Cisco Shake Up Certifications

So as expected, Chuck Robbins announced yesterday at Cisco Live US in San Diego, that Cisco are changing up their whole certification track. At first glance, you notice that CCNA has all but disappeared. Then you notice that Routing and Switching, along with Wireless has disappeared. When you’ve just got over that, you notice that CCNP is your entry to the CCIE Lab exams. Lets have a look at the new track in closer detail.

Entry Level

CCENT (Cisco Certified Entry-Level Technician) is out, and to replace it, in comes CCT (Cisco Certified Technician). Comes in two flavours; Routing and Switching which in Cisco’s words “focuses on the skills required for onsite support and maintenance of Cisco routers, switches and operating environments”. The second flavour is Data Centre, which focuses on support and maintenance of UCS servers and systems (I guess Hyperflex and things like that are included under the Umbrella of “systems”).

Each of the CCT varieties has a single exam, and once achieved is good for three years.

Associate Level

As I alluded to earlier, the first question I asked myself was “Where have all the CCNA’s gone?” There are now only two Associate level certifications on offer. CCNA has now been rolled up into one single exam. It covers the following topics:

• Network fundamentals
• Network access
• IP connectivity
• IP services
• Security fundamentals
• Automation and programmability

So, as you can see, there’s a little bit of everything in there.

The second ‘Associate’ level offering from Cisco, is brand new to the bill. Cisco Certified DevNet Associate is aimed at software developers and DevOps, assessing the following:

• Understanding and using APIs
• Cisco platforms and development
• Application development and security
• Infrastructure and automation

I have to admit, “Application development and security” gave me a chuckle. I can just see the teachers of this course right now; “never include hard-coded backdoor logins in anything you develop”. And that sound you hear, is the foot-gun going off.

Professional Level

At this level, we have the following:

• Enterprise
• Collaboration
• Data Centre
• Security
• Service Provider
• DevNet Professional

I’m not going to go through them all but I’ll tackle the obvious changes first off… “Where’s R+S and Wireless gone?” Both Routing and Switching, and Wireless have been rolled into one new offering; “Enterprise”. All the CCNP (Cisco Certified Network Professional) tracks seem to follow the same path. Pass the core exam, plus one specialisation exam under that topic, and voila! You’re a CCNP. I really recommend having a good look through the CCNP pages and discovering what options are out there, but there’s a few topics worth highlighting just now:

• You don’t need a CCNA as a pre-requisite to go for your CCNP anymore.
• Some new areas of expertise have opened up; SD-WAN, Automation and programming enterprise environments.
• The CCNP Enterprise core exam qualifies you to sit the Lab Exam for CCIE Enterprise and CCIE Wireless, without sitting a written CCIE exam.

Expert Level

Even the venerable CCIE (Cisco Certified Internetwork Expert) wasn’t immune to change. Here’s the offerings at this level;

• CCDE
• Enterprise Infrastructure
• Enterprise Wireless
• Collaboration
• Data Centre
• Security
• Service Provider
• DevNet Expert (Coming Soon)

Ok so, as mentioned, the core exam from any CCNP track, qualifies you straight to the CCIE lab exams for that track. E.g. If I have passed the CCNP Enterprise core exam, I can just go ahead and start preparing for either the Enterprise Infrastructure or Enterprise Wireless lab exams. Aside from the yet to be released DevNet Expert (Again aimed at Developers and DevOps), the other major piece of news at this level is that CCIE’s now last you for 3 (three) whole years!