Cant decide ms path or cisco help.

I have been working at my current job for a little over 5 years and my daily job includes regular server work and some Cisco work (very light) . I am taking a new job (start the 16th) that was a slight position demotion but it was needed to get out of my dead end job/company. At the new place I will do 1/4 of the server administration I was doing and no Cisco anything. They said in 12 months if I work hard I could look at moving towards the server team or network team and it has thrown my plans off.

As of right now I have done mostly desktop support with 2000, xp, and 7 (about 7 years experience) but also for the past 5 years I have done daily server 2003 administration including new deployments, maintenance, updates, dns reorganization, and some exchange 03 work.

When I was in ECPI I took some cisco classes I really enjoyed it and was thinking of doing my ccna even got some routers and my goal was to start on the 2 part icnd 1&2 soon as I thought it would give me an edge as I do both at my current job.

Now moving to a new company that has separate departments I am not sure what to do I am thinking skip the ccna and go msca 2008 route or should I go ccna then msca? I am not sure the ccna would be that helpful as I am primarily based windows and not sure if I would want to go to a cisco only position. I enjoy it but not enough for daily work I think.

Any input?

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Comments

N2IT

Sounds like you have real world experience using Windows 2003 server and you have a chance of getting into the system admin team with hard work and good performance. I would mirror my studies to align with the server technology in your place of employment.

It shows them you are serious about that technology and you seem interested in that technology as well. You obviously have some passion towards networking, but you don't have a real opportunity in that domain of IT.

It's a no brainer to me, server, server, and more server.

higherho

Are you bored with the server stuff? I wanted to go back to my networking roots so I jumped to a different position (I'm doing Cisco work and server work here). If you think you can handle the Cisco stuff and have good troubleshooting skills then I would just follow what you get excited about most.

What little Cisco work have you done? Have you changed any firewall rules? Configured an access layer switch? IOS updates? What do you want to make a career out of ? If you have 10 years server experience then you can easily get a Senior position in that (well its not that easy but you know what I mean).

EDIT

Going off by your last sentence, I would say stay servers. If you don't like the daily tasks of Cisco work then its not worth climbing up that ladder if you don't like the first couple of steps.

Somnipotent

How deep do you want to go into your current field? If Cisco interests you, there's no absolute harm in attempting the CCNA track. With a bit of luck you may land an entry level position as a network tech/engineer and build your credentials up that way. If you're comfortable where you're at, I'd say continue on with the MS path. Can't really pick for ya.

chappys4life

Did some thinking about it and think I am going the ms way for now. I have a friend who works for the company I am going to and he said for moving up servers is a better choice. I think for now I will keep my cisco stuff and go for my msca 2008 then see after if I want some more server certs or my ccna to round out my resume. I figure that will give me enough time to see what the company I am moving to is about as well.

drkat

Dude, you have opportunity.. remember that word. CCNA isnt going to do anything for your while you're working on servers and doing zero network. If you had opportunity for both network/m$ then yeah I'd say so.

Stick to what you know... .. <maybe i should take my own advice sometimes...>

Brain_Power

Cisco!!!

NetworkVeteran

If you enjoy servers and most of your experience is in servers, I'd say stick to servers. I don't see a compelling reason for someone in your boots to switch tracks.

NightShade1

ITs easy to decide..
If you like servers then go for ms path...
If you like networking then go for cisco path...

kremit

Yep it is easy and you are right nightshade

chappys4life

NightShade1 wrote: »

ITs easy to decide..
If you like servers then go for ms path...
If you like networking then go for cisco path...

Being I kind of had both to manage at my current job (leaving soon) it seemed fun to have both.

But yup headed to ms started watching the cbt nuggets 70-640

gdeusthewhizkid

Im in the same boat. Im going for both. MCITP from WGU. CCNA on my own. Im comfortable with working in a windows network infrastructure. I might as well get certfied in it..

NightShade1

im on that boat also for my job i need to know microsoft and also networking.... for example i remenber a few months ago i was installing and configuring a Switch CORE in a bank then a few weeks later Another core in a multinational company here... and then a few weeks after that i find myself troubleshooting AD replications on another client.... and well this week i have been troubleshooting a WSUS issue and yes thanks microsoft for the last update to the WSUS and yeah thanks also for that new client 7.6.7600.256 which cannot communicate with the unpatched WSUS ah yeah and also that the client install itselft automatically even if you got on the GPO Let me choose what updates to install and what updates not, and after that the clients cannot download updates! yay micrsoft you have done it again...
The ones that got WSUS Will understand that...

techiie

To the OP he did mention if he works hard in a year he could end up in either server team or network team. If you want to work on the systems get your mcipt~mcsa 08 but if you really to get your hands dirty with cli go the Cisco route. You are in the perfect position and more then likely if you get a ccna you will end up in the network side which is great if thats what you want. Sit back and think what do you see yourself doing in the next few years. Then follow through and make the big bucks