Can't decide on path to take. [Certs]

Hi. I am new here.

A little background on me;

I have a A.S in Network Administration and working on my B.S in Computer Science. I attend Cornell University in NY but I am taking a break from that while I finish Army's IT Specialist school.

I currently hold CompTIA Security+ and that is it. I have very little IT experience. (I work part time as a Jr. Admin)

I love routers, switches, servers, it just seems so fun to me.

Currently I am studying for CCNA.

Wondering if a CCNA, Sec + and my A.S will be sufficient enough to get me a full time job or at least something better.

I am using my GI Bill and I have 1 more semester left of it and Cornell will be too expensive for me.

I'm very interested in networks and security. I'm have a little experience with Unix and Solaris.

Goal for this year is CCNA, CompTIA Healthcare IT Tech Certificate and start studying CompTIA Server+

Is this a good path?

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Comments

RobertKaucher

IMO, the CCNA is a very good certification to have and that is true even if you go more to systems administration. I cannot speak for your part of the country but the qualifications you are aiming for would be very marketable in the mid and southern Ohio areas.

c0vjek

RobertKaucher wrote: »

IMO, the CCNA is a very good certification to have and that is true even if you go more to systems administration. I cannot speak for your part of the country but the qualifications you are aiming for would be very marketable in the mid and southern Ohio areas.

Thank you for the reply.

I will try to take CCNA soon

pert

RobertKaucher wrote: »

IMO, the CCNA is a very good certification to have and that is true even if you go more to systems administration. I cannot speak for your part of the country but the qualifications you are aiming for would be very marketable in the mid and southern Ohio areas.

Disagree slightly. CCNA is great, if it's a cert on a path towards more like the NP or some specialty However, a naked CCNA is pretty useless imo. You're going to need a lot of help and luck to find a pure networking FT job with an NA unless you have a lot of NOCs in your area. I also don't see how the NA is very helpful to anyone not intending to pursue networking as their primary skillset. Maybe I'm mistaken, but I know very few people who occasionally work on routers or switches (not counting virtual, thats different). It's either your primary role, you work in a shop where you support everything under the sun, or you don't use it all imo.

Just don't see what use learning about frame relay, eigrp, ospf, etc is going to be to a sys admin 99% of the time. Yeah I'm sure it could come up, but there would be other things you could learn that would be more useful more often. Time is finite.

odysseyelite

I disagree with Pert.

I think the CCNA compliments any area of IT you work in. If you don't understand how servers talk to each other through the network, how can you really be a good system admin? After completing the CCNA I got calls for all sorts of jobs beyond NOC. To me it really tied it all together.

I think the CCNA, Sec+ will get you going in the right direction.

As for server+, I'm not big on the cert. Not once has it made a difference trying to get a job. Someone else paid for it so I got it. What's your reason for CompTIA Healthcare IT?

Best advice someone someone gave me was to pick a route and go towards it.

ChooseLife

pert wrote: »

Disagree slightly. CCNA is great, if it's a cert on a path towards more like the NP or some specialty However, a naked CCNA is pretty useless imo. You're going to need a lot of help and luck to find a pure networking FT job with an NA unless you have a lot of NOCs in your area. I also don't see how the NA is very helpful to anyone not intending to pursue networking as their primary skillset.

I respectfully disagree.

For a network person, that's the most common and reasonable way to get the career going - CCNA -> junior network guy -> CCNP -> intermediate-level network guy -> expert network guy -> CCIE -> network god.

For a non-network person, CCNA provides immense value - typically, a sysadmin needs to be an expert in servers and systems, and at the same time have at least a basic understanding of networks. Sysadmin also sometimes needs to make some minor tweaks to the network equipment, and those tweaks are typically on the CCNA level. As a sysadmin, I have heard this too many times on the interviews at SME's: "We also have a few Cisco switches and a couple of routers that occasionally need some minor changes - and we see you have a Cisco certification, so that is great!"
Similarly, I'd expect a security person at the very least to have CCNA-level familiarity with Cisco, and so on...

RobertKaucher

odysseyelite wrote: »

I disagree with Pert.

I think the CCNA compliments any area of IT you work in. If you don't understand how servers talk to each other through the network, how can you really be a good system admin? After completing the CCNA I got calls for all sorts of jobs beyond NOC. To me it really tied it all together.

I think the CCNA, Sec+ will get you going in the right direction.

As for server+, I'm not big on the cert. Not once has it made a difference trying to get a job. Someone else paid for it so I got it. What's your reason for CompTIA Healthcare IT?

Best advice someone someone gave me was to pick a route and go towards it.

Thanks for the support. I agree with you about it being good for Sys Admins as well. I think that systems guys and gals, especially in mid-sized companies where there is great overlap between network and systems sides, gain the most benefit from the cross disciplinary study than network guys and gals. The reason I say this is because doing development and systems work I need to know what is going on in the network and have an ability to understand protocols such as Ethernet, TCP, IP, and the higher level protocols like DNS, HTTP, etc. If I don't have a good understanding of these it becomes hard to talk to both the Network team and the AD administrators when things are not working as I expect them to and all I would be able to do is push the blame on to one area or another based on my intuition.

The fact is if my boss brought me two resumes where one person had just an MCITP and another guy had the CCNA and the MCITP I would be more interested in interviewing the CCNA/MCITP because I would expect that person to be a greater asset to the work we do.

thedrama

Weird, this thread has turned into a battle area with disagreements of each.

Rakurai

Are you active duty? Can't really tell if you are just joining, or already got out, especially with you already using your GI Bill. Would have some good advice for you if you are just joining.

Nobylspoon

Which GI Bill are you currently using? If you are using Ch30 and you are eligible for the Post 9/11 one, you might be able to get 1 more year of benefits. If you have completely exhausted Ch30 MGIB before applying for Post 9/11 and didn't earn a 4th year of benefits (Guard/Reserve MGIB), you might qualify.

Nobylspoon

Rakurai wrote: »

Are you active duty? Can't really tell if you are just joining, or already got out, especially with you already using your GI Bill. Would have some good advice for you if you are just joining.

If you are just joining, save your GI Bill and use TA (tuition assistance).

RobertKaucher

thedrama wrote: »

Weird, this thread has turned into a battle area with disagreements of each.

Really? You should re-tune your definition of battle. This is just a few grownups who have differing opinions expressing themselves civilly.

pert

I'm not a sysadmin, so can someone explain to me how any concept on the CCNA other than basic routing, subnetting, and vlans are going to provide a major benefit? How does knowledge of routing protocols, frame relay, spanning tree, subinterfaces/router-on-a-stick, or IOS/CatOS config commands going to help you do your job more than further study of your major discipline? This isn't a question of whether this knowledge has any worth, but how it could have more worth than studying more about whatever is youre the admin for.

Also, as far as the CCNA landing you a network job. I know people say this is how it happens, but it takes A LOT more than walking into an interview with your NA certificate to find your first networking job. The NA isn't going to "help" you get the job, its a prerequisite! It doesn't make you desirable or a catch of any kind, it makes you just another applicant, and in most situations someone more qualified will be competing against you.

My advice, is if you are sure of what you want to do, become the best at that specific area. Having a NP in a networking job is better than having an NA and a MCITP, and same holds true in most positions where you're not responsible for everything (Those positions do exist, so if you have one disregard).

odysseyelite

Pert,

It really depends on how big of a shop you are in. The CCNA is more than just routing protocols. It does get into the basics of network design. Having a few windows servers is great but if you don't understand how and why they communicate they way they do you are limiting your troubleshooting skills. Not all places have dedicate network, sysadmins. Sometimes you are that guy. Say you are the sysadmin and need to setup a QA area, or a Dev area. Would you you know how to setup the routing properly? There are sysadmin duties after the packet leaves the network card.

I get what you are saying. Will I ever deal with frame relay, not anytime soon. The CCNA did give me a better understanding of basic sysadmin features like how DNS, DHCP, PXE etc work together.

Will only a CCNA alone get you a job, no way. SO many students in the CCNA classes think this.

Any knowledge is good knowledge.

Starting off with the MS certs is a good starting route. Then adding some network certs certainly can not hurt. Then picking an area to specialize and focusing only on it. Ironically doing this helped me finally specialize into virtualization.

c0vjek

Rakurai wrote: »

Are you active duty? Can't really tell if you are just joining, or already got out, especially with you already using your GI Bill. Would have some good advice for you if you are just joining.

I was an Infantryman on active duty and got out in 2009. I just recently reclassed to 25B for Reserves. I have been using Post 9/11 but I changed my major from biomedical engineering, which set me back about a year.

odysseyelite the reason for Heathcare IT Certificate is because I believe it can open some doors, specially since IT techs in healthcare are in demand in NYC..

Thx for the replies.

The route I want to take is to work with switches, routers and servers. I love working on Exchange, Windows Servers, configuring routers and switches.

ChooseLife

pert wrote: »

I'm not a sysadmin, so can someone explain to me how any concept on the CCNA other than basic routing, subnetting, and vlans are going to provide a major benefit? How does knowledge of routing protocols, frame relay, spanning tree, subinterfaces/router-on-a-stick, or IOS/CatOS config commands going to help you do your job more than further study of your major discipline? This isn't a question of whether this kn peopleowledge has any worth, but how it could have more worth than studying more about whatever is youre the admin for.

Below are some examples from my life.

At some point in time I was a typical IT sysadmin for a small shop - Exchange, AD, VMware, backups, whatever not. Network structure was flat and simple and required minimal maintenance. Uplink to the Internet was through a Cisco router, and the router was on our side of the demark point. Once in a blue moon the ISP would change the IP addresses assigned to us and someone on the team had to reconfigure the router. It's a simple CCNA task if you know what to do, but no one on our small team knew how to login to "this thing", let along reconfigure it. When I did the task, the manager took me out for a lunch, because, as he said, he would otherwise have to get an external party to do it for us (and he had done that before). He also allowed me borrow older Cisco switches and routers for practice, and paid for my CCNA exam - all because he saw immediate value in having someone with basic understanding of Cisco on the team.

Other experiences I had were similar - typically a company with a relatively simple network structure that cannot justify a dedicated network engineer, but appreciates someone with some knowledge of Cisco.

In fact, just last year I got pulled into a major network redesign for our multi-branch company (involving ASA's, VPNs, routers, switch stacks, Cisco VoIP, and MPLS links) because I was pretty much the only person on the five-man team who could do it. More importantly, that may have been a deciding factor for hiring me shortly prior to the start of that project, as I did express my willingness in helping out with it - even though the position I was applying for was 100% server administration and pretty much no networking knowledge beyond IP assignment was needed for it. I, CCNA, saved heck a lot of money for the company during the project, got tons of hands-on experience, and don't be mistaken, while I have good understanding of networks, it's still not quite NP-level.

So there, that's my take on the value of CCNA for a sysadmin :P

smithken2006

I want to do networking and security. Where do i start as primary stage to the professional stage? Please advice me

N2IT

All I can say is don't try to be perfect, it's not possible so do your homework, which you are doing and decided then commit and see the certification through completion.