Saturday, May 19, 2018

Learning path for ops manager with datacenter responsibilities

I ended up moving from software development to being an ops manager maybe 18 months ago. Its an interesting shift because it is a bit of a mid-career direction change (I'm 14 years past my BS/MS in Computer Engineering, did hardware design for 9 years, software development for 3ish, and now this). Most of the equipment I care about is in one of two datacenters with on the order of a dozen racks of equipment each. We use Cisco ASRs, Catalysts, and a bunch of Nexus boxes for our core networking equipment, with Palo Alto firewalls and F5 load balancers as well.

I'm finally at the point where I know the basics of my job and I can start digging in to what we are doing in the datacenter instead of just working off the pattern that was set by the person before me. I am pretty strong in managing Linux servers (as is my team) and we have no dedicated network resources (corporate IT loans us people as needed) so I went ahead and got a CCNA R&S cert so I'd know the basics. I'm trying to figure out my next steps.

On the Cisco/networking path, I'm looking at CCNA Data Center (both for NX-OS skills and general datacenter background), CCNA Security (mostly because we have a number of IPSec tunnels we manage with partners), and CCNP R&S (just going further down the general networking rabbit hole). I have some interest in SDN and/or using tools like NAPALM for network management, due to my software background. I also feel like I'm out of my depth in general datacenter discussions -- I didn't know twinax was a thing until I had to order some cables, I'm never sure when I order rack power or network connectivity if I'm getting the right thing, etc.

What education would be of the most value for someone in my position? It doesn't have to be certification-focused, though I like that certs give me a way to measure if I actually learned what I read/watched/heard. I'm leaning towards CCNA Data Center just because it covers some of the basic datacenter stuff I am missing and would get me up to speed on NX-OS, but I'd love to know if there are other good paths to take.

Because I'm trying to learn as I work, I don't want to spend too long on things that aren't useful. I did most of my CCNA R&S studying in about 4 months outside of work hours, but I had a decent network background for someone who has never officially worked in networking. I'm guessing the extra CCNAs would be similar in time, but I really don't know.

Really, any suggestions would be appreciated! I've seen a ton of advice for people getting certs to move into networking, but I'm basically already in the job and want to find ways to get better at what I do, especially having come in as a lateral move...



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