Virtualization skills are a hot commodity these days. An IT pro who knows the ins and outs or server or storage virtualization can expect plenty of interest from prospective employers.

“Virtualization's reach into nearly every corner of the data center is fueling the talent crunch,” my colleague Ann Bednarz recently reported in our New Data Center series. “Virtualization calls for people who understand how to deal with complex configuration-management, patching and performance monitoring, for example.”

When there’s more demand for a particular skill than supply, IT pros stand to rake in some cash. Right now, virtualization skills are about twice as valuable as the average IT skill, salary research shows.

The Foote Partners research firm tracks the market value of 164 IT certifications and 166 noncertified IT skills. The median pay for a noncertified IT skill, expressed as a percentage of base salary, is 8.3%. Virtualization skills are worth 16% of base salary, twice the typical value of an IT skill, according to David Foote, co-founder, CEO and chief research officer of Foote Partners.

Early adopter companies started seeing the need for server and storage virtualization skills back in 2004 and 2005, Foote says. It takes some time for emerging technologies like virtualization to become mainstream, but that is happening now and IT pros who are expert in virtualization are reaping the rewards.

In addition to specific virtualization skills, Foote has also seen pay increases for  storage-area network (SAN) skills, which can include storage virtualization expertise. (Compare Storage Virtualization products)

“SAN skills are really doing very well and I do believe virtualization is one of the things that’s clearly pushing that,” he says.

Virtualization certifications seem to be pretty scarce. Foote says his research firm is not tracking any virtualization certifications, simply because he’s not aware of any.

But virtualization certifications are starting to pop up, if slowly, says David Marshall, author of “Advanced Server Virtualization: VMware and Microsoft Platforms in the Virtual Data Center,” and the technical editor of “Virtualization for Dummies.”

In an InfoWorld blog posting titled “Finally, additional virtualization certifications on the way,” Marshall says VMware had been the only company making a real effort to certify IT pros in virtualization, but that Microsoft is now joining the game.

“To help IT pros develop a baseline of understanding about virtualization and the spectrum of technologies it encompasses, Microsoft Learning has created a series of training and Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist (MCTS) certification programs that focus on Hyper-V and the forthcoming System Center Virtual Machine Manager, both of which are part of Microsoft’s virtualization strategy,” Marshall wrote in June.

Marshall noted that Microsoft so far has one virtualization exam in beta focused on Windows server virtualization, configuring. 

This is a good step but Marshall urged third parties such as CompTIA to develop generic virtualization exams. As it stands today, Marshall says IT managers routinely complain that there just aren’t enough virtualization experts available for hire, and that “the search for virtualization experts is only going to get more difficult” as virtualization becomes more mainstream.

IT pros who want a lucrative career in virtualization will have to be well-versed in many areas. Virtualization is moving networking tasks into the domain of systems engineers, as Bednarz noted.

“A modern virtualization pro has to be competent in a number of disciplines because of the degree to which networking is invading systems,” Foote says. They need to be aware of differences between storage architectures, connections like Gigabit Ethernet, and various server form factors, he says. “There are a lot of technical things that they need to know.”

Jon Brodkin is senior writer at Network World.