CCIE Data Center?

The CCIE certification from Cisco is widely considered to be one of the best, toughest certifications to get.

Generally obtaining this certification requires months, if not years of preparation, abanonding free time (and in some cases, hope). You hear of CCIE widows/widowers. It has a high failure rate the first attempt, and some (really smart people too) take several attempts.

I haven’t seriously considered getting a CCIE, despite working a lot in the Cisco realm (I’m a Cisco Certified Systems Instructor).  And it’s not because of the insane prep and soul crushing defeats.  I mean, something difficult and insane? Sign me up. (I enjoy insane goals, like running marathons and training to be an aerobatic pilot.)

The problem is relevance. Right now there are six different CCIE tracks: CCIE Route & Switch, CCIE Storage, CCIE Service Provider, CCIE Security, CCIE Wireless, and CCIE Voice.  The vast majority are CCIE R&S. CCIE Wireless has less than 50 at last count.

Not one of them would dramatically increase my skills in areas that I typically work in. I deal with switching, a bit of spanning-tree, virtualization, and storage (some FC, more FCoE, and iSCSI).  Things I never deal with, ever: ATM, voice, metro Ethernet, routing protocols (although IS-IS maybe a new skill I need to pick up).

This will require intense study. Right after I check Twitter.

For a year or so now however, there’s been a rumor that a CCIE Data Center is coming. It would likely involve MDS/storage, FCoE, Nexus switching, UCS, even some load balancing and WAAS.

So I’m hoping it gets released soon. I would be all over that shit.