Wow! Do I feel like a bad parent or something right now – I ahve realized that I have neglected my blog here for a few months now – bad Fryguy! Work last year got crazy, good crazy!
I have made a commitment to myself and you to post at least one blog posts per-month, planning to do two per-month, going forward. Some of the things that I am working on are:
Wait, what is the title of this blog post and what does it mean?
Well as you are probably aware, Cisco Live 2016 is just a few months away from now – in fact just about 90 days from now! So around this time when information starts to come out as to who we may be listening to at the Customer Appreciation Event (CAE).
Before I reveal the big news, few housekeeping things that we should try and cover. First, Cisco Live 2016 is in Las Vegas at the Mandalay Bay Hotel and Convention Center from July 10 – 14th. Yeah, it will be a bit warm – but if you stay at the Mandalay Bay or Luxor, you won’t even have to go outside. Second, if you are not registered yet, you should hurry up and click HERE to register. Go, now – do it and then come on back.
Welcome back, looking forward to seeing you there! Now that you are registered, you may want to add your name over at Tom’s Corner (NetworkingNerd) Cisco Live Twitter list. This list quickly becomes an amazing list of individuals that will be at the event – and people that you may want to meet ( or avoid, who knows but I would suggest meeting them ).
In the past we have had a Social Media area at the event, and this year that will be the same. This is a great place to find and meet people as well as a fun place just to hang out. There are some amazing conversations that happen there and no topic is taboo – Networking, personal, financial, anything as there is always someone there who shares your passion. That is an awesome side benefit of this event, you get to connect with peers who have common ideals and experiences. I have learned a lot meeting others there – just a treasure trove of information above and beyond what you gain from the technical experience at Cisco Live.
Now that I have rambled for a bit, lets get to the information that you really want – the CAE information. First off, it will be held at the T-Mobile Arena.
I suspect that our opening act will be one that you love – as it is none other than the person in the below video:
[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0uLI6BnVh6w]
In case you have not figured it out, it will be none other than Elle King!
Now to follow that up we will be having none other than…
[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qpgTC9MDx1o]
Maroon5!
This is shaping up to be an awesome event! Last year was amazing and this year is on target to be just as amazing, if not more!
Hope to see you there!
It is finally official, Juniper has extended their certification expiration from two years to three years.
Originally Juniper certifications where active for 2 years, and then you had 1 year after that to renew. If you did not re-certify prior to the 2–year anniversary, you went into an inactive status for a year with your certification. Then if you did not renew within that two years, your certification became expired and you would have to take the test(s) again to regain that certification. What Juniper has now done is give you three years of active status, and you need to re-certify prior to the 3rd year anniversary – there is no more inactive status. While this does alleviate much pressure on candidates (it can be hard to re-certify every certification every two years), it also means that the motivation factor of “inactive” status is gone.
I just logged into my CertManager portal page to check on my certifications as I know I had one that was in inactive status. It is now active, but now shows _Expiring._ At least that tells you that you need to re certify soon! Luckily they do also list the date of the Expiration on the page, so you know your drop-dead deadline.
If you have a Juniper certification and want to check its status, you can do that by going to their CertManager page.
You can see the announcement at the following link:
Coming this November, Juniper has finally jumped into the Customer Summit bandwagon. This is something that has been asked for for many years now, a way for Juniper customers and advocates to get together and talk Juniper. This event will allow you to connect with your peers in the industry, meet current and potential new customers, and connect with Juniper leadership. Some of the primary topics of the inaugural event this year is:
Back in 1993 the CCIE Cisco Certification, the first Cisco certification, was created and tested. Yes, the CCIE certification came years before the CCNA certification (1998) and thus Cisco needed a way to weed out candidates who were not ready for the CCIE lab exam. What they came up with was a Written pre-qualification exam to show that the candidate was ready to attempt the CCIE Lab exam. The CCIE Written is not a certification in itself, even though many job seekers seem to think that it is, it is just a qualifier to show that the candidate is ready to attempt the CCIE lab exam. To this day the CCIE written is still needed, regardless if the candidate does not have or has other Cisco certifications. Today though, with all the Cisco certifications, training, and the amount of Cisco networking gear in the enterprise, it is quite different and begs the question, “Does the CCIE Written still make sense today?”
Day two is now in the books, and all I have to say is What a Keynote! I have been coming to Cisco Live for over 10 years now and I will say that this keynote did have something special to it. I think knowing that this was his list keynote as CEO of Cisco, it just had something extra to, maybe it was OK GO opening up, maybe it was the seating, or just the energy in the room. Mr. Chambers owned the room and engaged with the people in the audience.
His successor, Chuck Robbins, was able to do a nice tribute video to Mr. Chambers that covers many of the keynotes, Netvet receptions, and World of Solutions engagements over the past years. Mr. Robbins is preparing to take Cisco into the future of this industry and help it to maintain its leadership.
It has been an interesting start to Cisco Live 2015 this year. It is nice to see everyone refreshing friendships between people that we have not seen since San Francisco, if not longer. It is great to see many of the old (guess that what happens as years pass) faces that I have seen over the years. Below is the official Cisco Live Facbook photo of our Tweetup from last night.
Cisco Live is coming up fast, just over a week away as I write this.
So I figured I would share some quick updates with you as you prep for the trip.
Are you on Twitter? If you are be sure to add yourself to the Cisco Live 2015 Twitter list at Tom’s Corner – err, The Networking Nerd.
Have you installed the Cisco Events App on your iPhone/iPad or your Android based device? No, well you should as it has everything you need for Cisco Live 2015 (plus it is free!
So what is in this app? Here are some quick screen shots with the highlights.
For me I have this under my Cisco Apps folder, but you will be looking for an Icon called Cisco Events.
This year will mark John Chambers last Cisco Live Keynote as CEO of Cisco, ending his 20 year run in the position. In case you may have missed the announcement, starting on July 26th, Chuck Robbins will take over as CEO. This keynote will be John’s farewell and perhaps the welcoming of Chuck into that role. I am looking forward to what this keynote will be, but whatever it is it should be memorable and a not-to-miss event.
Sessions, sessions, sessions. There are hundreds of sessions to choose from this year. Have you made your selections yet – no, then click here and get started!
DevNet Zone is a recent introduction at Cisco Live, but it is an important introduction. It is a place where Developers can get together and share information, learn new topics, as well as show of what they know. This is the place to learn about SDN and learn how you can use SDN in your position. If you love programming, this is YOUR Cisco Live! Still not sure what DevNet is about, check out this video from Cisco Live Milan.
The other week (3/11/15) I was invited by Juniper Networks to their Sunnyvale, CA HQ location to particiapte in their 2015 Innovation Showcase. I have participated in Tech Field Day events in the past so I had an understanding of what to expect but what Juniper did blew me away – it turned out that this was the launch event for their new QFX10000 series switches, the Converged Supercore Architecture based on the PTX, and Express Path for their SRX5000, and ultimately their Q5 ASIC chip.
The QFX10000 is Juniper Networks latest addition to Data Center networking and it comes with Juniper Networks latest purpose-built ASIC -the Q5. The Q5 chip enables unprecedented performance, port density, and scale as can be seen in the QFX 10000. What is also very interesting is that the Q5 chip uses Memory Cube technology, something that is not found in merchant silicon. The QFX10000 is a high density spine switch optimized for the Data Center (or as many call it, “the cloud.”) How high density? If you look at the image above you will see an image of the QFX100002–72Q switch. Those are 72 – 40 GbE ports in that 2U switch! That equates to 288 – 10 GbE ports! Not enough bandwidth for you? Well, you can also order these boxes with 24 – 100 GbE QSFP28 interfaces instead! That is some serious bandwidth options right there! Still not enough for you? You can get these switches in a chassis design – 8–slot and 16–slot chassis options are available. The 8–slot chassis will support up to 1152 – 10GbE ports and the 16–slot will support up to 2304 – 10GbE ports! You can find out more about the QFX 10000 here – JUNIPER QFX10000. For more information on the Memory Cube / 3-D Memory technology, there is an great post by Chang-Hong Wu on the Juniper forums – 3-D Memory.