Lab advice?
msteinhilber
Member Posts: 1,480 ■■■■■■■■□□
in CCNA & CCENT
Greetings Everyone,
First time posting here, I found this site just a couple of day's ago after I decided to pursue working my way up the Cisco certification track. I was checking out hardware requirements for the new 640-802 exam as my hardware was purchased over a year ago and I thought I could handle devoting time to working full-time, going to school to obtain my B.S. in Technology Management and while expecting the arrival of our first child, my son Declan. I couldn't have been any more wrong! :P
Things are smoother now though, the little guy is nearing 6 months old and I've adapted to being a father and have found way's to fit in time to study easier so I'm going to finally get the ball rolling. I was looking through my hardware pile (mostly a bunch of 2500 series I purchased for ~$10 each at a University surplus shop in town) and determining what would stay and go. I had about a half dozen 2514's, couple 2521's, some various 2504, 2503's and whatnot and probably my best find - the $10 2511-RJ, I was shocked when I found that in their pile for sale after having researched pricing on ebay prior. I have a handful of switches as well: a couple 2924M-XL-EN's and a couple of 2916M-XL's. There's two PIX-501's and two PIX-506's I was given from work, and I will likely have around 8 26xxXM donated from work should our budget get approved and we switch to new routers and VOIP.
I have realistic plan's to certify through the CCNP and CCSP, I will have additional hardware and resources to seek the CCVP should my employer switch to VOIP, if not I will probably skip this one. Of course, it's probably most of our desires to obtain a CCIE, however I'm not sure I will have the time to devote to such a task but who knows.
My thoughts about a lab setup included using a couple of linux servers in my rack to run Dynamips and mix this up with real switches and some real routers perhaps. I'm fairly set for the requirements of the CCNA exam, but would definately need different equipment for beyond that. I've not used Dynamips yet, but from the research I have done - it appears that I could load up my servers with a bunch of ethernet cards, or I could run a dot1q trunk from my Dynamips machines to my switch and place the virtual router interfaces in vlans using ETHSW. Money is tight, so after I achieve the CCNA, I may give Dynamips a try, but I guess what I was looking for is perhaps some insight and advice from some of you who may have used Dynamips previously. Obviously real hardware is going to be less headaches and easier to work with, but I'm just looking at if the lower cost associated with using Dynamips instead of real routers for my further studies would outweigh the potential headaches - or if real hardware is simply the way to go.
-Mike
First time posting here, I found this site just a couple of day's ago after I decided to pursue working my way up the Cisco certification track. I was checking out hardware requirements for the new 640-802 exam as my hardware was purchased over a year ago and I thought I could handle devoting time to working full-time, going to school to obtain my B.S. in Technology Management and while expecting the arrival of our first child, my son Declan. I couldn't have been any more wrong! :P
Things are smoother now though, the little guy is nearing 6 months old and I've adapted to being a father and have found way's to fit in time to study easier so I'm going to finally get the ball rolling. I was looking through my hardware pile (mostly a bunch of 2500 series I purchased for ~$10 each at a University surplus shop in town) and determining what would stay and go. I had about a half dozen 2514's, couple 2521's, some various 2504, 2503's and whatnot and probably my best find - the $10 2511-RJ, I was shocked when I found that in their pile for sale after having researched pricing on ebay prior. I have a handful of switches as well: a couple 2924M-XL-EN's and a couple of 2916M-XL's. There's two PIX-501's and two PIX-506's I was given from work, and I will likely have around 8 26xxXM donated from work should our budget get approved and we switch to new routers and VOIP.
I have realistic plan's to certify through the CCNP and CCSP, I will have additional hardware and resources to seek the CCVP should my employer switch to VOIP, if not I will probably skip this one. Of course, it's probably most of our desires to obtain a CCIE, however I'm not sure I will have the time to devote to such a task but who knows.
My thoughts about a lab setup included using a couple of linux servers in my rack to run Dynamips and mix this up with real switches and some real routers perhaps. I'm fairly set for the requirements of the CCNA exam, but would definately need different equipment for beyond that. I've not used Dynamips yet, but from the research I have done - it appears that I could load up my servers with a bunch of ethernet cards, or I could run a dot1q trunk from my Dynamips machines to my switch and place the virtual router interfaces in vlans using ETHSW. Money is tight, so after I achieve the CCNA, I may give Dynamips a try, but I guess what I was looking for is perhaps some insight and advice from some of you who may have used Dynamips previously. Obviously real hardware is going to be less headaches and easier to work with, but I'm just looking at if the lower cost associated with using Dynamips instead of real routers for my further studies would outweigh the potential headaches - or if real hardware is simply the way to go.
-Mike
Comments
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hypnotoad
Banned Posts: 915
Sounds like a cool lab - especially with the PIXes. Your university must have money!