My visit to Cisco Live 2013 in Orlando this week has helped reinvigorate me in regards to getting off my tubby rear and dedicating some time to learning networking with Cisco devices.
Previously my focus has purely been on Cisco UCS, however since my new company has me working with a lot of ancient Solaris Servers, and a good deal more IBM (AIX, PowerVM) than I am used to, there is not a great deal of use in me spending a lot of time learning UCS as it may be a few years before I get to lay hands on it again.
However, on the plus side I have noticed that when it comes to certifications around UCS (which Cisco considers the datacenter track) I good deal more networking knowledge (CCNA level) seems to be required. And I get it… why not. Cisco touts UCS as a unified datacenter solution, so it makes sense that they want y0u to know your way around a router and a switch.
Plus its not like I am a dummy in the area… I have spent more than my fair share of time showing a network administrator how to configure their equipment to connect to Vcenter, Xen, and RHEVH/M. Its just the command context that I struggle with.
So I ordered a few used and cheap books and an planning to set aside some time to actually learn this very archaic operating system. Below are a few links that I either have already found useful, or hope to find useful in the near future.