All of CSDC’s certifications are designed to give holders confidence in their abilities to support AMANDA and its users. CSDC’s certifications also assure organization leadership that their staff members have the qualifications necessary to maintain and support AMANDA implementations. AMANDA certification also allows holders to register for AMANDA certification refresher courses available only to certificate holders.

Certification & Testing

The rigorous testing process is conducted by senior CSDC staff and successful candidates will have earned a grade of 75% to obtain certification. To ensure that certificate holders are up-to-date on the most current AMANDA developments, the certification exam must be retaken after 5 years. Refresher courses are offered annually, both on-demand and at the CSDC annual user conference, CTAC.

CSDC currently offer three levels of certification, the AMANDA Product Support (APS), AMANDA Business Analyst (ABA), and AMANDA Configuration Specialist (ACS):

AMANDA Product Support (APS) certification:

The candidate is expected to have a good understanding of the core AMANDA Architecture, demonstrable knowledge of the product, an ability to train and support various end user communities with proven debugging skills, and an ability to support end users through problem resolution.This one day examination consists of two components -  a written test followed by hands-on practical scenarios. The written test and hands-on scenarios will cover topics like:

• Property, People and Folder Architecture
• Variable Data Model
• AMANDA Security & Audit
• Automation points, Triggers, and Validation Routines
• Documents, Forms and Reports
• AMANDA Back Office core

AMANDA Business Analyst (ABA) certification:

The candidate must have an intimate knowledge of product and system architecture to analyze and design AMANDA for a business unit. They must be experienced in managing analysis sessions to design a new AMANDA folder based on a business scenario and be able to communicate the results of a business analysis to programmers. This one day examination consists of two components - a written test followed by hands-on practical scenarios. The written test and hands-on scenarios will cover topics like:

• Business requirements related to AMANDA technology
• Functional requirements related to AMANDA technology
• Property, People and Folder modeling
• Business rules, automation points and translation into configuration specifications
• Analysis of documents, forms and reports
• Knowledge of AMANDA Administration and variable data model
• Knowledge of AMANDA core software

AMANDA Configuration Specialist (ACS) certification:

The candidate must have an intimate knowledge of product administration and programming skills to manage and enhance an existing setup. The candidate must be able to develop the folder set-up based on business analysis results. They must be experienced in understanding AMANDA FASTrack working sheets. This one day examination consists of two components - a written test followed by hands-on practical scenarios. The written test and hands-on scenarios will cover topics like:

• Functional Requirements related to AMANDA technology
• Property, People and Folder Modeling
• Business rules, automation points and translation into configuration
• Enhancing and debugging existing folder setup based on analysis documentation
• Knowledge of AMANDA Administration and variable data model
• Knowledge of AMANDA core software