Learning@Cisco launched Cisco Learning Labs a year ago as an online environment geared toward helping networking pros practice lab exercises for Cisco certifications. The lab environment uses a version of IOS that runs on UNIX. It’s positioned as a cheap alternative to home labs or the physical labs that some certification boot camps that rent out. Cisco Learning Labs rents out 25-hour blocks of online lab time at a starting price of $25.

The new version of Cisco Learning Labs has been dressed up with an updated user interface to make it more intuitive for users, according to Marcello Hunter, product manager for Learning@Cisco.These updates have been added to the ICND1, ICND2, ROUTE, SWITCH and TSHOOT labs. These labs now feature helpful elements like “question bubbles,” that new users can click on to get hints on what to do.

“A lot of our customers working on these labs are newcomers to the networking world and newcomers to the complexities of working with networks,” Hunter said. ‘Just learning how to set them up and launch them and learning how to work with the user interface of IOS was new to them.”

The lab environment also has a series of new instructional videos that accompany the ICND1 and ICND2 labs.

Cisco has also introduced an expanded set of lab exercises based on switch functions that are typically implemented in hardware and are thus not available via an IOS software image. These functions include Layer 2 port security and port channel interfaces. The Layer 2 port security feature will expand the labs exercises available for all Cisco certifications. The port channel interface will expand labs for certifications CCNP and above.

However, Cisco isn’t looking the other way as much as it used to. As blogger Aaron Conway noted today, Cisco is making it harder and harder to download Cisco software without support contracts. Networking bloggers have been squawking about this for months.  The actions by Cisco prompted blogger Greg Ferro to start a petition back in July asking Cisco to create an IOS educational licensing option (the petition is currently not working).

Juniper hasn’t made any moves to make it harder to work with Olive as far as I can tell, but the company would be well within its rights to do so. Cisco has a perfect right to crack down on IOS licensing, too. But it sure would be nice of these vendors to address the issue of emulators directly.

Even though Cisco has made it harder for engineers to run an IOS emulator in a lab, I haven’t seen Cisco actually acknowledge that these changes are aimed at Dynamips and other emulators. I’ve never seen Cisco even acknowledge the existence of something like Dynamips. If you run a search for the word Dynamips on Cisco’s web site, you get back just one result: A transcript of a panel discussion at Cisco Live 2009 entitled “Insiders Guide to Cisco Career Certifications.” In the transcript, Cisco employee and NetworkWorld blogger Jimmy Ray Purser describes Dynamips as the “best way” to do IOS emulation at a zero cost.

Other than that, Cisco has never really addressed Dynamips or other emulators directly. Even when Jessica Scarpati asked Cisco to comment for a story she did on the Dynamips crackdown, the vendor chose not to address the emulator’s existence directly in its response.

Why do vendors like Cisco and Juniper avoid discussing these emulators directly? Wouldn’t some clarification on the tools help everyone? Wouldn’t a formal educational licensing structure be good for vendor’s customers?

Other vendors have made their operating systems much more readily available for learning. Startup Arista Networks has released a free version of EOS, the software it runs on its switches. Meanwhile, open source vendor Vyatta has built its whole business around making its routing software free to everyone. There’s no question that engineers can learn a lot about networking with this free software. Perhaps other vendors should follow their lead.

Regardless of whether vendors like Juniper and Cisco want to ignore or restrict the use of emulators like Olive and Dynamips, I think the community of networking pros who use these emulators to learn the technology and grow in their careers could benefit from some clarification on this issue. Just tell engineers where they stand. Listen to their request for educational licenses. Don’t let them go on working in this legal gray area.

Maybe that won’t be the case if your company never virtualizes its servers or applies dynamic provisioning or moves toward converged storage and data center networks.

So probably a fairer way to state it is: you can probably be just a networking pro for a little while longer. But then you’ll very likely be forced to provide networking that enables and even optimizes server virtualization performance, and you’ll be asked to figure out how your data center LAN and SAN can be managed as one.

Banking on that being the case (and hoping to sell their new technology strategies), HP rolled out an integrated infrastructure certification this month to rival Cisco’s Unified Computing and data center infrastructure specialist certs.

The HP ExpertONE converged infrastructure certification program includes network-specific certifications that teach skills in so-called next generation data center networks (read converged), as well as how to migrate from proprietary network technology (read Cisco-based networks) to multi-vendor “open network infrastructures.” The program also includes a systems component that teaches systems engineers how to apply IT to business processes, and includes Return-on-Investment (ROI) analysis in a converged infrastructure. It’s no coincidence that HP rolled the cert out during Interop New York, which has shifted its focus almost entirely to next generation networks that support virtualization and the cloud.

HP claims to be the first provider of integrated technology certification, but Cisco has long had its Unified Computing certifications that reach across servers, networks and storage. It also has a data center network infrastructure design certification that focuses on converged networks. These certs don’t, however, stretch across multi-vendor environments.

Vendors notoriously roll out certifications for technologies they want to sell – and all of these programs can be seen from that perspective. Still, with virtualization in some form experiencing uptake among 90% of most companies, and many of these same companies considering at least some form of private cloud implementation, it’s fair to say that networking professionals need to consider broadening their horizons.

Mostly the engineers I talked to thought it was a nice option for Cisco to offer to people and they could see scenarios in which going in this Emeritus program would work for them. No one seemed to object to it.

However, i got some reader feedback recently that presented a different view. Robert DuBell (CCIE#9105), a consulting systems engineer with World Wide Technology Inc., had this to say:

The written recertification test is definitely not a “hands on” test like the lab is. The written test can purely be passed simply by studying the material written in the study material listed on the Cisco CCIE written prep suggestions. You don’t have to be in the CLI all day every day in order to complete the recertification. Simply spend a few hours of your free time studying the proper material and you can recert. If you want to keep your CCIE valid, then you should have no problem keeping up with the technology.

Just because you have moved into a management position does not mean you should let your knowledge of cutting edge technology slip! I have completed the recertification test four times and I have taken different track tests to broaden my working knowledge of the different technologies. I think I have done the Routing and Switching CCIE recert test once since achieving my CCIE.

The CCIE is the best cert out there because Cisco has not given into rules changes on how they run their program. I think this is a shame that they have given into the CIOs and PMs [product managers] so they can keep their number active.

Cisco (using the research firm Illuminas) surveyed 970 CCIEs internationally (as part of a 15 year celebration of the CCIE launch) to determine what the digital infrastructure landscape will look like in the next five years.

Virtualization played a large role in the survey with another 67% of respondents saying the technology would be the top networking investment over the next five years as CIOs push to reduce power consumption and spending. After years of virtualization being sold as a data center and systems technology, these results highlight the crucial role of networking in virtualization and vice versa.

Virtualization will also introduce network complexity and management challenges, according to those surveyed, so 56% of respondents said network architecting skills would be in high demand to take on these new challenges.  

The CCIEs surveyed also noted the importance of unified communications, with 77% saying IP telephony has been the single largest trend over the last five years, while another 47% said unified communications will be a leading trend in the coming five. Meanwhile, another 52% said video would be a leading enterprise green initiative.

Cisco has published full CCIE survey results, as well as a CCIE survey white paper with analysis.

Angry? Want to stick it to the man? Feel a riot coming on?

Take a deep breath, put down the bricks and baseball bats, and fire up your Internet browser of choice to join the underground movement.

We spotted a Save Dynamips group pop up yesterday on Facebook, started by French networking student Benoit Goncalves in support of Dynamips, a free Cisco IOS emulator that seems to be the target of these IOS licensing changes. As I write this, it only has 18 members but sure looks like they’re rolling out the welcome mat for new recruits.

(Photo of riot police outside 2008 Republican National Convention courtesy of/politely borrowed from this flickr account)

The program, developed in conjunction with Metropolitan Community College of Omaha, teaches skills in virtualization and server consolidation, energy efficiency, security and compliance and business issues that arise in the data center. It’s unclear whether those issues include IT in-fighting between networking, systems and storage teams.

What the program does promise is problem-solving in a real-world setting — if your real world is built on IBM hardware and software. The school’s data center lab includes IBM Power Systems servers running AIX, IBM I and Linux.

Until now, there haven’t been viable options for vendor-neutral virtualization certifications, but companies like VMware, Citrix, Microsoft and Red Hat all offer specialization courses. There are generalized data center certifications and degrees, though those are typically on the graduate level.

But at a time when the data center is diversifying in vendor offerings and equipment, it’s questionable whether students should invest their money and time in such a vendor-focused program. That said Cisco made its equipment the holy grail of networking in large part by partnering with community colleges to build network certification programs — and it’s clear CCNAs and CCIEs the world over have gotten their foot in the door and then learned diverse technologies on their feet.

What makes this degree attractive despite its vendor affiliation is its focus on virtualization as a central part of the data center. Along with the rise in virtualization has come a plethora of management issues and in-fighting about who controls virtual machines – networking, systems or storage. Forrester analyst Rob Whiteley has suggested the answer is the emergence of a new “virtualization administrator.” If that’s the case, this degree – and others like it that will soon pop up – may be the first step toward that role.

Metropolitan will offer the IBM green data center course (virtually of course) to students at other participating universities.