Learning - CCNA or MS?

[misae]

Possible in the wrong forum but need some advice on training.

Firstly if you are already a qualified CCNA/MCSA technician how did you get your qualification? What route did you take?

Where centres around the Midlands would you recommend or would you learn the courses yourself?

Which one would you go for, what is more lucrative for employment, a CCNA or an MS based couse like an MCSA or the newer courses for Server 2008 and beyond?

Any help and advice would be appreciated....

[Jay]

I am not CCNA or MCSA but they are two very different fields when you get to a high level.

Money wise I would say at the moment a CCNA would be very good but only if you already have experience behind you, if not I would start with the MS stuff as it will get you on the ladder.

To be honest I will be doing my CCNA soon but I am also going to be doing Citrix as well so I am just as guilty as yo ufor going down to paths at once!

[misae]

Ah Citrix, didn't think of that, my current employer makes extensive use of Citrix based applications.

[Jay]

yes CCA is a good one to do but its about £1500 for a 5 dayer I think.

[Allen]

Where will you do that Jay? Would your company be sponsoring you?

[Jay]

In Manchester, no its self funded.

[badass]

IT wise, I have 2 MCSE's (2000 and 2003), a CCNA and a CompTIA Hardware A+
The hardware A+ is a complete waste of time.
If you're not in IT yet or are very new to it and you think you can find a networking job (no matter how junior and badly paid) after taking a CCNA, I would say CCNA every time.
If you are all ready reasonably experienced with MS software, do an MCITP. If you haven't all ready started the MCSE, then it is a complete waste of your time. Do a Server 2008 MCITP instead.
One think to think about. What do you enjoy doing the most? Follow that path. You will always be best at doing what you enjoy the most. You'll more likely put more effort into it, both in your job and your study and more likely to get paid better for it as a result.
One thing about IT. If you haven't got into it yet, be prepared to be studying for the rest of your life unless you plan to go into management. The studying is initially interesting but once you understand all of the core concepts and the theory, the rest is how to do it and is soul destroyingly boring.

[Jay]

good advice there.

[Allen]

Didn't think MCSE and MCSA existed anymore anyway?

I'm working towards MCITP: Enterprise Administrator, doing 70-640 at the moment and going to try and get MCITP: Server Administrator first.

But as others have suggested, you need to know what you want to do before studying as from what I can tell, MS and Cisco certifications are about different things, MS being software and servers , Cisco is more about hardware.

[misae]

Been in IT for a years at 1st level, want to progress from there. Most of my experience is problem solving and hardware really. Never been into networking but willing to learn... thanks for all the advice guys.

[Moby-Dick]

I've got MSCE , MCITP:EA & MCDBA ( as well of a handfull of VMware Certs )
I did a mix of self study and courses via QA.

Video Training by trainsignal & cbt nuggets.

CCNA is something I quite fancy doing to round off some network certs, just got to get into ping

[badass]

I've got MSCE , MCITP:EA & MCDBA ( as well of a handfull of VMware Certs )
I did a mix of self study and courses via QA.

Video Training by trainsignal & cbt nuggets.

CCNA is something I quite fancy doing to round off some network certs, just got to get into ping

You'll find the CCNA really easy TBH. What I liked about the current 640-802 is that there's no trick questions like the MS exams are plagued with. You provide yor answers based on what you see and that's it, rathing than reading the question and the possible answers 4 times to make sure you haven't missed something.

[Moby-Dick]

Makes sence - just finishing off a few days in San Jose at a bloggers tech conference and should be getting some access to a CCNA training lab , so I'll have to find out

[Jay]

Has anyone here done ITIL? I have the basic cert in that, it was horrible to train for but I got over 90% in the final exam. I don't think it was worth the money to be hones though but its nice to have.

[Moby-Dick]

Yeah I have ITIL foundation as well as PRINCE2 Foundation. Its a little bit high level and sometimes quite divorced form the real world. Application of it too literally can cause a critical level of administrative overhead.

My good friend Steve Chambers has some great thoughts on ITIL - for a quality rant have a look at http://viewyonder.com/itil/

I'm also looking at doing a couple of other "high level" courses - CISSP and TOGAF for Security and Architectural stuff.

[kidzer]

I'd say if you want to work in Networking (and who wouldn't, it is rather brilliant! Slightly biased opinion, I'll admit!) then go for the CCNA.

I've got my CCNA Exam on Tuesday, I'm not sure if I'll pass or not - I'm hovering around 80% on the Boson Practice Exams that came with the Cisco CCNA Certification Library (ICND1/2 books, by Wendell Odom) - but some reading I've done suggests they are harder than the real thing. Some of the wording in them is a bit silly too! It doesn't help that I'm tend to have a 'seat of the pants' style approach to most things I do - doesn't transfer well into exam questions!

Main incentive I've got is that if I fail I have to reimburse work the cost of the exam! >.<