Greg posts here on the Cisco Learning Labs; a long overdue learning tool for Cisco Networkers but rather limited in usefulness for people like Greg who want to experiment with different designs, features and go beyond the basic labs which are provided in the labs.
I really think it’s about time that where vendors have internal simulators available that they start to get them into a state which they can release into the wild and I believe there are some really good reasons to do so.
It’s worth looking at Computer Science/Engineering courses for example, they turn out programmer after programmer but it is very unusual for them to turn out anyone with an interest in infrastructure.
Why? Because it’s very expensive to kit out labs with lots of infrastructure and this is really frustrating for those of us in the industry because we know there are good infrastructure simulators/emulators available. Most of us have used them on expensive courses provided by vendors.
If we want to encourage and capture the best, I think that the vendors can help with this by getting their emulators out there. Don’t think of it as giving something away, think about it as an investment.
Do you think Java would be quite as popular if it wasn’t taught so extensively in universities? And why do you think it gets taught so extensively? Because it got given away.
I know many of the storage vendors have already started to do so but it’s time for some of the rest of you to step up to the plate. I’m looking at you IBM; I’m looking at you HDS….Cisco, Brocade, Juniper and rest, time to stand-up.
EMC, keep up the good work and get the rest of your simulators out there. NetApp, you too.
A bit on the Cisco front — their UCS emulator is quite good and available to almost anyone…just register a CCO account.