Cisco ACI - worth going into that as NetEng?

[Shadow-82]

Hi!

Recently I got an opportunity to work in a new DC - Cisco ACI roiented.

I think my main stuff will be creating new services / migrating some old stuff / troubleshooting the DC, maybe some changes to infrastructure - more like NetEng, not NOC or HelpDesk role.

I'm CCNP level with expierience about classic R&S, some security & load balancing.

I'm quite confused - is it worth stepping into that.

Any thoughts? Maybe some of you were in similar situation & could provide me some feelings about this?

[Tomas de Leon]

Choosing a Career Change is always a personal decision and you should choose based on your preferences & professional goals.  That said, Cisco ACI is not a typical networking technology.  You look at things differently and it exposes you to a lot of your classical networking skills but opens the doors to a whole new world of technology and how we look at networking and the cloud.

I would advise you to read throught the following links:

http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/switches/datacenter/aci/apic/sw/1-x/aci-fundamentals/b_ACI-Fundamentals.html

https://adamraffe.com/2014/12/03/learning-aci-part-1-overview/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l75B6D9xyMQ

If you like learning and you want to improve your skill set in the Data Center, then ACI is a great choice.

Cheers!

T.

[Shadow-82]

Thanks for answer!

I do like to learn - but I think I'm more network related guy - not a programmer & quite less higher layers oriented. The meat for me are - you know: routing, redistributions, dual homing, etc. & I'm afraid I'll face WebGUI based life there :)

Not sure did I cleared my point of view

[Tomas de Leon]

Programmability is only a piece of the solution.  You can use scripting or in an upcoming release develop apps; but there is still a lot of newtorking in ACI.  We have the Admin GUI and NXOS like CLI for configuration.  We have OSPF, EIGRP, & BGP for routing.  There is VMM Networking with VMWare, Hyper-V, and Openstack.

There is "a lot" to offer with ACI and you can develop a nice skillset enhancing what you already know.

Good Luck!

T.

[sateeshk10]

In future we won`t see network engineer role, everything is network automation/cloud network etc...

Anyhow, look at my view on my personal blog.

http://sateeshkolagani.com/?cat=5

Regards

Sateesh K

[Joseph Young]

The cloud knows all!!! ;)

But in all seriousness every SDN solution runs on networking technologies. BGP, OSPF, VXLAN, overlays, tunnels...the term 'network engineer' will change over time to encompass knowledge of virtualization technologies and scripting for sure but the need for network engineers isn't going away.

[Joseph Young]

I was almost exclusively a route/switch engineer before making the move to ACI. Those skills have been challenged everyday as I've had to understand data flow through ACI. For example, for a packet to get from point a to point b it will have to follow a control plane that is at the very least comprised of vxlan, bgp, and is-is. Once you start dealing with l3 outside connectivity it becomes extremely helpful to know routing-protocol details. We're getting to the point now where we are extending EVPN outside of the fabric to communicate VXLAN information. Bottom line is I think you will still be challenged from a routing and switching perspective.

Additionally...when I made the switch I had very little knowledge of virtualization technologies. Since ACI supports VM integration you will most likely grow in that area too. All of this results in becoming a very well-rounded, knowledgeable engineer.