Next month I will be taking my 5th certification exam for the year. It’s the 5th because I considered my CCNP R&S as 3 separate exam. The 5th exam will be Brocade’s BCVRE, which is pretty much the equivalent of CCNA in Cisco, only difference is that its virtual routing. It’s all about understanding and configuring Brocade’s Vyatta virtual router and how it applies to your Software Driven Network.
It was by accident how I ended up with preparing for this exam. I was scanning through facebook when I saw an add about Brocade that got my attention. An awesome bundle which includes a 60-day trial of vRouter 5400, on-line 170-010 course and voucher code to take the BCVRE for free. The entire package according to Brocade amounts to $650, I wouldn’t want to pass up on that opportunity.
Unfortunately no one at work really knows about Brocade. Everyone knows what is Cisco, Juniper and Dell networking devices but no one has an idea about Brocade. I only heard about them when I was listening to one of the Packet Pusher podcasts.
I started going through the materials and I find it really interesting. There was a sense of excitement learning something new, I know, its all the same concepts, almost the same commands but I just feel like this newby, very much the same feeling when I first got into CCNA. I am at awe when I get to execute a simple command such as running a static command on a virtual router.
It’s pretty much like Cisco where you get into different configuration mode but this one you always start with the “set” or “edit” command. Instead of typing “do” in front of a command that’s not within the correct mode, you type “run”. You “commit” everything first before a command is executed.
Everything is in brackets, its like looking at programming codes. Pretty neat.
Honestly, I feel like I am becoming a certification junkie. Just trying to get whatever certification is out there specially if its free. I just want to learn and since I am learning it might as well get certified with it. I am still out there looking for a better job, so while I wait I make good use of my time learning.
I guess I am just making up for what I missed last year. I missed the boat when I told all my peers last year that AWS would be the next big thing. I started it, never really pursued it but I was right it did become huge. Most jobs I see now requires having someone with experience with AWS.
I don’t wanna miss that boat again and will follow my gut this time. SDN is happening, gone are the days when you have dedicated SysAds and Network Engineers. I’ve been telling my students since last year that tomorrow’s networks will be managed by hybrid Network Engineers, someone who knows software and hardware driven networks. DevOps is a buzz word that making its presence felt nowadays.
What’s my plan? I am dropping plans for VMware VCP-NX for now and will focus on Vyatta and maybe work on CHEF.
Running-Config 