Balance of Microsoft & Cisco Certs.

cleanwithit

Hello, all. I'm studying for the ICND2 to get my CCNA, and the 291 to wrap up the MCSA. I don't know about anyone else, but when studying for Microsoft certifications I get really, really bored. It doesn't interest me at all, now that I have a good taste of the Cisco material. All I want to study is Cisco!

So, my question, how important is it for someone to have a balance of Microsoft & Cisco certs? Is it essential to have MCSA or MCITP:SA for someone wanting to get into the Cisco world? Thoughts, comments?

earweed

It probably all depends on what you want to do further down the line in your career. Having both Cisco and MS knowledge will really help you later in your career. Whether having certs in both is really important is a totally different question. Having certs in either one is not as important as having knowledge of the Servers and clients and the networks that allow them to communicate.

Bl8ckr0uter

This week I was contacted by a company about a network engineer position. It was for a pure cisco job. I have no MS certs (yet!). I don't think that for a pure cisco job you would need any MS certs (most of the true network engineers on here don't have them at all). The problem is that most network engineering positions aren't entry level. So unless you work in a NOC, getting the nessessry experience with cisco gear is going to be difficult. Plus many small companies aren't going to do much with their network gear anyway (set it and forget it sadly). So the best thing is to get to a large company that isn't extremely static or work in a networking company (ISP/Service provider, etc).

To answer your question no it isn't nessessary but to make the jump to a larger company you may need a "balance" of MS and Cisco (or juniper or linux or oracle or redhat or vmware or citrix or whoever).