I am often asked this question by Juniper customers, partners and employees.  What value will a technical certification have for me and for my company? My response to this question can be a little biased – I have managed technical certifications for almost 20 years in four different IT companies so technical certification is a bit of a passion for me. However, you don’t really want a biased response from the company sponsoring the certification. You want to know what your peers think!

To get that unbiased answer we surveyed over 7,000 network professionals that have gone through the process of earning a Juniper Networks certification. This survey was completed in November 2011 and included Juniper customers, partners and employees as well as students and people currently seeking employment.   Individuals were from all parts of the globe – 43% in APAC, 32% in EMEA and 25% in Americas.  An executive summary will be posted on J-Net in the next few weeks – but I wanted to give you a short preview of our key findings.

Hi, my name is David Roy; I have been working for Orange for the past four years in the Network Support team for the Domestic Backbone. Here’s a short story of my Juniper Networks certification journey, which took me just under two years to complete.

My Juniper certification journey started back in 2010 with the M/T track, which was the closest certification related to my job. At the time the books from Harry Reynolds were available and constituted most of my learning for this certification track, I found these to be awesome books, which helped me a lot. I would recommend that you try to get hold of these books if you can, you might have to try the second hand market on ebay. Next up was the JNCIS-M/T; to be honest I didn’t find this track so difficult. After that, I then prepared for the JNCIP-M/T Lab (actually, the P level of the old track was an eight hour lab exam.) To prepare myself for this exam I used a Junos emulation (called Olive), with ten logical systems. All topics for the P level are well implemented in Olive. The first lab was so impressive after two hours I passed, so to configure my topology and playing with several interfaces I was a little more relaxed and I finished the final exam in eight hours (no more, no less). The preparation of my JNCIE-M/T was done by using Olive again for the IGP/BGP/VPN configurations. Nevertheless, I used a real MX960 to prepare the L2VPN part (not well supported by Olive). The E level was much more difficult, the IGP topology was quite unstable. I was so stressed and I spent a lot of time debugging it, and unfortunately I didn't have time to finish the entire exam (so I lost critical points) a little disappointing at the time. Needless to say I didn't pass the JNCIE the first time. However, second time round for JNCIE I was much better prepared for the troubleshooting part as I had created more scenarios in my own lab, which I think armed me with a better understanding and knowledge going into the exam, I finished the exam on time and I passed the JNCIE-M/T in December 2010.

In my last blog (Recertification of JNCIA and JNCIS – A Path Well-Trodden) I laid out my plans for how I was going to try and resit a fistful of Juniper certifications. Things started well with re-certifying the JNCIS-SSL on the first go (well it is my pet subject), but life, but mostly work, intervened once again.  Firstly my supposedly “quiet” month of December was rudely interrupted by a training course which had been bumped and then there was a slew of proposals requiring attention. So, instead of having time to leisurely study for four exams (Junos, UAC, Firewalls & WX) I had scant time to study for one. Added to that, it suddenly occurred that if I wanted to complete the “Specialist” level JNCIS-FWV without having to redo the “Associate” level I had to do it before 31 December2011 when my prerequisite cert expired.  So, everything, but the firewall exam was pushed into 2012.

I thought it might be helpful to share some my experiences and rituals preparing for and sitting the exams.

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As I have shared with you in my first blog post, the company I work for has recently decided to switch from Cisco to Juniper Networks as the main supplier of equipment for our network. As you might imagine this impacts us on several levels one of which I’d like to address today – knowledge.

At the end of the 2011 I find myself staring at no fewer than five expired JNCIA certifications and one JNCIS. Most of them actually expired in the middle of the year and my first task is to figure out where to go from here. I was vaguely aware that many of the certs have been changed or updated since my last flurry of activity in 2009. So, my first job is to work out what goes where.

Starting from the Top

The JNCIA-EX exam has now been replaced with the JNCIA-Junos exam; which kind of makes sense given that across all the Junos platforms, EX, SRX, MX, et al. the base platform is identical; it’s mostly down to platform specialisations (switching, security, routing) as you go deeper into the tracks. My first step was to take the practice exam online, now in my defence, whilst I do work with EX and SRX a reasonable amount I’d be first to admit that I’m far from expert in the platform.  First result was a sobering 45%; sounds like I need to hit the study guides before I go any further on that one.

In 2005, when I was 18 years old, I finished high school I already knew what I wanted to do. I wanted to start a career in IT! The only thing I didn’t know was in what direction I wanted to go. So, I did a little bit of everything. The first important decision I took was to only finish high school and start working without going to university. I figured that, with enough dedication and focus, 4-5 years of work experience added with the right technical certifications would get me further in the IT world than a degree would get me. After 6 years I think I can say that it definitely worked for me! 

For years I was an active member on the ScreenOS forum www.juniperforum.com, a forum for Netscreen before J-NET, some of you may remember me as “frac” in this community. I also spent a lot of time with the local Juniper Networks team and worked on some very interesting projects.

In 2008 and 2011 I was rewarded by Juniper with the title “Master of System Engineering of Juniper Networks”, which was a major accomplishment in my career.

My first true networking role was a familiar one to many; configuring and supporting Cisco routers as part of a managed service. Working in a Cisco house, I was encouraged to embrace the Cisco way of doing things and in turn, became certified as – CCNA, CCDA, BSCI, BCMSN etc.

I later found myself managing a network based around Foundry Networks switches and within this role I made a pivotal decision for my career – deploy new switches for the network. The existing switches were ageing and performance was quite poor. So, I evaluated what was on offer from other vendors including Foundry (now Brocade), Cisco and Juniper Networks, then picked the best for our scenario, which was Juniper Networks. The EX platform brought the benefits of the virtual chassis technology, enabling ease of management, redundant power supplies and the carrier class background in terms of reliability and support.

Over the last few years I have made the transition at the company I work for, from Support Engineer to Network Engineer. In between this I became a Managed Services Engineer dealing with the configuration, installation and maintenance of Cisco 1800 series routers.  During this time I decided I would use the knowledge gained in my day job to go on the certification trail. 4 months later I gained my CCNA accreditation and a thirst to obtain more understanding in networking in general.