At his site, Olson places a high level of value on volume management certifications such as Veritas Storage Certification Specialist or Sun Microsystem Inc.'s Certified System Administrator. Olson says that administrators have to understand volume management to manage servers. Knowing that an individual holds a system administrator or volume management certification reassures him that the individual understands some of the finer points associated with managing storage, such as what a SCSI-3 reservation bit on a LUN means.

One certification that IT managers are warming up to is SNIA's vendor-neutral storage certification. Fischer lists obtaining a SNIA certification as one of his goals for 2007. He views a SNIA certification as increasingly valuable since he works in a heterogeneous storage environment with multiple operating systems, vendor storage platforms and Fibre Channel switches.

Though he finds that his EMC Proven Professional certification has given him much of the necessary knowledge he needs to pass the SNIA certification test, everyone on his team needs to know something about everything. Fischer says, "Though we are storage generalists, we are very deep in each skill set and the SNIA certification will help me to deepen my personal storage knowledge base."

Luchs says that a recent survey completed by his organization indicates that end-user interest in the SNIA storage certification is rising. According to Luchs, pursuing vendor-specific certifications takes people out of the office, and the user has to complete each vendor's foundational storage course before pursuing any advanced courses. "At SNIA, we want our SCP certification to satisfy every vendor's foundational requirements for basic storage knowledge," Luchs says.