What do you guys think? SDN...

blueberries

I truly want to get my CCIE digits some day. Maybe within a few years. The R/S bug has bitten me.

Be that as it may, I have dependents, so if I don't put enough meat into the shark tank, I become the meat.

Is CCIE worth all of the time and effort when we are on the forefront of this new technology, or am I too late to get a real nugget for my efforts?

NetworkVeteran

As I've stated in these SDN threads a few times, I'm actually using SDN, and complex protocols that require expert engineers to design, configure, and troubleshoot.. still require expert engineers to do the same. It mostly simplifies the grunt work, such as upgrading software in one place, having a single UI, and not needing templates applied to many machines.

Whether the CCIE is worth it is a very personal question as it always has been. Both the financial rewards and time commitment, provided you already have the networking experience to back it up, are fairly clear.

I still am not certain whether I want to give up so many hours of my life for <$10,000 in rewards. I have been focusing lately on broadening my expert knowledge to include more networking vendors and technologies.

powmia

A network in which a centralized system provisions configuration and circuits?!??!! Wow, that sounds nothing like Frame-Relay or ATM, and nothing like any home-grown or commercial config-management system in the past I agree, SDN will make operations easier, but someone still has to build the network. In order for one vendor's SDN implementation to inter-operate with other vendors, any new protocols that are defined for forwarding traffic and routing information will have to be standard protocols, and will need someone to design, integrate, and troubleshoot. If we ever reach a world in which every network is running SDN, even the CCNAs will still have a job. They'll just have to be familiar with Cisco's SDN platform.

rakem

SDN is going to be amazing. BUT it sill runs on top of a standard hardware network, so there is still a need for us network engineers.
We just need to upskill a bit and learn about things like Open VSwitch, VXLAN, NVGRE and STT.

I'm doing a bit of work with Nicira and it is amazing stuff.... Tunnel layer 2 across any L3 network, and have around 16,000,000 possible VLANs.
Good stuff.

My advice... learn about it if you can, its pretty interesting stuff.
But unless your working for a Cloud provider or similar its probably not going to be on your radar for a while.