The Cisco Certified Internetwork Expert (CCIE)

 The Lowdown on CCIE Storage Network-ing

The Cisco Certified Internetwork Expert (CCIE) certification is accepted worldwide as the most prestigious networking certification in the industry. Network Engineers holding an active Cisco CCIE certification are recognized for their expert network engineering skills and mastery of Cisco products and solutions. The CCIE community has established a reputation of leading the networking industry in deep technical networking knowledge and are deployed into the most technically challenging network assignments.

The Cisco Certified Internetwork Expert program also in-cludes a component on storage networking, which is a must for allprofessionals who want to be known in this field. The storagenetworking component works to bring together the different areasof Cisco, which are routing and switching, service provider, secu-rity, voice (VoIP) and Cisco Certified Internetwork Expert tracks.The Cisco Certified Internetwork Expert storage networking com-ponent is committed to creating storage area networking as a way of presenting itself as a core advanced technology. Putting togethera Cisco Certified Internetwork Expert exam for only one area isuseless, so the nuances of information technology as well as theinternetworking industry can benefit from a strong background instorage networking as part of the entire Cisco curriculum.This way, Cisco can be seen as the number one overall beststrategy in networking. The storage networking component simply  builds on the successes that Cisco has been able to produce before-hand, which, quite incidentally, is also built on a foundation of networks. The many candidates for storage networking will alsoneed to pass a written test that will cover the different theoreticalconcepts, including a hands-on exam for lab in order to demon-strate their real world skills in the system. These candidates must be able to demonstrate thorough proficiency when it comes to thedevices that are used in this system, including SAN switches as wellas directors, routers and management solutions. Such a certifica-tion also deals with the Cisco MDS 9000, which includes intelligentstorage directors as well as fabric switches

Benefits of a CCIE
Networking professionals typically seek CCIE certification to help increase their salary or expand job opportunities within their field of specialty. The extra focus and effort required to preparing for CCIE exams normally improves an individual's skill in the field. Interestingly, Cisco Systems also gives preferred treatment to Technical Support tickets of their customers when filed by CCIE engineers.