Lukas Beeler's IT Blog

HP0-055 is the basic exam needed for the HP AIS certification. Together with some vendor exams (Like Microsoft’s 70-290, 70-291) you can already earn this basic HP Systems Integration certification.

HP0-055 is a normal test center exam. Priced at 163 CHF, it’s about a quarter cheaper than Microsoft’s exams (priced at 215 CHF).

If you’ve only done Microsoft exams before (like me), prepare yourself for a massive change of pace and question style. I had 88 questions and 2 hours to finish my exam. Less time and more questions than Microsoft. The question however are in a completely different format: There are usually only one or two lines of text, and the answers are even simpler. It’s quite possible to answer a question within less than 30 seconds.

HP offers Official Study Guide and Desk Reference, which i found utterly worthless, mostly because it reiterated facts i’ve known since several years (but might appeal to newcomers, like detailed explanations of raid levels, etc.).

The problem was that much of the exam didn’t really focus on the server itself, but instead on available service packages from HP, and the tools that HP offers for it’s customers. The latter aren’t covered in the before mentioned book, and i didn’t want to deal with most of them on productive servers after my experiences with IBM’s and DELL’s vendor tools.

Another part i found really annoying was that you were offered a problem, and then products to solve them. The products weren’t described, just their model. This can get quite annoying because i frankly don’t know every storage array, raid controller, server that HP has to offer without glancing at a web site.

I passed the exam barely, but i’m still disappointed with it’s quality. I think HP should put more emphasis on the hardware, and move away from questions that honor memorizing product names.