Today, Cisco is announcing a new
comprehensive, job-role-focused training and certification program for its
datacenter architecture. It includes a comprehensive Career Certification
portfolio consisting of the Cisco CCNA Data Center, CCNP DataCenter and CCIE
Data Center, as well as a robust product training portfolio.
"The key message here is that our career certifications now fully embrace the
unified datacenter architecture -- unified computing, unified fabric and unified
management," said Antonella Corno, product manager for Data Center
virtualization and cloud product portfolio at Cisco. "These announcements focus
on the first two unified computing and unified fabric. Unified management is
cloud-focused and isn't as mature as the others, and so is not ready to receive
a full career certification yet."
Corno said that as technology has been evolving to more intelligence in the
networks, the industry has discovered that a knowledge gap is growing.
"Those tech trends were responding to specific business challenges, and IT
organizations had to rethink the way they leverage the infrastructure, which was
leading the industry into new roles and skillsets, and we had to address the
gaps that were forming in training," she said.
"Moving to more complex infrastructures needs better trained people to lower
the cost of operations, increase the functional excellence of staff and ensure
the network evolves with business," Corno added.
The new specialist certifications cover every data center product. Joining
CCIE Data Center, which was announced in February 2012, are CCNA Data Center and
CCNP Data Center. All see two key pillars of the Unified Cisco Data Center
architecture -- Cisco Unified Computing and Cisco Unified Fabric -- addressed
across the job roles of design, implementation and troubleshooting.
CCNA Data Center lays the foundation for basic level job roles such as Data
Center Networking Administrators that require competence in areas including
network and server virtualization and storage and IP networking convergence.
Good for three years, the certification requires two exams, one on routing and
switching (DCICN), the other on data center technologies (DCICT).
The CCNP Data Center certification is a more advanced certification, aligned
specifically to the job role of Data Center Network Designers and
professional-level Data Center networking practitioners. It consists of six
exams, in Troubleshooting, Implementation and Design, for both Unified Computing
Support and Unified Fabric Support. The candidate needs to complete four of
them, depending on their specialization.
The certification validates an individual's capabilities, including
troubleshooting a virtualized computing environment based on the Cisco Unified
Computing System platform focusing on storage and network connectivity,
installation, memory, adapter connectivity and booting issues, drivers, BIOS and
deploying a virtualized environment.
"The CCNP prerequisites are the CCNA and 3-5 years of experience," Corno
said.
While the CCIE exam was announced earlier this year, Cisco is announcing that
its written exam is now available, and the lab exam will be available December
10, 2012.
Cisco also announced an expanded product training portfolio for the Cisco
Nexus 1000V, 2000/5000, 7000, the Cisco MDS 9000 series and the and Cisco
Unified Computing System (Cisco UCS) B and C-Series.
CCNA Data Center and CCNP Data Center exams are now available through Pearson
VUE. Training courses are available through Cisco Authorized Learning Partners.
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