Does being in a multi-vendor enviroment affect your certs?
I'm just kind of curious here. I used to work exclusively with Cisco stuff..VPN, VOIP, routing, switching, etc. I left that assignment, and now work with probably 85% Foundry, and 15% cisco..with some odd bits mixed in here and there (different media types I previously had no experience with..MM fiber, converters, etc). It's great experience-wise, but I'm studying for my CCNP, and I fear this multi-vendor stuff will hurt my studying. I find myself constantly typing in cisco commands into the foundry devices and vice versa. Granted, they're very similar, but there's little nuances that are not good to pick up if you plan on taking any kind of test with cisco..does that make sense? Such as, doing "sh run" at interface mode in a foundry...it's all good, and works. Do that on a cisco and..well..you know...
Anyone else have any advice for going from almost a proprietary network (so to speak) to multi-vendor? How'd it affect your overall skill level? I'm just kind of curious. Push come to shove, I'm excited to be in this place, but I can't help but wonder. The sad thing is, in 8 months, I move onto a top secret helpdesk (no pun intended..it's a helpdesk that services the top secret network for SOCOM)..dealing with a lot of active directory (I have experience with AD..), and citrix metaframe (zero experience..). Ugh. Just when you get used to something!!
Sorry to ramble..
Anyone else have any advice for going from almost a proprietary network (so to speak) to multi-vendor? How'd it affect your overall skill level? I'm just kind of curious. Push come to shove, I'm excited to be in this place, but I can't help but wonder. The sad thing is, in 8 months, I move onto a top secret helpdesk (no pun intended..it's a helpdesk that services the top secret network for SOCOM)..dealing with a lot of active directory (I have experience with AD..), and citrix metaframe (zero experience..). Ugh. Just when you get used to something!!
Sorry to ramble..
Comments
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GT-Rob
Member Posts: 1,090
Its the nature of the job. Not many roles are 100% one technology/vendor, and its a good thing. Keeps you sharp I think.
You can always pick up a couple of home routers and maybe do some cisco stuff on your own. Some people manage to get CCNP without ever touching a production network, let alone a Cisco network, so you have the leg up in any case. -
rbutturini
Member Posts: 123
I work for a VAR/MSP, so we dabble and get exposed to bits of everything. It's nice to get certified in a particular vendor's gear (We do a lot of Cisco ourselves). I would throw in though that some of the vendor neutral certs (Linux+, CWNA, CWSP) have been beneficial to me because learning the "nuts and bolts" of the technology and protocols behind the technology makes moving between the platforms a whole lot easier, as well as when we walk into a site and see gear we've never seen before (as is quite often the case), it's easier to pick up and start working on with a good foundational knowledge base of the technology.
That may have been a worse rambling spell than you went on