Data center is absolutely blowing up in the industry, We're finding a lot of interests with people wanting to get involved or changing careers, But data center has been by far one of Cisco's, Most quickly growing areas of expertise.
So we're looking for a lot of new engineers out there to help support the new technologies out, You know, Are coming down the line here, So it's a great time for you to be involved in this type of study group. So a big welcome from both Mike and myself and the rest of the team here for everyone. You know to choose this. You know the certification path. So quick, Introduction myself.
My name is robert burns. I'Ve been with Cisco for just over five years. I actually joined back in the day.
I was part attack and I came on board great when we came out with a lot of the news products for data center, So when UCS was being envisioned Nexus, 1000. 5000. So I've really been along the whole journey. That cisco has been going from start to where we're at today, And I can tell you from experience it's an absolute rollercoaster excitement ride really enjoyed the time that we've had here so far.
So what we're going to do here is we'll get rolling here into this. First of our many sessions, So the first again just a big welcome from all of us and thank you for choosing the CCNA data center career path. As you know, We're going to be doing these webinars every week. So we'll have a different topic and we really want to look to you to give us suggestions on any topics that you find you are having.
You know, Either troubles with studying, Or you just can't find in kind of information on. If you want to suggest those topics through the Learning Network, We'll be glad to throw up together, You know a presentation or address those topics, So we're going to have a lot of guest speakers. You know, In addition to both Michael Brown and myself or pullin various experts across Cisco, To help you know address some of the various topics that are going to be covered in the CCNA.
So everything from you know, Why is an ace to TV? Next, To 7000 you name it we're going to have the right expertise, Giving you the information that you need to get your heads around the topics and around the concepts as well as giving you some. Maybe you know here's some spots. You really want to focus on during the course of your study. We'Re going to help have open a discussion thread for each webinar topic, So this being the first one, Matt's already got it opened up and if there's any questions pertaining to, You know any of the material or if you want to go back and read the offline.
Recording by all means, If you have questions after the fact you can post them to the discussion thread and we'll be happy to take those questions as long as you you know, See fit and that leads into you know the recordings everybody can't make all the Session times - and we do understand that so al these sessions are going to be recorded and it will be made probably if t are - later we'll post them to the forum sites where you can go ahead and read these afterwards. So just a quick, Disclaimer myself, As well as the other instructors who are going to be presenting a lot of the material we've actually been involved in contributing many of the questions to the CCNA data center, As well as many other certifications. However, We aren't privy to all of the questions and that's something we like to make very you know straightforward.
We are going to be teaching you to the topics and the requirements of the exams. We'Re not here to you know, Tell you exactly what you've got to write in your questions for the answers. We want to give you the theory behind it and really get you skilled up, So you have all the necessary skills that you need to be successful in the data centers certification paths.
So again, Our goal here is really just to fill in the missing gaps. A lot of this will be responsibility of yourselves to take this back, And you know study on yourself, But we're really going to augment that as best we can - and we do understand - there's not a whole lot of DCCC any specific material. Yet a lot of that is in the works and that's what we're here for and that's what these webinars are geared towards is to in those gaps, And you know give those additional experience that we've no amassed over the years to you and help you Achieve your certifications, So just some a couple notes on WebEx: you know doing this kind of training has been very successful in the past for us. So, As you have noticed, All your phones are muted, There's no audio for this session, Which is fine, So, Like Matt ativan pointed out we'd like everyone to use the Q&A panel for asking your questions, And now this serves for a couple reasons. One allows us to capture the questions, So if we want to do a FAQ afterwards, We can.
You know draw these up and keep you recorded as well as allows all the other participants to be able to see your questions as well, And that helps you know people avoiding to having repeat questions. You know once or twice. If we have this available, You might have access to these two types of icons, Which is a green checkmark and a red X and sometimes in various sessions. We might use these to prompt you for a question or say here's a question. We'D like to you know, Get your response back, Yes or no style, And one other thing we're going to be utilizing is is WebEx polls, And this allows us to load up.
You know some questions and get some feedback from you and that way it doesn't require any kind of voice interaction. It's really. I can open up a poll, And I can let you you know, Give yourself some answers here.
So one of the things we want to do here initially is get an idea of what kind of experience everyone has. So we're going to open up our first poll right now and I'll probably get Matt to go ahead and open that up and if you could take about 30 seconds or so there's only seven questions we'd like you to go through this and just rate your Experience level on you know basic switching. What kind of experience have you had in your career? You know to date and if you've got none, That's fine as well.
But let us know what kind of level of experience you've got for. Switching for routing storage, Unified computing just to give us an idea for future sessions, And if we find that there's certain gaps in various areas we'll be a little more attentive and spend a little bit more time on those problem areas. So leave that poll open for the next, Probably a couple minutes or so so go ahead and work on that as you're listening to the rest of our presentation here. So our first topic today is going to be on the study plan of attack. So back years ago, When I took my original CCNA, That was my challenges.
how do I start off? Where do I start to learn? You know networking was brand new to me and I really had no direction on where to go now. Fortunately, After doing a bit of Google research, You know box, You know - and it was only about eight years ago, That did my na there was a lot of material out there. So there is a lot of direction.
A lot of great people put together some great books on here's, How I should studying here's, How you should approach it with the data center one. This is a very new certification, So those types of books don't quite exist in the same fashion, You can still approach a CCNA is a I'm going to be an associate level and if there's two exams that are are built up to give you the CCNA, And These are very specific to data center, So, As in the overview of this session, We're going to do talk about is what are the requirements to the data center CCNA and most of you probably are aware, But if not we'll just go through what the requirements are. We'll give you kind of an idea of how much time you should expect to invest in your studying. You know how much reading time should you expect? Do you need some lab time? How much lap time should you expect to spend on this? We'Re also going to tell you a little bit about what kind of equipment and software is available.
So there's a lot of. You know people go concerned because some of the topics on the CCNA view come with a very happy price tag for the actual physical equipment. But hopefully we can, You know, Cut that budget down in quite a bit and give you an idea of what's available to you you know, Add a free or a very minimal cost.
We'Ve got a bunch of books, So we've posted on the Learning Network as well. So I'm going to give you on this deck as well as some ISBNs of some very useful texts that we've we've developed over the years and t really explain a lot of the good theory you're going to need for your first em and of course, We've got A great little feature with these webinars is we're going to be giving away ten Cisco press data center publication ebooks per session, And we're going to do that by means of these surveys. So we ask you to give a quick, Three or four questions survey.
At the end of the session and then we'll be drawing names and then notifying those winners, You know that t've got a free ebook that t can download. So let's take a look at the data, Centers certifications for Cisco, So data center again only about five. Six years old, With Cisco, As far as we've been pushed really hard with it, And now we've just got these three brand new certifications which have just come out. So we've got the NA level to your entry level for data center and we're looking at about one to three years experience, And this would be for a typical data center network admin. There's going to be two exams for this certification and there's no prerequisites.
So you don't have to have a write and switch CCNA to take this, And this was purposely done. A lot of people ask: why do some of the other na s have prerequisites? And that's because this one's a bit different, You know we're not built on iOS we're built on an X OS. So this whole certification package has been built to be inclusive of all the technologies.
You need to know, And you can kind of see the ones listed there in the in the various comparisons. So we're going to be. You know touching 1000v nexus, 1000v nexus, 2000 fabric, Extenders, Cisco, Wise cisco, Ace, Cisco, Unified Computing, B and C series.
So there's quite a few technologies there that we're going to be touching the knee and a level and when you're going to find out is when you're building your labs, The equipment isn't that much different. If you're, Looking then towards your NP or ie level, So we're going to go a bit deeper on some of the topics. But a lot of the equipment can be very similar between the three different certification levels. So the to do exams that you're going to have to sit and pass our DD CIC n, Which is the can in this data center networking, Which is really focused on you, Know your basic routing and switching topics: , The very generic stuff - and you would find On your basic CCNA that would be read and switch, However, We're going to be more tailored towards an X OS and data center switches, Rather than iOS and catalyst switches.
The second exam you're going to have is the DCI CT, And this is where we now dive. Really deep into a lot of the data center technologies, So we're going to start approaching things like Unified Computing and unified i/o, We'll look at fabric paths and OTV and all those great topics t're now at the ena level, Even though we throw around some pretty technical Terms at the NA level, You're really only doing a little bit of theory and limited amounts of you know, Expected troubleshooting and hands-on and we'll kind of cover. What you're going to be expected to know. Your certification is going to be valid for three years and you can recertify it by writing a higher-level exam and that will recertify your na, But hopefully with after three years.
Maybe you want to proceed on to your NT or IE level at that time, So time requirements everyone's going to study at a different pace and it really is going to plan on how much time you can commit to you know. Do you have you know a full-time job? Are you a student so, Whatever time of time you can you know you can devote to this try and get a concrete schedule and try and stick to it, Set yourself a goal, Early on and say? I plan to have my na within X amount of months or X amount of weeks and then try and see if you can commit to that, We kind of give an estimation of around forty hours of reading per exam to really understand the concept. Now.
The first exam because it has to do a lot with routing the switching and it's really just an X, OS versus iOS if you're comfortable, With a lot of the routing, Switching concepts or maybe you've already done your regular CCNA. You should be able to breeze through that exam fairly quickly. You know you may have to do a little bit of brush ups on the differences between iOS and MX, But for the most part it should be fairly quick, It'll be the second exam that gets into a maybe a lot of new technologies and a little bit More deep dive into the data center on concepts, So your 40 hours is going to make that up between you know, Reading materials, White papers reading Vons and webinars such as these will really help you out.
You can't do these exams up without hands on and that's something that's very important, And you know I learned this the hard way when I was first trying to get my head around a lot of the NA concepts back years ago. It wasn't until I sat down at her out of switch and sort of banging away at it and you know breaking it, Fixing it and figuring out. Why was you know? Why would these things happening? So you really want to make sure you can kind of setup yourself either a home or a lab at work. If you can, You know something? Obviously, That's not production and that's not something you can use to.
You know do setup configurations a little bit of troubleshooting and then just you know, Deploy features and services and see how how you can how confident you are with these systems so the first exam. This is just kind of a taken from the exam content itself. This is the overview, And these are the really the four main sections of the DCI CN exam.
So a lot of it has to do with theory, You're, Going to find that these four topics are again are identical in wording to the read and switch CCNA. However, We're going to focus a little bit more on the NX westside, But you know a theory is going to be theory. So, If you're pretty confident with your read and switch capabilities, You're going to find this exam to be, You know a lot of review.
So things like you know knowing VLANs, Knowing your spanning tree, Your OSI models addressing as well. So, If you're brand new to networking network addressing can be a little bit difficult. You know it's something that does take a little bit of practice to understand, Subnetting and barrel length, Subnet, Masks and, Of course, We've got the beautiful ipv6 now as well. So understanding that and how it works is going to be some of the fundamentals during you're going to want to know taking on the any levels.
Now, Once I get done that exam, Then you get into the good stuff and you go. , My gosh. Look at all these topics. We'Ve got storage. I'Ve got unified fabric. I'Ve got all these crazy words have never heard about, And if you really just take your time and the way you want to approach your na is just do it piece by piece.
So start off on your fundamentals: , Sand and land. I'Ve got some fabric path in there, Some VPC data center interconnects. You know these are calm. You know t look a little more scary than t are unified fabric. Things like FCoE on a lot of people coming into this level of never touched Fibre Channel over Ethernet or may not know what it is. So this is a good primer to learn the basics of this new protocol that we use to help with our unified IO.
Just from what our polls on the Facebook group, I found a lot of people coming into data center. Really the biggest struggle is going to be with storage networking. You find a lot of people, You know, Have some kind of switching background or you know routing background, But it's the storage, That's brand new to them and the concepts can be a lot different.
So we want to make these. You know very useful for you, And you know this book. It's not that bad! You don't have to learn all the ins and outs of storage. We just want to be able to teach you to speak the language and understand some small configuration items, So you can do kind of an end-to-end boot from sanh or other tasks with similar. So when you take all these various topics and t look very daunting but just kind of limonade, You know all the verbage there and say: ok, Let me focus in now what's important, So here's your topics or your key words that you're going to want to spend The most time on you know things like: ok, Storage, Networking isn't so bad.
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