is data center technology is 'trending' ?

saddayz

Hello,

quite strange topic name, i guess:) just wanted your advice. Now i'm holding CCDP and CCNP sertifications, and I dont know what to study next. I want something that would be used as advance in financial insitutions companies networks (like Barclays, Western Union, etc) cause i want to work there as a network engineer. First i thought that Security track would be nice, but then friend told me that Data Centers technologies with Virtualization and etc. are trending and it will be in the future even more required, so Cisco Data Center certs track, as the next goal would be nice i thinked. What do you think?

also dumb question: what is the basic difference between enterprise networks and data center ? Thanks..
also could we say that data centre engineer job is something between enterprise and service provider ?:)

bharvey92

It all depends on what the job you are doing entails. For example, I completed my CCNP R+S and decided to step in and complete my CCNA: DC as the job I was going into involved working with things such as Cisco Nexus: 2000, 5000, 7000 and other various things - so this track was best suited for me.

I think that the DC will probably be best for you if you are looking to go into Trading/Banking environment. I've heard that most banks use Nexus equipment such as Nexus 3K so this will be beneficial for you to use. Also, I have worked in quite a few environments and every place I've worked at have had Nexus equipment in the their Aggregation and Core so I think this would be something you would want to learn.

Good luck.

DirtySouth

The term datacenter networking typically refers to gear that is purpose-built for datacenters. Most vendors (Cisco, Brocade, HP...etc) have a series of servers, switches and routers that are specifically designed for datacenter technologies as opposed to WAN, wireless, access-layer switches...etc. Specifically with Cisco this is going to be Cisco UCS (servers) and Nexus switches. These devices support things like Fibre Channel, Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCOE), OTV, FabricPath...etc. Any medium sized company or larger may be using these types of products, not just very large enterprises. The term "datacenter" is kinda vague and could be a single rack with a switch sitting at the top. It could also be a 100K square foot room with 10's of thousands of servers. A Nexus 3000 or 5000 is a relatively small switch, but you can get much larger chassis-based switches in the 9000 & 7000 series. It just depends on what your needs are. I hope that helps a bit. Let me know if you have any questions.

Danielh22185

Data Center stuff I think will always be a valuable area of study / skill sets to obtain. The data center generally is the most technologically advanced area of an organization's network. My company uses tons of Nexus in the data center for Server Access (Spine/Leaf) environments. I've toyed with the idea of getting least an NA in DC too before going full bore into IE studies. I'm still debating that idea...

theodoxa

I see alot of companies looking for Cisco Nexus experience in their Network Engineer positions.

Legacy User

Yes I do agree datacenter can be very vague. I did a datacenter migration once and there "datacenter" was a single rack (cisco 6509 and a couple of 3750 switches).

Well a high level

Enterprise network can be a campus lan design. The access layer connects to the users, access layer connects to the Distribution which handles that traffic within the switch block, core connects Distributions from different locations or switch blocks for cross communication.

Data centers are built with servers that get high traffic if they're providing a service/services. Get it "Data" "center". So this would be all about getting fast access to that data.
So the access layer which can be FEX's which are dummy switches that are controlled with the N5K's connects to servers for high speed throughput, N7k's can be used as the aggregration or distribution for the N5k's to communicate, The same N7k's can also be the core as well by creating a vdc or you can also connect the distribution layer to a separate n7k chassis.

Enterprises depending on the size can have Datacenters as well. It would follow the same format and the data center core would connect to the the enterprise core so all of the enterprise resources can connect to the data center resources. It's all about having a hierarchy and structure for a reliable infrastructure.