Cisco Career Certification Poster v3

RTFM · January 05, 2015, 06:56:51 PM

https://learningnetwork.cisco.com/servlet/JiveServlet/previewBody/11573-102-51-104334/Career%20Certification%20Poster%20v3.pdf

deanwebb · January 05, 2015, 08:18:26 PM

Thanks for the link!

Is the 7 years' experience for CCIE a recommendation? It looks a LOT like a requirement.

Reggle · January 06, 2015, 05:44:15 AM

Thanks!

icecream-guy · January 07, 2015, 11:09:57 AM

bleah, makes me want to move away from Cisco certifications to other vendors, maybe just taking switch or route every 3 years to keep my CCNP active.

Gone are the days of self study for the NP+ certs, the hardware is just too expensive to obtain for personal lab, and the formal training is too expensive to pay yourself.

wintermute000 · January 08, 2015, 04:08:52 AM

Although the exams are expensive, regarding the labbing, I think for many tracks its not too bad re: lab costs.

Sure, DC and Wireless is ridiculous, Collaboration is pretty brutal too with lots of VMs required and once you factor in SBCs, CMEs, Unity Express and E1/ISDN2 ports - but don't forget there are rack rentals.

Security - you can virtualise and evaluate ASAs and CSRs and ISE. Sure no sourcefire/IPS labbing, thats a big black mark.
R&S/SP - you can pretty much do it all in GNS3 / VMs on ESXi or KVM / IOU minus 4 breakout 3560s worth a hundred each. (God bless Route/Switch!)

Also, for up to CCxP level at least, you may not need to lab THAT much if you touch the real stuff. (CCIE of course is a different story regardless of what track). I dunno about you guys but by the time I do the A or P level exam I go in there and find that I wish I spent less time labbing and more time memorising the BS timers and niche cases, meanwhile tut-tutting at the complete joke nature of the 'sims' lol.

I consider having at least a 32Gb or more capacity Virtualisation host(s) par for the course for anyone who's serious about keeping up with networking and IT in general. When you get mid level engineering or above, its mandatory IMO. Pretty much every 8/10 or better engineer I know has a decent lab @ home or shells out dollars on rack rental or stays behind after work labbing with staging kit before it goes out the door. Heck I knew a L1 who went to L3 and is going for his IE wireless, he did it all by ordering parts from the depot for made up incidents then after playing with the WLC or whatever for a week he'd just put it in the box and send it back ROFL

Having said that the exams can indeed be a rip if your company is not paying. 2 x exams for CCNA DC, even for an experienced CCNP? (what a blatant money grab) Also the general quality of all the CCxA specialisations is completely abysmal, you learn f--k all and might as well go straight into the CCxP for that track since its only when you get to the P level that you learn anything useful. I've done the Arch, Sec and Voice tracks so I've seen a large chunk of it, and from what i hear wireless is similar (i.e. CCNA-W = pathetic course).

You know Juniper is 1 exam per levell right? (and if you pass the JNCIA free evaluation, the 100 dollar test goes down to 50 dollars.... go on.... lol)

deanwebb · January 08, 2015, 08:57:21 AM

Looks like Juniper wants to help you help them.

config t · January 23, 2015, 08:13:15 PM

Do any of you guys have experience with Brocade? Our enterprise is supposedly moving all the campus networks to Brocade over the next year or two.. I'm wondering if I should run for the hills or stick it out.

deanwebb · January 23, 2015, 08:49:17 PM

I hear good things about Brocade. It can diversify your skill set to learn it.

wintermute000 · January 23, 2015, 09:29:13 PM

Solid stuff. A 24 port wirespeed gigabit netiron that can do full bgp tables + mpls costs same as a 4 port ASR. market leader for storage switching.

config t · January 24, 2015, 12:56:03 AM

It's encouraging to hear you guys speak positively about it. My only other cross-vendor experience has been with Avaya/Nortel and I hated it.

Have you guys looked at the certs? The entry-level cert costs $20 and has been described as "CCENT-lite." I've considered just taking it without studying for grins and giggles.

deanwebb · January 24, 2015, 09:16:54 AM

Take it with studying for a quick add of a few more letters on the ol' resume.

icecream-guy · January 26, 2015, 07:51:38 AM

Quote from: config t on January 23, 2015, 08:13:15 PM
Do any of you guys have experience with Brocade? Our enterprise is supposedly moving all the campus networks to Brocade over the next year or two.. I'm wondering if I should run for the hills or stick it out.

yeah I got my BCNP a while ago, though never use the stuff. the CLI is very much like Cisco, at least for the basic configurations

the biggest difference is with Cisco you assign vlans to ports, brocade you assign ports to vlans,

<link is now expired>

Here is a link to the BCNP study material from summer of 2013. I can't say how much has changed, but the test wasn't too hard, and there is no recertification requirement. BCNP for life.

the file is shared for anyone with the link, I'll take it down in a few days or so.

Reggle · January 31, 2015, 05:21:27 AM

Thanks ristau!

I'm hearing the same here about Brocade. Never worked with them, but what interests me is the (supposedly) bigger egress buffers on small platforms. That's always a pain with Cisco.

config t · January 31, 2015, 05:58:22 AM

Gracias Ristau.

We are being provided with a training class as part of the conversion. I start Monday and it goes through to Friday, and from what I hear we get a test voucher for the BCNE test which is alright by me. I think that is the cert one level lower than the one Ristau has. Like dean said.. some more letters on the ol' resume.

Some of the guys who went through the course last week were saying the same thing about similarities with Cisco. I'm actually a little excited about this now.