10.7 Apple Certification or wait for 10.8 ?

Many times, Apple will offer a delta test, which is a shorter version of just the changes, and would grant you the new cert (10.8).

The reality is that the stability for Lion has taken until 10.7.3 for wide adoption. In my estimation, the Mountain Lion classes will be ready to teach around the end of this year. Many AATC's (us included) are offering great discounts for those that took a Lion class and also want the Mountain Lion class.

Budgets can be cut with little to no notice. I've been on both sides there, having to cut staff training budget, and having my own training budget cut. Lesson learned...strike while the iron is hot.

As a co-author of the Lion Server Essentials reference guide and workbook for the course, I encourage you to attend the classroom training as soon as possible.

With classroom training, you have the ability to block out time to focus exclusively on the course. In most work environments, that's difficult to do on your own, and daily tasks and "emergencies" often intrude on that study time.

In classroom training, during the lecture and the lab portions of class, you can ask clarifying questions and get an immediate response. You have access to other students and their experiences and stories during discussions.

In classroom training, you have the opportunity to quickly grok the concepts, the tools, and the procedures necessary to accomplish necessary tasks.

Once you take the class, you can take those skills and understanding back to your workplace and continue practicing (hopefully on a sandbox network and not your production network).

Finally, I think it's really important to understand that with Lion Server, you should try to use the Server app whenever possible, rather than trying to use the legacy Server Admin Tools (Server Admin and Workgroup Manager). Of course there are several services that you currently cannot manipulate with the Server app (DNS, DHCP, NetBoot), so you still need to understand how to use Workgroup Manager and Server Admin. The class (and the reference guide if you decide not to take the class) walks you through the reasons why.

As you might be able to tell, I love producing and delivering these training materials, and I feel quite strongly about the classroom experience.

@ Arek. Ty for writing such a good reference book.

if you're at a point in your career where an apple cert will help you, go for it.

my actc has never really helped me get a job, and the books and tests didn't (they may now) cover much beyond clicking around in the gui. in my experience, the apple training books and certs mainly show you how to do things the "apple way" without much else to help you in the trenches.

you'll get way more mileage from formal or informal linux/*nix training. redhat certs are usually worthwhile. better yet, get involved with local user groups outside of the mac community. you'll learn a lot more that will easily be portable and inform your mac sysadmin duties.

While I do agree that real-world experience in UNIX/Linux is an invaluable addition to the Apple curriculum, I would also caution against treating Mac OS X Server like you would a Red Hat or BSD server.

Like it or not, Apple built a GUI on top of a UNIX server. Like any distro, Apple has changed a fair amount of the base code in ways that might not be immediately obvious. The GUI will do whatever it needs to do to the files underneath, which might complicate the way a UNIX Greybeard would expect to find things.

One of the most common problems I encounter in the field is cleaning up a Mac server after the Linux guy rooted it and did what he thought appropriate, and ended up causing huge problems after a software update or someone else touched the GUI tools.

...

But to the original point, I also find the Apple Curriculum very useful. Knowing how Apple designed their services provides a huge insight into how the third party vendors (like JAMF and others) design their replacement services.

You need to know the rules before you can break them.

my main point is that it may be wiser to spend training dollars elsewhere, because more organizations are moving away from os x server, and other technologies are more flexible and prevalent. i agree that one can't approach os x server in the same manner as a linux box, but i'm also willing to bet a donut that the install base for os x server is shrinking at such a rate that it won't matter in the near future.