Training and Certification as Self-employed

[stek]

I want to go down the Virtualisation route, my Microsoft skills are ok as far as I can tell, but I want to specialise in the hope that I can get better contracts and better rates.
So I’m going to study for a MS cert in Hyper-v and Do the Vmware VCP.
It’s not going to be cheap I know, for exams, books etc. I want to set up a ESXI and hyper-v environment, so there’s hardware costs etc..
What can I claim for, or how do I try to lower the cost , by utilising my self-employed status ?
Thanks for reading my waffle.

Hyper-V is a pile of poop, ESX is not so bad but for real virtualisation look into Solaris (now Oracle) LDOM's and IBM AIX LPAR's - also HP have NPARS and VPARS but I know nowt about that. These are proper hardware hypervisors not emulated in software with a few CPU tweaks to help.

For example, VMware can't do micro-partitioning, POWERVM can, 10th of a processor per VM, we have a mixture of all this at clientco, the AIX stuff is faultless, never needs a reboot, hardware is 100% reliable, uptimes in years, Sun (Oracle) stuff not so good since I don't know, their QC has gone to shiit, for the last few years really, before Oracle took over so not pointing fingers.

On the other hand, the ESX estate is rebooted constantly, we get frequent freezes where every VM on a server is inaccessible but up on vCenter, reboot ESX, reboot ESX. For me it's the architecture, whichever way you look at it it's a bloated PC...

Hyper-V we don't have, but I've seen enough of it to know it's limitations.

Phew! Deep breaths...

[TykeMerc]

Well, literally speaking you're an employee of the umbrella company and not self employed. For a first dip into contracting it was a sensible move and I'm glad things are off to a good start.

I'm not 100% sure how you can expense training and hardware/software as an umbrella employee, your first port of call should be to ask them how they regard it, it could be an issue or a doddle. The other option is to set up a Myco Ltd and those expenses would be easier to sort out.

[Virtual Lover]

Hi everyone
I have just become a contractor for the first time, mainly because I was struggling getting a decent permanent job in the region I live in. Although I had been contacted before about contract positions, I never really thought I had the bottle to do it. My biggest worry was, I’d turn up and find I was way out of my depth, especially after seeing some of the rates that were offered. Anyway I thought what the hell ! give it a go what’s the worst that can happen ?, I didn’t lie on my C.V and could easily answer all the technical questions in the interview, so when the agency said I’d been offered the contract I took the plunge, and well I don’t in the least bit regret it. So far it’s been a great experience and for the first time in a long time felt that my skills are being appreciated by an employer, the days have flown by, even to the point where my manager came by my desk at about 18:00 and told me to go home, because he wasn’t going to pay me overtime ! I said I wasn’t expecting to be paid overtime, I’m just so use to permy employers expecting you to work at least 10% more hours than your salary asks that it came as a bit of shock, that they were paying me very good money but not expecting something for nothing .. could be this is one off ?
Anyway the agency guy , spent ages going through what I need to do for contracting and pointed me at this site, I did read through a lot of articles and they really helped me choose my contracting path, so thanks for all the effort.. well I chose to go with an Umbrella company, yeah I know my agent recommended one, and yes he will get a kickback, but if they are rubbish I’ll go to another one. BTW they have paid me without any hassles, including my expenses within two weeks of starting.. so I’m happy.
What I would like to know is, if I can claim training/exams and materials needed for certification?
I want to go down the Virtualisation route, my Microsoft skills are ok as far as I can tell, but I want to specialise in the hope that I can get better contracts and better rates.
So I’m going to study for a MS cert in Hyper-v and Do the Vmware VCP.
It’s not going to be cheap I know, for exams, books etc. I want to set up a ESXI and hyper-v environment, so there’s hardware costs etc..
What can I claim for, or how do I try to lower the cost , by utilising my self-employed status ?
Thanks for reading my waffle.