Brocade Certifications

My manager wants me to start getting certified on Brocade switches.
So from Brocade website, I figured I'd start with BCFA ( Brocade Certified Fabric Administrator)
Certification Exam Information
Anybody knows anything about these exams ?
Looks like the available material is for BCFP not for BCFA...so I will use that only. BCFP in a nutshell study guide...I hope it's enough !!
So from Brocade website, I figured I'd start with BCFA ( Brocade Certified Fabric Administrator)
Certification Exam Information
Anybody knows anything about these exams ?
Looks like the available material is for BCFP not for BCFA...so I will use that only. BCFP in a nutshell study guide...I hope it's enough !!
Goal: MBA, Jan 2021
Comments
Hey there...are you really from Brocade then ?? cool.
Thanks for telling me that, I'll pass that to my boss. I'm frustrated with BCFA, no material !!
Brocade is the largest manufacturer of Fiber-channel switches/directors in the world (something like 3/4 of all ports ever sold are Brocade). With all the acquisitions over the last few years it really comes down to Brocade, Cisco and to a (much) lesser degree QLogic for FCP fabrics. They also picked up Foundry Networks a few years ago for IP switching.
UnixGuy, let me know how you find the exam and study material (once it gets released). I'd be up for taking this later in the year.
profile: linkedin.com/in/astorrs
@Astors : I'll share my experience
@veritas: no you should learn about SAN Storage, there's a great future and development in this area. Datacenters are getting bigger, and the need to centralize storage will be more crucial in the future.
quote from this weeks Network World if you believe this kind of stuff
a simple search for SAN admins positions or SAN architecs on job boards will give you great deal of information about salary ranges.
reading through the BCFP guide, I think I don't have the necessary experience and knowledge of Brocade products. I worked on them, but not enough to know the needed details, so I'm gonna wait till I get the opportunity to get more hands on, or maybe trainings.
Right now, I'll go for SNIA certifications
I'm reading this book to brush up on the concepts, and I'm loving it. It's better than anything I've read so far:
Amazon.com: Storage Networks Explained: Basics and Application of Fibre Channel SAN, NAS, iSCSI,InfiniBand and FCoE (9780470741436): Ulf Troppens, Rainer Erkens, Wolfgang Mueller-Friedt, Rainer Wolafka, Nils Haustein: Books
profile: linkedin.com/in/astorrs
sounds interesting. I'm skimming right now, I'll focus on the iSCSI and FCIP and these protocols....let's see how it goes. So far so good.
We use Cisco for routing, but Brocade for switches. Not my call, just what we do. Have to remember which box I'm in because there is some variation in the commands.
Many companies looking at Brocade as cheaper alternative to Cisco. Think Foundry. People are still hung up on SAN solutions when they think of Brocade. They do routers and switches too.
I don't know though.
Always thought it’s the other way, cisco is alternative to Brocade, considering how long B has been industry leader. We have cisco nexuses in our Dev, 5k and 2ks, performance wise they are worse so it never went into PROD. And it seems to be a general opinion within my circles, cisco are not performing as per the blueprint. I can see that they are trying to expand, but it all seems very much like their involvement in server business...
As far as the cert itself, well I personally have been working with various SAN vendors for 15+ years now, did not even know that Brocade do their own certification. It all comes down to first getting the job, then expanding knowledge. If you need to back it up by a cert, go for it, all the power to you.
Salary-wise, if you are like me in UK and contracting, then the numbers are significantly higher than those posted.
Best of luck
I am Linux admin and i have basic theoretical knoweldge on SAN. Have you done BCFA, if yes can you provide me guidelines. I want to be SAN admin, but due to lack of practical knoweldge i cannot.
Best way to become a SAN admin is by working as a server admin/support or storage support/installation where you get a chance to work with storage. Vendor certs will not help you now, maybe you can look into SNIA SCSP, it's a vendor neutral cert