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If you want to prove your chops at OpenStack, the popular-but-difficult-to-master open-source IaaS cloud, you need to pass the Certified OpenStack Administrator (COA) exam. That program had been managed by the OpenStack Foundation, but now Mirantis is taking over as the exam's testing provider. The Foundation continues to oversee the certification.

Jonathan Bryce, OpenStack's Executive Director, explained in an email:

"The community values the COA exam as an important part of training and certifying operators of open infrastructure powered by OpenStack. Vendors stepping up to fill vendor-neutral roles in the community is a critical part of any open-source project, and Mirantis is doing exactly that. It's taken a leadership role in providing the resources that the community needs to administrate the vendor-neutral COA exam, which has historically been managed by a third party."

The COA is the only OpenStack Foundation professional certification. It's written for OpenStack professionals with at least six months of experience managing an OpenStack cloud environment.



"With the OpenStack market forecasted to grow to $7.7 billion by 2022 according to 451 Research, the demand for Certified Openstack Administrators is clearly strong and set to continue growing for many years to come," said Mark Collier, OpenStack's COO. "We are excited to collaborate with Mirantis, who has stepped up to provide the resources needed to manage the COA, including the administration of the vendor-neutral OpenStack certification exam."



In the COA's three years, about 3,000 professionals across 77 countries have taken the exam. The new COA exam is based on OpenStack Rocky and covers the core Identity (Keystone), Compute (Nova), Object Storage (Swift), Block Storage (Cinder), Networking (Neutron), and Images (Glance) services. You'll need to know how to work with them using both the OpenStack command line and the (Horizon) Dashboard UI.

There are dozens of OpenStack training providers, including Mirantis, offering OpenStack courses to prepare students for the vendor-agnostic OpenStack certification exam.



Dave Van Everen, Miranti's SVP of Marketing, said:

"We're extremely proud of our accomplishments as an OpenStack training provider and look forward to our collaboration with the OpenStack Foundation continuing to offer a vendor-neutral certification exam that can help community members grow their careers in meaningful ways."

It's been a busy few weeks for OpenStack. The group has just released the 20th version of its flagship program, OpenStack Train. Immediately beforehand, one of OpenStack's early leading lights, SUSE, dropped OpenStack from its offerings. Still, with OpenStack still growing, especially in China and in telecoms, the demand for OpenStack savvy administrators shows no sign of slowing down anytime soon.

If you're interested in becoming a COA, you can buy an exam through the OpenStack website or one of the many OpenStack training partners.

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