As I’m writing this post, I am still high on the drug that is called a passing grade. After 10 months of studying the blueprint and putting in hundreds of hours reading through the configuration guides, building topologies (just to tear them down and start over when you’re done), one failed attempt in May, dreaming about all things Cisco UCS, Nexus (physical and virtual) and MDS..I can finally say that I got my CCIE on Datacenter: number 44460 (an easy one to remember too!).
Ccie datacenter written dumps cisco ccie data center guide written exam ccie data. Ccie data center all in one pdf free download ccie datacenter written exam in june. Ccie data center v2 0 lab preparation workbook ccie dc written total question. Ccie training in india ccie site douglaskay.org ccie blueprint excel ccie video.
Stating the obvious is usually not my thing, but this time I’ll make an exception: Preparation is key.
Preparation Plan your preparation, plan it, plan the shit out of it. Of course you can’t plan any unforeseen stuff, like if your understanding of certain subjects isn’t coming along like you’ve hoped. Make a chart, a schedule, an Excel sheet (like I did), make something you can look at to see where you’re at.
If you’re starting fresh and also need to do the written exam, make two plans. One for the written exam and one for the lab exam. Reason: the written exam is mostly the theory around the subjects and you don’t need to know all the configuration options by heart.
Equipment & Lab time The list of equipment that is on the blueprint is pretty hard to come by. Jeffrey Fry calculated it once to be almost 1,2 million USD (list price).
If you’re lucky, like me, your CCO account is linked to a Cisco partner. In that case you have access to Cisco PEC, which is a goldmine for test equipment. It has all the CCIE DC technologies covered.
If you’re not lucky, you’ll need to go outside for lab time. Rack rental companies like INE and iPexpert have pretty much no vacancy. There is limited access to the base configuration (2x N7K VDCs, 2x N5K), but if you want any time on UCS or MDS, you’re going to have to schedule time very far ahead and do that by approaching the respective rack rental company.
There are several options to get a cheap lab going; get a MDS 9216i switch with a DS-x9124 module and a Nexus 5010. A Nexus 7K or UCS is going to a bit harder to come by cheap, but you can emulate if needed.
Take a Bootcamp I took a bootcamp with INE and it has probably made the difference. During this 2 week bootcamp, you get full access to the lab equipment, which is quite a lot. Two weeks of unfettered access to a full scale lab is priceless.
Next to the equipment, you also get access to one of INE’s excellent instructors. In my case it was Mike Snow, basically a Jedi on datacenter, networking, collaboration and a lot more. The bootcamp was lined with theoretic refreshers, smart and energetic discussions and a lot of lab time. Basically two weeks of complete focus on refreshing theory and refining your configuration skills.
INE also supplies you with an excellent workbook that has a scope of tasks throughout the entire datacenter blueprint.
The Week Before At least a week before your lab, go offline. I took a week, but that could be longer if you need. Go completely dark, no email, no phone, no work. Focus completely on your lab and your preparation. In this week, I had a dedicated lab to my disposal to log about 10 to 12 hours a day on. This week is to practice, look over your notes, practice, reread a few configuration guides, practice and practice some more.
Don’t overwork yourself though, a restday is required every once and a while.
The Day itself My day was a Monday and in Brussels. I live about 1,5 hours drive away from Brussels, so I decided to drive. Wanting to get as much as sleep as possible and fresh start on Monday, I decided to drive up Sunday, stay the night at the NH Hotel and walk (a few 100 meters) fresh to the Cisco building.
They start at 8:00, which is very favourable compared to the 7:00 of RTP in North Carolina. The proctors in Brussels run an almost military precision operation and have managed to run the schedule with 1 minute offset while I was there.
The proctor was very helpful, in the way that they should be. Ask precision questions that don’t require them to divulge anything that relates to actual answers, but questions related to the environment and questions that have a yes or no answer, they will be very helpful. Any open questions that you ask, are a waste of your time as they won’t give you the answer you’re looking for; you’re supposed to know the answer yourself.
The lab itself isn’t that hard, it’s just a lot to get through. You need to be prepared to go to war and make every second count. Remember, your skills as an expert should not be limited to technical skills, they should also include stamina, stress management, keeping the global overview and time management. In marketing terms; Cisco is testing you as a complete package.
Making a chart for points and time management did me wonders, I could simply add up the points of tasks I completed and was sure that was finished correctly, add them up and see how I was doing overall. The same chart also had a checklist for all tasks that I used to check all configuration three times. Only after checking all the boxes three times, I was confident with my performance and ended the exam.
Despite that I was fairly confident about the lab, I still was fairly nervous while driving home. Having heard stories about Cisco taking 12 to 24 hours to grade your lab and notify candidates, I was not looking forward to the next hours. After spending 1,5 hour in the car, slowly starting to second guess myself trying to remember if I did certain things correctly (remember, after I checked everything three times), I got home and started a game console just to try to take my mind off it all.
To my surprise, I didn’t have to waste a lot of time, Cisco sent me an email at 18:03. For some reason, my first thought was “fast isn’t good, I failed”. After a few minutes of calming myself I logged in the to Cisco website and saw the awesome news: Your CCIE status is Certified ( CCIE# 44460 )
Reflection After a few hours of complete bliss, reflection came. Going for an expert level certification is a challenging road. You have so much material to go through, theory to cram in your head, train your muscle memory with standard configurations and keep it all orderly inside your head.
Going through this process has thought me a lot, push and break boundaries, open doors, expand horizons when it all comes together and overall made me a better technologist in the broadest sense. There have been a lot of speculation around the value of these certifications, but for me, it was worth it all the way.
If you’ve come this far, thank you for reading this long post, it’s been a great ride which I needed to get on paper.
Share the wealth!
This article is directed to CCIE candidates, especially R&S CCIE candidates. As I mentioned in my article on CCIE Lab Preparation and Soft Skills, I believe it is not enough for CCIE candidates to just prepare technically for the CCIE lab, I think you also need test taking skills and mental toughness for successful completion of the lab. My premise is that you need to practice strategies and mental preparation techniques so that you can showcase your technical expertise in the constrained time limits of the CCIE lab exam.
I’ve been talking about some of these ideas with Terry Slattery, and he sent me a Wall Street Journal link to an article by Sue Shellenbarger on the “Toughest Exam Question: What Is the Best Way to Study?” I thought it was a pretty good article, so I thought I would expand on a few of the key points that I think apply specifically to CCIE candidates.
Test Yourself Repeatedly
The WSJ article mentions that testing yourself repeatedly helps to teach your brain how to retrieve and apply knowledge from memory, and that this is probably more effective than just reviewing a technical article or a book. This is probably why successful CCIE candidates run through multiple hours of lab practice on expert level topics, and do this multiple times. They may not know this is part of their learning strategy, but they are establishing a pattern of solving problems.
For what its worth, I also apply a similar idea of practice testing to those Cisco and other IT certification tests – I make up multiple choice versions of key facts, put them in an Excel spreadsheet, put the the answer key in white in one column, and then review the questions selecting the best answer in another column where I check my results. This process seems to help me prepare.
Remove Novelty and Stress Sue also mentions you will also want to reduce novelty and stress on the day of the exam. Perhaps you can visit the Cisco office in advance. If you can’t visit it in person, here is an older video from Cisco that provides a look inside: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-WXl68EJl4
Even if you can’t visit the exam building in advance, you should definitely practice in as similar an environment as possible. This means using the same tools:
Putty not Secure CRT or another terminal emulator
Interface similar to the exam site (a keyboard in the test site language, one monitor close to the same size --thanks Daniel!)
Practice exam questions all in an electronic format
Only blank paper and pens or blank marker boards for starting diagrams
You might also plan some simple ways to reduce your stress, such chewing gum or eating Tums (that really was one of my strategies!!)
Practice, Practice, Practice You need a ton of hands on practice on gear, CCIE candidates really need to know a huge range of technology as I mentioned in CCIE Roadmaps, Topics, and Blueprints. In addition to these required technical skills, part of your practice should be test-taking skills dealing with the environment and pacing. Environment can be a factor – there is a higher success rate for CCIE candidates on their second and later attempts. Part of this is probably because they studied more, but part is probably because they have already seen the exam room, saw the actual lab delivery mechanism, and attempted the actual exam once before.
However, you can do some of that practice before you get to the lab day. For the six hour configuration section, I recommend running some practice labs from workbooks from two or more CCIE lab prep providers. For the 2 hour troubleshooting section of the CCIE lab, I recommend running some ticket based labs in a simulated CCIE lab format, such as the Cisco Learning Labs Troubleshooting labs, or the TU portion of the Cisco 360 Performance Assessment labs both available from the Cisco Learning Network Store.
Pacing is another strategy that you need to practice. In the CCIE lab you “just” need 80% in troubleshooting, and 80% in configuration in the allotted time frame. Practice your pace – solve the easy tasks first, and build up a pile of points. You first need to review the entire exam section you are working on to decide what are easy versus hard tasks. Once you estimate that, you should be able to plan whether it is ok to push a task to later in the day, or even completely skip a task if the point value is low, and it does not impact overall connectivity.
The key to passing the troubleshooting section is resolving enough trouble ticket scenarios to pass this section. These tickets may not overlap much, and do not need to be solved sequentially. The key to passing the configuration section of the lab is end-to-end connectivity meeting a sufficient number of the lab scenario constraints– but the lab exam does NOT need to be implemented sequentially.
Watch Your Diet and Hydration The WSJ also mentions that the week before a big exam, you should eat a balanced diet. Extending that idea, I suggest that during the exam, you work to not exceed your typical coffee intake, by perhaps mixing in plain water to keep you hydrated. I personally think that taking a deliberate brief bathroom break every hour or so also helps with the exam. I feel the few minutes away from the keyboard allows your mind to maybe make some connections, somewhat like when you put together an idea while in the shower.
Visualize Success Sue’s article also suggests you visualize success, which should help build your confidence and reduce your stress. Cisco could make the lab exam so hard that no one could pass, but I believe they truly want to find folks that can rise above a stressful situation and demonstrate their expertise. So if some folks are going to pass, develop a positive outlook and visualize this time it will be you.
Conclusion Good luck to all of you current CCIE candidates! Study hard with a lot of practice using a test strategy, keep up the positive outlook, and attack your lab attempt with deep technical knowledge and a strong mental mindset. Let me know if this helps you!