Classes to learn switches

Mishra

Our company has decided to buy a 4506 switch and 5 3506s for our remote offices. Included in the price is the money to have another company come in and configure the switches.

I made a suggestion to instead spend that money for classes so we can learn how to configure switches and just do it ourselves so we know what is going on in the environment.

Anyone have any opinions on this or ideas of what classes to go to?

kafifi13

I don't but i agree that you guys should be trained to do this yourselves. It's a waste of money. vendors will charge you about 200 bucks an hour. Everytime something happens you will depend on them coming on site. They also charge a 2 hour min. even if it's a 20 min job.

dtlokee

It's a could be a good idea depending on what you're expecting to do with the switches. If the configurations are going to be complex and need to operate with equipment manufactured by other vendors it may make sense to pay somone to do it for you because the class time required would far exceede the cost of having a consultnt do the work. However if you are planning to continue to add Cisco gear to the network it would make sense to be able to implement and manage it long term. Just hope the guy who knows how to do it doesn't leave

Depending on the time frame, the configuration guides will give you everyting you need to implement the equipment, perhaps in a test pahse to get the problems worked out before a production deployment.

The biggest problem I see with relying on outside vendors is the response time you may be stuck with if there's a problem. Nothing like needing to wait 4 hours during a network outage for somone to show up.

As far as classes, you're spending some money on buying the equipment, see if you can get some Cisco Learning Credits from the deal. You can then use them to attend classes at a CLP and take ICND and BCMSN courses for the switching.

Mishra

Well they went ahead and bought a bunch of Cisco equipment without my consent... Pretty crappy but as is most IT business. The managers always have to buy stuff in order to look busy.

But I'm happy about the purchase as I will be able to dig into the environment.

They bought

Cisco 4506 w/
dual power supply
supervisor
IOS
4 48 port gig cards
sfps/gbics
6 port gig ethernet module

3 48 port 3560s
2 24 port 2560s

Also we got 10 learning credits from Cisco so I will need to sort the credits out to classes I should take.

dtlokee

Mishra wrote:

Well they went ahead and bought a bunch of Cisco equipment without my consent... Pretty crappy but as is most IT business. The managers always have to buy stuff in order to look busy.

But I'm happy about the purchase as I will be able to dig into the environment.

They bought

Cisco 4506 w/
dual power supply
supervisor
IOS
4 48 port gig cards
sfps/gbics
6 port gig ethernet module

3 48 port 3560s
2 24 port 2560s

Also we got 10 learning credits from Cisco so I will need to sort the credits out to classes I should take.

Atleast they bought Cisco... I've had companies decide to buy a bunch of unmanaged 3com switches then ask why we can't make them work in our existing network which is full of Cisco gear and PVST ect...

10 learning credist won't go to far, it's typically 30 credits for a single module (like BCMSN). With what you spent I'd go ask for more.

Mishra

Well I finally got a hold of a good spreadsheet. Looks like you can take virtual classrooms for only 10 Cisco credits... Not too bad.

My company is thinking about spending a little more money for certifications for me...

But now I'm stuck again. >_< I have studied for my CCNA a while ago and actually took the test (knowing I probably wouldn't do good, but it was free) and got a 637 on it. I think if I do some real good studying then I could probably get my CCNA on my own.

Cisco offers a CCNA bootcamp for 32 credits that I think my company would be willing to spend... But if I got my CCNA cert on my own then I could go to a BCMSN course which is really the knowledge I will need to manage/configure these devices.


Thanks for the replies dtlokee by the way. I'm learning quite a bit as I go.

Mishra

Well I'm on my way to studying and doing labs. I have 5 3560gs at my work that I am playing with right now. I've already went over the STP, RSTP, VLAN, VTP topics... I skipped over the subnet chapter and now am on to routing in the ICND book.

Routing is kinda difficult to do on the 3560gs though... I enabled routing using "ip routing". Then I tried to do a normal 'router EIGRP 2' and 'network 10.0.1.0' but it isn't showing in my 'show ip route'
So I am messing with figuring that out right now... Hopefully I can knock this CCNA out in a few weeks so I can go to CCNP classes.

datchcha

Isn't the 3xxx series used to mostly provide routing so you can create VLANs with out having an router? From what I remember the 3xxx works at the Layer 3 of the ISO model, while 2xxx series only opperate at L2 of the OSI. Could be wrong.