Now I’m settling into my new role, I’m more confident but far from competent. There are still a lot of grey areas and different vendors to become more skilled at, notably Aruba and Palo Alto. There have been discussions regarding some vendor training for 2023, which would be great.

The immediate target will be to obtain JNCIS-SP, I aimed to have it before last year’s end, but I wasn’t quite ready. After that, the priority has to be recertifying my Cisco certifications, which will expire on the 18th of August 2023. This is a six-month extension to the original expiry date due to the pandemic and the overhaul of Cisco certification tracks. The last time I had to consider renewing, I decided to do this by going down the Security track to learn something new instead of resitting an exam I had already passed. This time around, there isn’t a tertiary track that appeals to me, before the overhaul, it would have been Design or alternatively the CCIE written.

Cisco’s recertification policy for professional level certifications is as follows:

  • Pass one technology core exam
  • Pass any two separate professional concentration exams
  • Pass any one expert-level written exam
  • Pass any one expert-level Lab/Practical exam

An alternative option is earning Continuing Education (CE) credits or combining 40 earnt CE credits and passing a single professional concentration exam.

I’m leaning more towards passing two separate professional concentration exams over the core exam. My thinking is that there are two main reasons for this - to learn something new and bridge the gap towards the CCIE.

 

Professional Targets

Cisco

  • Implementing Cisco SD-WAN Solutions (ENSDWI)
  • Designing Cisco Enterprise Networks (ENSLD)

Juniper

  • Juniper Service Provider Routing and Switching, Specialist (JNCIS-SP)

 

Personal Targets

  • Get back in the Gym
  • Relocate
  • Hopefully, I will become a Manchester United season ticket holder
  • Improve at Chess
  • Learn Python and possibly pursue the DevNet certification
  • Write at least one blog post a month