testing racket is all about creating a subscription-like dependency with planned obsolescence to get steady, easy money for more testing and more exams.

Thank the various gods for, back in the day: TestKing.

Good certifications which can be used in certain safety-critical tech jobs include the US state-by-state Professional Engineer license with a brutal and comprehensive exam process plus required work experience.

In general, better exams are free-form responses and/or a panel interview (if they still do that) like CCIE.

Yup.

My boss had an MCSE but could only operate a Windows desktop as a power user and install Windows (server). He got this cert because of the "bootcamp" where they only taught to the tests and then they took the tests until they passed them.

Meanwhile, I was deploying GPOs and scripting remote cleanups of Blaster using PsExec... zero certs and no degree.

A+ is the mark of the beast and the coming of the second-stringer.

Get an A+ certification and see how far you get. :)

I could be wrong, but you come across to me on the negative-side, like cognitive distortions or inexperience. "Some job markets" being what specifically? Game dev, for example, the most sure path to that is more general experience before and willingness to work as an unpaid intern/code janitor prior to getting a paid position.

"How": That's your responsibility to use your imagination to figure out. No one else can or should think for you or do what you need to do because then you won't internalize independence or gain self-confidence to be more capable.

I've been a hiring manager on occasion. Resumes are an advertisement that must be proven fact-checking the candidate that the can demonstrate further knowledge and calling references. Resumes are often moot in rapid-pace technology fields where demonstration of specific, current knowledge is more important.. they are only good if they can be used as advertisements to get the attention of a company and/or get attention of different decision-makers within that company.

A home lab is useful for gaining knowledge that may be tested in an interview... like how to construct an HA MySQL or Postgres cluster that can failover itself, move the vIP and prevent split-brain. Or machine learning.

In general, I had zero family, friends or legacy connections for the following to demonstrate :

At 15, I went to interesting talks and colloquia just for the heck of it, and asked questions. At one of them, I was offered a job as a dark matter physics research assistant at IBM Almaden but couldn't take it for legal reasons (15 ½ legal minimum). I was disappointed, but moved forward.

At 16, I got a pizza flipping/cashier job with zero experience because no one else was hiring (it was a recession and there lots of potential workers). Definitely a sh*t job but a job nonetheless. I had to break down every business door in the area and it was rejection almost every time, except when it wasn't.

At 17, I moved to a job in retail software sales with only one crap job on my resume by again banging-down every door to every business for 2 miles down a main road.

At 18, I started a sysadmin consultancy and built it up to 4 clients within a single building for convenience. I was doing sysadmin, netadmin and ported a Fortran nuclear reactor simulator from UNIX to Win32 and made it run 2.5x faster by disabling swap. Also, added a Cisco 1604 128 KiB ISDN router and discovered AIX was phoning home to IBM, keeping the router always demand-dialing... nothing a little /etc/hosts couldn't fix.

About 19, I took a crap-ton of (then cheap) community college classes, 5-7 at a time, and did a Transfer Admission Agreement to guaranty admission to a decent school while working almost full-time.

21, transferred to the uni and took 4 CS quarter-system classes at time. It's even more fun with a concrete math class where proofs are pages and pages. 3-4 all-nighters a week for months at a time.

At 25, I hit pause on uni and got a full-time Lead SysAdmin job at (top 5 university name) without a degree and zero certifications. They gave me all sorts of training/certs that were of mostly limited value and no importance but gave my boss an excuse to put us up in Hollywood, rent a Jag and personal-cost road-trip to Vegas on Friday. Remote-site VMware VCP training cost $10k back then, I bet it's $15-18k now... and the tests cost $3k+ now IIRC.

At 27, I moved to a biomedical informatics department doing High Performance Computing (HPC) and what would be considered now more like SRE.

A couple of years later, I bounced to finish the degree and go into enterprise consulting.

At 31, I did on-premises, generalist (SRE-like) integration and migrations at an AWS preferred partner for Fortune 200.

At 32, I delved in the startup scene, mostly earlier YC batch folks and did a smattering of consulting gigs, getting paid $10k/week. (It's best at that point to have an LLC.) In general, hang around the right coffee shops, and meeting potential clients is inevitable.

----

Here are some preparatory elements to consider:

- Put useful things on Github and/or Youtube/Vimeo.

- Scrub social media clean or close them.

- LinkedIn is essential for legacy organizations.

- Have a resume in PDF & DOCX formats.

- Have a personal site that has limited details, links to professional social sites and a captcha'ed contact form.

- Carry personal cards with email (containing name), phone number with +country code and timezone, and a QR barcode that's the vCard.

- Cultivate a pleasant, no complaints, always on-time, always deliver, can-do/will-figure-it-out attitude.

- Make them tell you "no," because never asking is a definite "no."

I both agree and disagree with your post... Mainly because it just a big long False dilemma where you put General knowledge over specific knowledge believing that one has to choose

I think people should have a good conceptual knowledge, a base line of general knowledge of technology, that however does not preclude one from gaining vendor specific knowledge.

Your coming at this from a development standpoint, I am coming from ops but if I have legacy environment critical to my business I need people that are experts in that environment. You may have all the best "general theory" around how Virtual Machines work, how iscsi works, etc but if I have an error on VMWare ESXI that causes production lose I need a person that has DEEP understanding of VMWare not someone that understand the theory of things as I do not have time for you to open a ticket to get vendor support, I need it fixed now not 5 hours from now after vmware blames the storage vendor and the storage vendor blames vmware

> If I'm looking at learning something, my criteria is "will this information still be relevant 10 years from now?"

I don't know, in the tech world there is a ton of stuff with a lifespan shorter than 10 years, but you still often need to learn it.

I mean, I get the point of your post, and I agree having general knowledge is a critical starting point, but at the end of the day you often need to actually put hands to keyboard to get something specific done. For example, it's important to know generic programming concepts, but as someone who switched to the Node world from Java a couple years ago there was a ton of new stuff I had to learn: How Node's threading model worked, the details of the event loop, how Promises and async/await worked, the specifics of Javascript's prototype inheritance model, etc. It took me a long time to feel like I was as proficient in Node as I had been in Java because so many of the critical details are so different.

> "will this information still be relevant 10 years from now?" This is so true. It basically applies to every single learning resource that is out there, especially good books that withstand over time. I always found certifications a waste of money and in a way I'd glad if all of this IT certification industry disapears for good.

I think there is some value in certifications as a way of teaching unusual corner cases you might not otherwise come across.

I only have one cert - the Sun Certified Java Programmer, from back in the day when Sun still existed - and i can say it encouraged me to dive deeper into the quirks of the language. For sure, reading Effective Java gets you more bang for the buck in becoming a great Java developer, and stuff like Clean Code probably helps more with learning how to build maintainable apps, but i still feel like the SCJP was worth my time to do.

The thing i found about doing the SCJP is that it increased my curiosity around programming languages in general. Those contrived "gotcha" questions on visibility, inheritance etc made me think more deeply about how to design code in a readable and safe way - not just in Java but in other languages too.

I’ve gone down the certification rabbit hole twice in my career.

The first time was in 2008 when I was trying to pivot from an expert beginner C bit twiddler to “enterprise development”. I took the six courses for MS certifications. Even then I knew that certifications were meaningless. They were basically a guided study method so I would know what I didn’t know. I never put them on any resume. By the time I went looking for my next job, they had expired and I didn’t need them.

The second time started two years ago - a AWS certs - and they are for the same reason, a guided studied path but this time the company pays for them.

AWS certs are good to have because they are requirement for a company to maintain “partner” status, it gives clients a warm and fuzzy and it helps to get through the HR filter. But no actual hiring manager (including me) gives them much weight when accessing candidates.

In the 90s I was in the vanguard of “paper” MCSEs - I knew this computer networking stuff was interesting, but had no idea where to start. Back then, the core exams were all NT 4.0 related, which clearly is mostly irrelevant now, but the electives, Networking Essentials and TCP/IP are still rather relevant. The certs were good in that they tried to make sure you knew the basics of everything, and there were lots of electives to choose from (such as IE 4 Administration, which I passed, lol). In the end, I think that I agree with you that these certs have little value once your career is established (I skipped Win2k certs, and didn’t get a ton of new knowledge studying for my Win2k3 certs, which were my last). The real crying shame is all of the latchers-on who pushed these certs as effectively a get rich quick scheme. I wonder if MS is getting out of this cert biz to get away from that as much as anything.

Considering most Microsoft Windows Server features covered have been around since Windows XP, I’d argue most Windows certs meet your criteria.

I’d call my Cisco certs, combined with the community college courses that aligned with them, the most effective education process in my life. It directly impacted my job, immediately. Even aside from the fact that in the MSP business, certs are super marketable.

I think Cisco certifications, even the CCNA, are suspended from scrutiny by many, even in disciplines famous for their cert-skepticism like infosec.

There exist other prestigious certifications, but they generally lack the reputation for seriousness that Cisco is credited with, even crystallizing into a semi-mythological reputation for playing unfair on behalf of recipients with refusals to license IOS ELX and even lucrative hardware sales to organizations which don't have CCIE on staff.

From my understanding, Microsoft certs can be similarly challenging. And from an IT industry standpoint, there's similar value in terms of partnership: Microsoft partner levels depend on having Microsoft-certified professionals.

It will be interesting to see what they do here, for instance, the Datacenter competency for Microsoft Gold partners requires MCSA: https://partner.microsoft.com/en-us/membership/datacenter-co...

Right now, the document just says "we're working on something to replace these".

You have to get the job first.

And being in the tech field for decades (which I have) is all about pivoting from one flavor of the month to the next.

As an employer (IT consultancy), I in particular do not mark up for MS qualis. I generally drop those to the bottom of the stack for lacking originality if that is nearly all that is shown in support. I want to see things like engineering, maths and science degrees, actually any degree will do that shows critical thinking.

I'll take a HND in palaeontology in preference to a MS fellowship with a signed photo of Bill G over their headboard any day. At least I'll get someone who has legendary attention to detail and the ability to follow a chain of inferences and gather clues. They'll also be able to completely piss on anyone who starts going on about their first PC or programming language as though that is some sort of ancient history.

Please Mr IT teacher: Give me critical thinkers, not drones.

I call these McQualifications.

They're a negative signal when I see them in a CV.

Virtually all certification schemes are a scam with extra steps. Candidates who don't see the scam for what it is, are bottom of the barrel. Likewise employers who bought into the scam are bottom of the barrel.

Except they are an hiring requirement for the Cisco, SAP, Adobe, Oracle... consulting partners.

Yes, that's the scam part of it.

Vendors have placed a toll booth between job seekers and jobs in fields where vendors have enough sway with employers to convince them to make their certifications a hiring requirement.

It's not only the vendors, it's the market around that too. I just remembered which company did my certification, clicked on the link from ddg and got

Secure Connection Failed

An error occurred during a connection to www.pearsonitcertification.com. Cannot communicate securely with peer: no common encryption algorithm(s).

Error code: SSL_ERROR_NO_CYPHER_OVERLAP

Yeah. Right.

/me giggles

edit: Hm. May have giggled too soon, because https://home.pearsonvue.com/ works. Don't know how the link above is related to them.

I'm not too sure who this reflects badly on: You, me or those "consulting partners".

I can quite happily make money without invoking Satan or Oracle/SAP/Cisco as you choose to call him. What on earth is an Adobe? Sounds like a real earth element, probably worthless unlike the real ones.

Me not at all, as I see it just as yet another part of the business.

Are you hiring software engineers, or desktop support IT people, or what?

I don't think an MCSE tells you much about hiring someone to do work that is mostly about learning and creating - software engineering, network architects, infrastructure admins, etc. But i can imagine it being useful if you're hiring someone for a position that is more about routine problems and customer service - IT support, cabling, audio-visual, etc.

I should add that i don't mean this as a slight on our comrades in first-line support. They are a vital and valued part of the IT community!

I'm hiring all sorts - it's an IT consultancy. We only have one f/t software dev. We do have a helpdesk with 1st - 3rd levels, a datacentre that wont set the world on light but is watched like a hawk and quite physically secure: a bijou cloud if you like.

The vast majority of MCSEs I've seen are the result of a boot camp. The questions and answers are rather contrived. The only worse quali I can think of now is the VMware VCP (memorise the maximums and a load of other rubbish) I've got a VCP myself for 6.0 I think. Its bollocks. I wrangle vSphere clusters all over the UK and I think the qualification is absolutely rubbish. I'm also QUEST accredited - that's better than the others but still pretty naff.

I'm the MD but I still do levels 1-3 on the helpdesk, as do my two other partners in the firm. This isn't some sort of micro management thing: the helpdesk is a good litmus style test for what is happening in the firm, quality wise. I still get a kick out of telling someone who requests escalation of their problem that it can't go any further. I don't do it too often but when I think that a customer (rightly or wrongly) is at their wit's end and me de-cloaking might help their stress levels, then I deploy that strategy. Some of the responses I have had are absolutely priceless and make the job (and life) a better place.

Interesting, because as I mention in another thread they are an hiring requirement for the Cisco, SAP, Adobe, Oracle... consulting partners.

Anecdotal, but as a hiring manager I can't remember the last time I cared that a candidate had an industry certification. It's not even a positive signal, it's zero signal in either direction.

My own experience does not match yours. Both in being hired for roles in Microsoft-focused shops and in hiring and growing a team at a Microsoft partner.

My own lack of certs has never been an issue. When I have been hiring, I've actually built up a bias against certs, as the people who have talked the most about certs have ended up the worst employees. And those who have sought certs rather than experience have ended up worse off than their opposites. I recognize both my relatively small sample size and various cognitive biases that creep into this. Thus, I strive to completely ignore certs.

I had several employees who were required to complete Microsoft certs for us to keep our Gold Partner status with Microsoft. Those who completed them mostly considered them a waste of time. Sometimes there were learning opportunities simply that a feature exists. No one ever became better at their job or designed better solutions based on certs.

My conclusion ultimately is that, at least so far as Microsoft is concerned, the certs are for trivia. They're not useless, they are just literally trivial.

Note, here trivial does not mean easy.

Looks like they're basically throwing on-prem stuff under a bus now: All the certs are for Azure-related stuff.[0]

[0] - https://query.prod.cms.rt.microsoft.com/cms/api/am/binary/RE...

We have a winner! Microsoft is unabashedly trying to destroy on-prem IT. They are cutting out every reseller, and directly telling users things like “this feature that would make your life so much easier and make you look great in front of the boss has been disabled by your control-freak system admin”. And they have already tipped their hand that they intend to prevent admins from having any control at all on future things. You can’t even install Windows anymore without a Microsoft account (without jumping through ever-increasingly complex hoops).

I got my MCSE exactly 20 years ago; it had a different meaning at that time, S was for System, not Solution. Today the company I work for has close to 100,000 computers in Active Directory and no plan to change that: most of these computers are personal laptops and desktops, there is no move to cloud for these. I have no idea what training and certification the new hires working in the AD and Personal Computing teams will have to pursue, I will have to check but it is definitely not a change in favor of simplicity.

>> most of these computers are personal laptops and desktops, there is no move to cloud for these

While the OS will not move, Microsoft wants you to move to Azure AD and Intune for Management instead of OnPrem AD and Group Policy

They want that monthly per device revenue, and I would not be shocked to see EA CAL and Core CAL prices increased very soon to be more than the Equivalent Cloud Product.

I think past 2019 Versions of Server Products it is about to become VERY VERY expensive for companies to Continue with OnPrem Microsoft products.

better start looking at Directory389 and and FreeIPA..

Edit:

Since I am rated limited (posting too many controversial things)

I will edit my post to say MS has been signalling well since Ballmer left that Onprem is deprecated and will be a second class citizen in their Line Up

This is just further moving down the path of eliminating all OnPrem for Azure, 5-10 years I would say MAX before they end all support for the Server Side of OnPrem, or it will become Azure Stack and the only way to use Windows Services is with a Hybrid Azure, so your OnPrem AD will be a Cached version of AzureAD

Azure AD may be a decent solution if you have people doing Office and other work all day long, not when you have manufacturing plants across the world in places with poor Internet connections, SCADA and continuity plans that don't involve reliable Internet. If you need that, the complexity of having on premise AD and Azure AD is just cost with no benefits.

Wouldn't AD be just as painful in that instance, since replication could be interrupted between other sites by connectivity outages and the local domain controller could become out of sync?

We pushed federation caches over the signalling channel of ISDN2 as late as 2007. ISDN is the most commonly misunderstood and under appreciated communications standard. During the early nineties ISSN acquired a horrible reputation for incompatibility, but the very nature and value proposition of ISDN remains the most adaptable and capable L0/1/2 communications standard that was intentionally designed to adapt to and enable legacy protocols and future transition requirements. This is why the D channel is capable of transfer of user defined packet payloads up to 16kbps. Commonly dismissed as the signalling channel, why was it designated as "D channel " and the commonly presumed data channels, "B channels"?

The myriad problems and factors that assailed practical IDDN adoption in the early days when a working ISDN interface was a genuine wonder not of miracles in configuration but the capability delivered (we ran applications in advertising that had financial trading style requirements for transactions and the fact that advertising copy was delivered via ISDN was the kind of integration that was envisioned originally)

Everyone is confusing me with their apparent over reaction to the connection of cloud to remote sites. This was what CICS was written for fifty years ago. I feel like I'm discussing state secrets every time I mention CICS. Can anyone recall the killer feature of NT3.1? MTS, if you must have it. MTS is why SQLserver was so easily portable to Linux. I suspect about everyone who reads HN might have a ball with some of the desperately not trendy things we are involved in. Like my uncle dusting his suit vests, smiling he only had to wait thirty years for them to return to fashion. This is a universal interval someone who can explain it will deserve a Nobel I'm sure...

ISDN is an edge point to point protocol (although used to get on a network). I don't really see how it has to do specifically with anything related to AD vs Azure (a data link is a data link, you could has well have used an analog modem, or a custom solution involving an avian carrier), neither do I see how ISDN should be considered as anything else than obsolete technology in all regards nowadays, no matter the nostalgia factor.

BTW B channel is for "Bearer", and D is for "Delta" or maybe "Data". (Wild hypothesis: maybe it was initially for "Data" at a time when B was seldom used for things other than digitized voice possibly with a bit stolen for in-band signaling)

On my side I consider that ATM was pretty sweet at a time when IP&co was complete garbage (and still somewhat is), but I know who won.

As for CICS, well, mainframe are still not dead. I suspect they won't, because why would they? But the model is not the same as the modern "cloud" stuff, at all levels.

"It's dead, Jim." I had that stuff with 128Kbit/s|16KB/s at home up to around 2004, and shudder at the thought of having an upgrade or patch release of any application, or OS over that. Apart from that, every telco everywhere is discontinuing service for that, or has already done so long ago. The whole "ecosystem" of line technology is gone, not produced anymore. Only surviving niche are internal installations where some gateway translates whichever VoIP to some internal S0-Bus, and the long obsolete phones.

That was that. What was your point again in this context?

Yes and no.

An AD DC can be offline for as long as 60 days (by default, since the actual length of time is covered by AD's tombstone lifetime, which is configurable) and recover just fine, assuming you're not to worried about the intrinsic fact that changes at or affecting that site aren't replicated immediately.

And assuming you plug the site back into the network somehow, under your 60 day limit, AD will largely just keep truckin'. If you've got sites that are offline for more than 60 days at a time due to unforseen circumstances, well, maybe those sites need some other solution.

Spotty connectivity is just fine for AD, though, especially if you're designing things properly.

Please let me make the connection from active directory wan replication, as far as what I believe is the objective of ramping up the azure ad services capability and capacity: making a global computing grid with current and next generation Xbox consoles. This isn't a polished presentation, I'm genuinely sorry I can't manage better, but this is a proper long line strategy. (Also you could imagine a phone product fitting into this end scenario, at least I can)

I suspect that pushing the world off local machines and licenses is not a bad thing for the security of systems generally.

But consider the flatness of the stock during Ballmer's tenure.

By literally cutting the supply of people who can maintain off net machines, Nadella is pushing the license revolution about the hardest he can.

I hold two not necessarily complimentary theories about the stock under SB: flat stock suits a relentless acquirer such as SB, who iirc became the largest non founder shareholder by committing his net worth to his employer stock and sticking to this policy in every remuneration review. I believe SB laid some of the best foundations for growth to ever be implemented by any internally promoted business leader in a direct majority positive personal wealth correlation position at the time of appointment. Many CEOs have become one to one linked to their employer success but only after options awards and bonus schemes created that equity correlation. Ballmer was all in. I beseech you especially if you're not favourable to the man by reputation, to look at SB more closely. I experienced a Damascene conversation and subsequently I discovered I admire Ballmer's dedication and principles as much as they surely desperately needed smoothing with greater sensitivity to the constituencies that are the still neglected bedrock of economic and technological capability and development in America (much less so in Europe unfortunately) because we just can't respond to any proverbial chair throwing, it's not in the geek career handbook, sorry Steve, but I at least know that you truly tried and can guess how much it means to you still. ---- Equally Ballmer could have suppressed the stock by his relentless investment in long term economic growth. Windows Mobile is the best known calamity. Not necessarily for the mobile ecosystem, but for the social and political relationships that ownership of Nokia could have created. Such transatlantic opportunities are not necessarily seen in every generation.

I think Ballmer takes credit but SN was the trigger puller on the XboxOneX architecture that enticed Dave Cutler from retirement to bootstrap W10 on the 1X. This puts workstation class 3D hardware in homes for under three hundred dollars, last offers I saw. The next model is even more attractive. But at launch the 1X was almost five times the component value and packaged how very few are capable of producing. Powerful workstations in ubiquitous distribution is a stepping stone to the next technological transformation in this lifetime I hope to see and even participate in.

Can you now appreciate why I've digressed so much?

Hundreds of millions of workstation class consoles presents the most important network and remote tenant support challenge that I think I will see in my life.

If by reaping the financial benefits of pushing sites to cloud and subscriptions, Nadella can afford to extend Intune to domestic demand on the scale of the consoles market, the hardware will support a new era of possibilities. I certainly didn't think the adapter for the Xbox to use the switches and controls you bring, was by any means facing only the challenges of physical disability. I have forever since been thinking about my garage door opener being replaced with a simple relay and I have sufficient trust in my wan access to my console to be completely comfortable with this. (Plus of course further security doors before you enter our home)

How do you prefer to heat your home? I prefer to be paid for running azure jobs that are modelling for local transport conditions and micro climate forecasts. Rackfill not landfill, is the future for hardware my company hopes to speed into reality. Miniaturisation is plenty for the data created by our lives exception being sensor data and video capture of later value in review. But I expect to see de duplication of scenery behind multiple channels of capturing cameras, after dimensional data extraction, which is easy to control the storage facility for, over neighbourhood 5G networks (see STH for latest Celeron 5G targeted chips, the most interesting news I'm surprised HN hasn't leaped upon) for simultaneous multi deca gigabit ptp mimo is upon us probably before a full traditional interval technological generation (I think the important tech generation interval is halved and halved again in the last decade alone and therefore I believe that Moore's Law is now manifest in the periodicity of development having become challenged by other limits nevertheless the technology advances just not by virtue of inherent value or capability but external factors. If Moore's Law can be restated to apply for the interval of development continuing the capability exponential growth, please allow the currying to be noted as Kirby's Second Law, my first being explaining is losing, a admonishment probably rather than immutable law but it is very hard to find ways it is inapplicable. Hence my second law could be written, laws return in guise too thin to deceive but too importantly to be obvious (we are too preoccupied with the effect of force unknown ") I had better write that much better.. please please don't take me too seriously in fact please don't take me seriously in the first place, as Feynman offered the seeker of physics profundity his advice "physics doesn't matter, love does" I'm ashamed every time I consume my listeners attention without being able to make some token of value beyond the time taken. Time is beyond the gift of the gods. Its waste is in this incredible epoch I believe is the only crime that is important to punish with meaningful actions.

Bold move by Microsoft. I get that the cloud is more lucrative, but I feel like this is a bit premature. Plenty of businesses aren't ready to switch to the cloud and it seems like MS and others want to push this illusion of "everybody is doing it and you should too".

It seems overly confident. They know the majority of business depend on their OS, AD and office suite so they can f them real hard and get away with it. So either they know really where the boundary is and calculated this well, or they already know that all this stuff will go away and accepted their fate. Or they are being really stupid here and rapidly turn themselves into just another cloud provider.

They're turning our dens into the next generation datacenter and personally I won't be happy until our furnace is substituted for radiators that are heat sinks / backplanes for the various 1U * servers I'd like instead of overpriced home automation systems and poor entertainment hardware that is bettered by miles for much less by actual professional production gear and this is how I dream we're going to be able to heat the homes of our elderly people who not too long hence will count among their number this comment author or rather my wife and my ashes after I expire from shock at human kind managing a drinking session in a brewery. But I have hope, sure and certain hope, as my faith's liturgy inters it's believers...(I think of religion like a lost advanced technology that has become entirely misunderstood and its uses forgotten or even despised because maybe like LISP having faith in our fellow humanity is plain hard and involves too many macros. But that's the kit of my digression into that subject, I am merely so deeply worried about global events that I fear a retrograde to exactly what of theology is most abhorrent and destructive though ephemerally consoling. This race of man needs to work afresh to understand anew everything, I believe, and I already think I'm seeing the failures of modern civilisation caused by the passing of the last generation who learned the hardest way to work first towards better life for all and trust that wealth will subsequently follow, instead we're almost entirely product now of gaming the edge cases of capitalism which cases should instead be solved to enable the future to be built)

(preferably the open computing rack spec or maybe something entirely different and more suitably designed. This area is ripe for patents and I'm looking for like minds to establish some prior art in anticipation of bad actors especially the mostly unprofitable energy utilities, and I've legal and development budget carved out of my savings to do so on my hunch I can reasonably ask to be made whole if the product is useful)

* slightly involved investigation showed me I can assemble the most excellent home theater system from pro equipment for plenty less than close to the higher end of consumer systems, while giving my family the facility almost every way equal to a professional post production studio. This isn't Lutron. Lutron don't sell DANTE routing/ volume controls and switching with display to fit into our light switch soffets. But Teac do for a modest sum. DANTE is the most advanced pro audio live audio interface over Ethernet so we'll be able to connect our daughters keyboard music workstation to the DAC in our den, which can record 32 channels of 5Mhz sample sound to SD card, or have a computer patched in by a inexpensive Yamaha PCIe (v4!) card capable of incredible wonders and software process for Dolby and Auro3D (a lesser known but arguably far better surround format originally adopted by Skywalker and big studios and now part of the IMAX 8K spec. This is software processing and we can record as easily as play. We aimed to beat a dealerships quote for a "safely not high end but show off what's possible today not tomorrow please " setup and managed by a pleasant amount.

.... all I have written looks like prime Azure/IoT candidate income sources to my vision of the not distant future. Of course Microsoft is bold. How can you be anything but hold at trillion dollars scales? How can you move the needle unless you're playing with a big stack? I amuse myself with thoughts about splitting Microsoft's businesses now and separating cloud from on premises lines. This makes sense to me as a business decision that would help the company to thrive whilst enabling the less connected economic world to access software systems that aren't subsidies for the cloud computing competition. I think Azure is a better standalone business than integrated. This may require a long term investment from shareholders. But our 401ks need genuine growth stocks. The legacy business will serve the world being served by the Melinda and Bill Gates Foundation today. That's a sympathy for the good in every way possible that I've thought about it. I would separate the IP and patent portfolio into a trust in recognition of Microsoft business in the OSS world which needs assurance and support but by separating the on premise Microsoft from Azure, the on prem Microsoft can now compete with open source alternatives. Equally this is the open source movements greatest opportunity for all time. Who cares about the Year Of Desktop Linux if Microsoft is abandoning the desktop? We won already. So did Microsoft. Pooh, capitalism is about growing pies for real? Hand me my defibrillator!

Plenty of businesses aren't necessarily businesses already.

My company partnership numbered five in the beginning.

This isn't a unusual headcount for a family home that's represented by a ad hoc bunch of pcs, phones, printers, and possibly a consumer NAS in the most prominent form likely a cable box or network movie disc player.

No Active Directory licences involved here.

But why not?

My brother is a retired professor of transportation sciences and setting Windows Update is not a use of time he'll entertain. I think he just isn't aware that he's not enjoying his new SSD storage how he should. Startup time is 5KRPM SATA quick for his main machine.

I am going to provide a Microsoft 365 account and licenses for him from allocation for ad hoc consultants to work on their own personal laptops but our operating system image and our network not touching anything about their environment at all.

However I'm positive I can provide very close to the same by simply buying a Office 365 Premium CAL from the local pc world store. This won't include any cloud W10 license not the virtual machine runtime and asynchronous mirroring for a DR facility and neither is the extensive endpoint security system included that's a real selling point now iPhone and iPad and Linux are to be supported sny day now.

But just roll out the sum of the above for a "family office" license (includes one academic license without further application) for say $50pcm .

I know that I am going to sell countless such hypothetical licenses if they made available to retail. Upgrade payments get you the virtual machine runtimes, storage lakes and archives, mail order Microsoft hardware tokens/2FA sold under Xbox xtranet branding (I could think of better but I could also register and sell a good name too) which is something that I cannot wait for giving the kids to secure their phones and laptops at school because they will accept the device and not reject it because they will need it to log in to their games after school as well and they will be able to signal their achievements with flare and graphics emblazons on their keys and their parents are going to be able to secure the kids against forced access by ovrrreaching school administrators (who did so to our wrath on unfounded allegations of cheating last semester) because we'll be able to require no line zone simultaneous authorisation by one of us via another channel and assuming we paid for content security we'll be able to prevent copying and searching by anyone we don't wish to all the while nobody can accuse the girls of withholding their passwords and I best not start on the enforceability of contractual allowance for such invasions upon minors whilst parents guardians nor anybody's got any legal rights to bind a minor to such impositions as far as our counsel advised...

This is easy a couple of hundred of millions of "small business " Azure/Intune sites to connect and the arguments are wholly relevant to our immediate lives and very strongly represented by many other means without any advertising to us at all.

Microsoft is to our knowledge the sole major cloud computing business who spends real money to deflect warrant less and unlawful ingress into accounts by LEOs. Apple appears to be protective of customers whenever it protects Apple. This notwithstanding, the Santander case being the one to watch, iPhone or rather the now almost usable iPad OS, after gaining Microsoft endpoint security (another paid upgrade to reach the magical $75pcm mark equal to LinkedIn and far more than a office license costs in real world pricing) that's what this is about.

This is a theoretical two hundred billion dollars in revenue coming on stream in effect possible any time Nadella is up for it.

How to handle this network load?

That's why David Cutler was pulled from retirement to bootstrap Windows on the Xbox and why they're selling serious workstation class hardware for peanuts in the guise of a gaming console.

Good. I spent about 15 years hiring and managing MS devs and these certs were always a red flag to me. It almost guaranteed the person would only know the MS exam way and would have no critical thinking capabilities. They also rarely knew anything beyond the MS world.

They were a very strong indicator of someone’s ability to pass an exam, not that they were a good engineer.

From talking to other disciplines, the networking and infra certs were useful but everything I saw about dev certs was negative.

I guess they were useful in helping thin down a pile of CVs as these went straight to the bottom.

In general I’ve viewed any 3 or 4 letter acronym (MSCA, MBA, CISA, PMP, etc) to be a bad signal. It’s as if they’re signaling a lack of depth.

And now you’ve lost a bunch of red flags you were able to use for recruitment.

I've heard that reasoning of certs under different IT disciplines from different managers as well. To me, the fact that you think that way is a redflag that you don't do technical interviews right and perhaps you haven't managed to train people right either.

The cert only tells you that they know the $cert way of doing things and that in itself shows minimal competency as opposed to someone making things up. A cert says nothing about other abilities such as critical thinking and abstract reasoning. It only helps you decide whether or not you should call them in for an interview. Your technical interview should include practical questions that filter out candidates that can't be bothered to research a subject and stick to the cert way no matter what.

Yep, GP rant is middle-brow dismissal.

I've been out of the Microsoft loop for a while (thankfully). Their new certs are confusing, it's not really clear what the person that does the "Active Directory" stuff even needs at this point.

MCSA was pretty straight forward, not really much marketing fluff. "System Admin" right in the name of the cert. Matched industry job titles and responsibilities.

"Microsoft 365 Certified: Teams Administrator Associate"

Does that have to do with Microsoft Teams? The description talks about "Office 365." Microsoft has lost their minds with this 365 nonsense. "Administrator Associate" also sounds inferior to "Administrator". Is this an entry level certification? It used to be somewhat simple hierarchy: Administrator, Engineer, Architect in the IT world. Now it's buzzword soup everywhere.

>"Microsoft 365 Certified: Teams Administrator Associate"

> Does that have to do with Microsoft Teams? The description talks about "Office 365."

This part seems fairly clear to me. Teams is a product inside of the Office 365 family of products. So that certification would be for someone that wants to be an administrator for Teams.

That being said, I do agree with some of your points: like "Administrator Associate" is a bit confusing. Administrators are typically farther along than associates I would think. Office 365 is for the productivity apps (including Teams), and then Microsoft 365 is for Win 10 + Office 365 + Security things... could get confusing quick.

> Administrators are typically farther along than associates I would think.

I just never heard "associate" used in reference to a title on anything related to informatics.

Citrix also called (calls?) their first tier cert "associates". Citrix Certified Associate, going up to Profesional, and Expert.

AWS also calls their 2nd level certification „Associate“ [1].

[1] https://aws.amazon.com/de/certification/

What about the “associate” in the entry-level CCNA (Cisco Certified Network Associate)?

>>MCSA was pretty straight forward, not really much marketing fluff. "System Admin" right in the name of the cert

the SA is MCSA is not System Admin, it is Solutions Associate and has been for a number of years

MCSA was Microsoft Certified Solutions Associate

MCSE was Microsoft Certified Solutions Expert

They changed the names in the Early 2000's if I remember correctly

Source, with a list of the more than 40 exams that will be retired: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/learning/community-blog-post...

I feel like it's not only certs that are retiring, most MS dev/sysadmin I know (myself included as MCSA) have moved to linux stacks in the past 3 years

There is an ever increasing number of Linux servers, that is correct, but there is still a huge base of personal PC's (laptops, desktops) running Windows in Active Directory in many companies; there is still specialized software that runs only on Windows even on servers - I know in the area I work the top options are Windows only - so there is still need for Windows admins.

People should make their Opinions heard,

https://trainingsupport.microsoft.com/en-us/mcp/forum/all/pe...

Probably will not do anything but...

Microsoft is a pale shade of its former self. Many argue that Ballmer departure was a good thing™. But I am sure it was the tipping point for a progressing irrelevancy. The situation is unlikely to change any time soon. Microsoft is bloodless and dying.

Azure brings them cool money now, but that's a temporary thing. Fast forward some years and they will degenerate into a hosting company.

Why? Because software is the king. The cost of software distribution is negligible, and hardware is commodity.

How? Imagine Kubernetes + Digital Ocean combo. Are they a big threat to Azure? Not at all. Digital Ocean is sweet and beloved, but Kubernetes is hard and clunky.

Now imagine a piece of software that eliminates all deficiencies. Let's call it The Killer. Now we have The Killer + Digital Ocean combo vs Azure. And not only Digital Ocean participates, take any other VPS or cloud-rental company. Take any other computer in the world.

Azure the Goliath will be defeated by millions of Davids in a blink of an eye.

Microsoft the company is going to face a harsh reality. And given the direction it follows today, it will have negligible chances of survival by then.

What are the options to have windows domain controller? We got some 20-30 windows7 and 10 pcs and need to centrally manage them - with profile roaming, with SMB ACL, and Administrative policies.

With this strong push towards Azure, there is still no replacement for AD, neither samba reached the point of being a primary controller replacement. Are active directory domain services supposed to be an alternative? It seems to me they only provide ldaps and able to login on windows, but no trusts and nothing to enable sharing ACLs.

So for a new deployment, with ample time to learn the options, I still have to setup some redundant windows servers, with AD and trusts, the old way.

If you're already using Azure, then Azure AD might be an option to look into if you're not wanting to run your own Domain Controllers. Otherwise, you can continue running them just as you've been able to for the last 20 years.

Retiring these certifications has exactly zero to do with any Active Directory or Domain Controller functionality.

(To me, yours seems a bit of an odd question, so I apologize if I'm maybe missing something in your question.)

MCSE was good, back in the days, prior to the proliferation of Internet and virtualization technologies. It taught fundamental networking and bare server under the hood. Not sure what new learners learn these days amid all the virtual abstractions, etc.

LOL. Finally! I had that MCSE thing for Windows NT4/Networking and IIS. What an utter waste of time. I had to actively ignore most of what i knew already to pass the braindead questionairies. It wasn't all BS, especially in networking, but mostly...?

Anyways, it smelled scammy, it empowered scammy tutors to scam scammy institutions to scam scammy people to scam employers into employing them. A whole market of scammers.

That is why i cut the card in two and BURNED it in public at the end :-)

(Don't panic, there was an ashtray...)

I do wish there was a ‘skip tech interviews’ cert that was taken seriously.

Will this affect my ability to receive useless answers on their community run support forum?

The community answers are not really their fault, I think the moderators are not meant to be a higher level of support when the community answers suck. The useful answers are from their paid support like in many other cases, for everything else there is Stackoverflow.

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