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New certifications for developers from Cisco. Industry Certification Overview

The Cisco Certification Program has been around for 26 years (was founded in 1993). Many well-known engineering line of certifications CCNA, CCNP, CCIE. This year, the program has also been supplemented with certifications for developers, namely DevNet Associate, DevNet Specialist, DevNet Professional, DevNet Expert.



The DevNet program itself exists in the company for more than five years. Details about the program Cisco DevNet has already been written on Habré in this article .



And so what we have about new certifications:



  1. As for engineering certifications, there are four levels of DevNet certifications - Associate, Specialist, Professional, Expert.
  2. Engineering certifications are supplemented with modules in the direction of automation / programming.
  3. In certifications for developers there is a module related to the basics of network programmability.




Let's look at each of the certifications, including the content and who is targeted.



Cisco DevNet Associate



To whom is targeted:

For young professionals, namely, junior specialists in positions from programmers and SRE / DevOps to testers and automation engineers.



The DEVASC 200-901 exam will include both application development fundamentals (git knowledge, python basics) and knowledge and skills using the Cisco equipment / solutions API.

As previously written, certification also includes a module on network programming fundamentals (15% of the total).





Cisco DevNet Specialist



To whom is targeted:

Experts with experience in one of the directions, from 3 to 5 years.

Developers with practical experience in developing and supporting applications built on Cisco platforms.



In this certification, you can choose one or more of the following specializations, for each specialization, an appropriate exam is provided.

For programmers:





For automation specialists:





For Core specializations, DevOps will be modules for testing knowledge on topics CI / CD, Docker, principles of "12-factor app", OWASP threats.



The Webex specialization is related to Cisco Webex devices and solutions. Previously, many unified communications solutions moved under the common Webex brand, and Cisco Spark was rebranding at Webex Teams. Direction includes Webex Teams automation modules, customization, programming of devices for collaboration (Webex Devices).



The IoT specialization includes modules on Open Source IoT solutions, visualization and interpretation (including using Freeboard, Grafana, and Kibana).



The DevNet Specialist Certification Exam : DevOps also includes topics such as: characteristics and concepts of build / deploy tools such as Jenkins, Drone or Travis CI; configuration management tools for automating infrastructure services, such as Ansible, Puppet, Terraform, and Chef; Kubernetes (concepts, application deployment in a cluster, use of objects); definition of requirements (memory, disk I / O, network, CPU) necessary to scale an application or service; methods to protect the application and infrastructure during development and testing.



Below is a table of comparisons of some certifications that exist in DevOps. It may seem to you that the table compares objects of different characteristics, and it is). In fact, there are some IaaS services, open source projects and vendor oriented certification.





The set of skills and knowledge that cover the sphere of DevOps certainly also includes the ability to use many more different programs and tools. Many projects also have their own certifications, such as Docker Certified Associate, Certified Jenkins Engineer, AppDynamics Certified, Red Hat Certified Specialist in Ansible, and many others.



Certifications for Automation Specialists



In automation, there is a module on the basics of network programming (10% of the total volume of topics), which includes topics such as:





Cisco DevNet Professional



To whom is targeted:

Experts with experience in the development and implementation of applications from 3 years; experience with Cisco solutions and Python programming language.

It will be interesting: developers who are moving to automation and DevOps; solution architects using the Cisco ecosystem; experienced network engineers who want to expand their skills, including application development and automation; developers for infrastructure designing secure production environments.



Certification includes two exams:



  1. Basic exam, which is designed to confirm the professional skills of the developer (DEVCOR 300-901)
  2. Specialized exam, in one of the areas: DevOps, IoT, Webex, Collaboration Automation, Data Center Automation, Enterprise Automation, Security Automation, Service Provider Automation. About them described in detail above in the description of certification Cisco DevNet Specialist.


The basic exam includes the following topics:





The module “Development and design of software” includes topics from the module “Fundamentals of network programming”, and is also supplemented with the following themes: application development fundamentals (architectural patterns, selection of database types according to application requirements, application problem diagnostics, application architecture evaluation parameters); integration with Webex Teams (including knowledge of Webex Teams SDK, OAuth, etc.); Token authentication in the Firepower Management Center; in-depth knowledge of git (git server, branching, resolve conflicts, etc.).



The Infrastructure and Automation module will also include tasks and questions regarding the configuration of network parameters using the Ansible playbook, Puppet manifest.



Cisco DevNet Expert



The highest certification is aimed at professionals, programmers, engineers who have the advanced skills and knowledge described in previous certifications. Such specialists should also have the skills to deploy ready-made applications that use the Cisco API.

Detailed information regarding certification will be provided later.



Detailed information is already available for each of the Cisco DevNet certifications. Exams will be available in February 2020. Exam preparation resources are available now https://developer.cisco.com/certification/



PS



New technologies form new requirements for the knowledge and competencies of specialists. Already, the level of development of equipment and solutions allows you to automate many processes, manage your IT infrastructure using frameworks / scripts and programs written in a convenient programming language.



Knowledge and skills necessary for passing certification exams, conditionally, can be divided into the following categories:





Every employee and person who was looking for specialists developed their attitude towards certification and its influence on promotion in the company or salary increase.

I am sure that, other things being equal, the availability of professional certification in the profile area will be considered as an advantage.



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Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/460543/

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