My CCIE Data Center Thread

joelsfood

The standard reading list for storage is:

1. Storage Networking Fundamentals (Vol 2.) by James Long – This book is not for the faint of heart, or the storage newbie. It is packed full of protocol-specific information. I found it extremely useful for referencing materials.
2. I/O Consolidation in the Data Center by Silvano Gai et all – This book is a definite resource for FCoE studying.
3. IBM Redbooks – Introduction to Storage Area Networks and System Networking – A free read on SAN’s and the protocols that they run on. It’s also a great reference for beginners to storage area networks.
4. Storage Networks Explained: Basics and Application of Fibre Channel SAN, NAS, iSCSI, InfiniBand and FCoE
5. Cisco Storage Networking Cookbook

Those are the CCIE level books. Watch the first two Cisco live videos from this page too

Joel's CCIE Journey | Free Video Training 3

powmia

Storage Networking Protocol Fundamentals as well ^^

whiterg

Although i registered some years ago , i was not participated to this forum now i think it's time ( 2015 resolution ) so hello everybody and happy new year. ( English is not my mother tongue , so be kind)

that's been said , i have both workbooks and hours labs from Ine and IPexpert (around 60 hours from each vendor) and no access to PEC ; i will start my ccnp DC on February with the expectation to pass the CCIE written in june 2015 ; i have little exposure to DC technologies but plenty in RS at the ccnp level.

speaking of "strategy" , do you think :

- i should reserved the 4hours labs period for ipexpert moc and used ine lab for technologies labs .

- is it "better" to study for the written exam and pass the ccnp along the path or follow the regular way ccnp -) written

- how much lab time do you estimated without PEC access ( ipexpert said around 100h and ine 200/250 h ) to be able to

attempt the ccie lab because i was thinking of using this hours lab exclusively for the ccnp .

- i am thinking of buying 2 x 9216i on eBay , do you think it's necessary for the ccie lab exam to have them at home or relying exclusively on rack rental .

- For now my strategy will be "mastering" Storage , the nexus and finally UCS (in that order)

So thank you for yours Responses and advices .

whiterg

gorebrush

Hi Iris, how's the DC study coming along....?

Iristheangel

Thanks for asking. Still at it. Currently going thru the UCS videos on IP Experts and labbing some best practice guides. The last week has been a little slow with updates and I've been studying less hours because I am in the middle of a move so shopping for the new place and packing is eating into my study time. I should be fully moved by February 7th so expect me updating this thread more after that

gorebrush

Glad to hear it! Will keep watching this thread as I am wondering what to do after RnS

Iristheangel

Hi all. I swear I haven't given up my CCIE DC ambitions! It's been a really long couple of weeks and I haven't been able to study or lab at all. I finished my move, caught the flu and was away for a week-long business trip but finally back, healthy and have everything sorted out. Tomorrow is my first real study day back in the saddle so I'm going to dive right into the UCS videos on IPExperts and work on finishing them out. As soon as I'm done with those, I'm going to attack the IPExpert Lab Workbooks and get a TON more labbing in. Between now and the lab exam in October, I hope to get at least 300-400 hours of labbing in.

lrb

There will be setbacks due to work/life all the time. Just keep plugging away doing what you can inbetween the more hardcore study sessions and you will be on track for a good shot at the lab

gorebrush

lrb wrote: »

There will be setbacks due to work/life all the time. Just keep plugging away doing what you can inbetween the more hardcore study sessions and you will be on track for a good shot at the lab

^^^ This! Life will inevitably get in the way - I'm sure you know this already

JoJoCal19

lrb wrote: »

There will be setbacks due to work/life all the time. Just keep plugging away doing what you can inbetween the more hardcore study sessions and you will be on track for a good shot at the lab

That's the truth! I can barely plug away at certs that are nowhere near as difficult without being interrupted so I can't even imagine what it's like with a CCIE endeavor. Iris, definitely keep updating your blog too. It's very informative.

Iristheangel

242 days until my lab exam.

I'm finally through all the IPExpert videos and just in labbing mode. The PEC labs are keeping me pretty busy but I've started to schedule my rack rentals months out. This is what my ProctorLabs and INE schedule looks like at the moment:



I'm refreshing Proctorlabs almost obsessively so I can book my remaining 20 sessions before my lab date. Moving took a lot of time away from my studies but I'm back in a groove now and getting stuff done. I did a good refresher of Nexus 1000v last week and the next week is going to be dedicated to really starting to hit IPExpert Lab Workbook Vol 1. I got through the first couple of chapters and it was great but I really need to hit it a lot harder. I think for Vol 1 I can try doing as much through PEC labs until I have to actually use the Tech labs.

Anyways, that's it for an update for me.

d4nz1g

Oh, so you are the one holding all the mock lab sessions? xD

Too bad to order both workbooks and realize that they require mock labs even for some technology stuff ;(

gorebrush

Very interesting to note. Taking notes on this because I'll need another IE to study.

ninjaturtle

d4nz1g wrote: »

Oh, so you are the one holding all the mock lab sessions? xD

Too bad to order both workbooks and realize that they require mock labs even for some technology stuff ;(

LMAO!! That's exactly what I thought when I read the updates to this thread. jk jk

I snuck in some lab time on next weekend. Super odd hours, but at this point I just want lab time. I'm now thinking to look into IPExpert labs, as it keeps getting mentioned. More money into this data center investment. Gosh I hope this pays off, otherwise I have some explaining to do to the wife.

Glad to see you're back in the groove Iris! Keep at it!!!

Cheers,

Iristheangel

d4nz1g wrote: »

Oh, so you are the one holding all the mock lab sessions? xD

Too bad to order both workbooks and realize that they require mock labs even for some technology stuff ;(

LoL. Sorry! I still have about 20 sessions still to book as well! I'm only really taking 1 session a day at 5PM if possible. Given how impossible it is to book a full INE lab, I'm probably going to be left with over 1000 tokens when I'm done with this CCIE. I'll probably use them for the R&S next year :P

gorebrush

Also - keep a study counter if you don't already. I loved adding all the hours up here and seeing the result at the end.

Iristheangel

235 days until my lab. Starting to feel a bit anxious. One of my buddies who has 10+ years of DC experience and who owns his own partner company just failed the lab.

I spent the better part of last week shopping for the new house and trying to get the N1K PEC labs working. Unfortunately, there seems to be an issue in every pod I found - the Intro to Nexus 1000v either had connectivity issues between the VSM and VEMs or the other half of the pods had issues with basic connectivity to the VMs I needed to RDP into. The other Nexus 1000V lab - the four hour one that you configure from scratch - had SAN connectivity issues and without the ability to boot an ESXi host, I couldn't get 1/5th of the lab done. Every time I opened a ticket, the default response was "We're sorry. Please try a different pod in the meantime." Since all the pods were hosed for those two specific labs (believe me, I tried each and every one!), I ended up making Gold Labs Support get the pod owners involved and hopefully someone fixes it. Then again, I've been waiting for someone to fix the admin password on the second N7K on FabricPath Pod 3 for over a month now so....

This week I'm going to do something different. I've been so focused on mini-tasks and hacking the PEC labs from their original purpose that I haven't ever really followed the labs as intended. I'm going to try to get as many PEC labs done following the instructions in the next couple of weeks just to expose myself to more technology. Usually the lab instructions give you what you need to do at the top of every task and detailed instructions on how to do it at the bottom. I'm going to see how much I remember and just try to do the tasks without looking at the detailed walkthroughs. Should be fun

I have so many rack rentals scheduled at this point that I should be doing at least 4 hours of labbing a day from the time my bootcamp ends in mid-April to the lab date in October. I really want to start nailing the IPExpert lab workbooks so I'm going to start using them once I get past the PEC lab tasks (~2 weeks or so).

Well... that's it for the update. Time is definitely against me these days. Been pretty busy at work and I've been too easily distracted. After watching my friend fail, I'm getting a lot more serious about making the time to lab more. Hopefully I have some better updates in the upcoming weeks

Iristheangel

This week was pretty productive. I got through half of the PEC labs a few times and really nailed some things I was feeling weaker on. I also noticed a new lab pop up on the DC PEC labs: TrustSec. Not sure if Trustsec is going to be on the actual lab but it's awfully convenient to have that pop up there

If anyone else is having problems with some of the PEC labs, I've been escalating the tickets past Tier 1 support and getting some of the issues resolved in the labs. Here's my tally so far:
- The Nexus 1000v labs are still hit or miss as of earlier this week. I found some are having connectivity issues between the VMs so you can't even RDP in and others are having connectivity issues between the VEMs and VSMs
- Half of the FabricPath labs are back up. The other half never load after you initialize the lab. I've escalated to the lab owner. Roughly 8 of the pods have issues and the other 8 don't. I'm assuming there are two different physical set of 7Ks VDCed out. The 8 that are up have an uptime of less than 2 weeks so I'm wondering if the other two pods never came back up or are just stuck hanging somewhere. I escalated to the lab owner.
- MDS 9710 Lab - Found an issue with this lab getting into the console of the MDSes. When you load the lab, it sometimes starts without the MDSes fully up so when you're trying to console in for the first 5 minutes, it's asking you for a username and password and nothing works. If that's the case, give it a couple more minutes to load and try again. Eventually you'll get in to a prompt asking you to set the Admin password :P

Also, IPExpert's Proctor Labs Mock Labs opened up all the available scheduling until the end of the year. If you want to get lab time between now and CY16, go schedule now. I already scheduled 30 different 4 hour sessions between now and my lab date Now I just need to stalk INE to find openings to use up my remaining 1500 tokens

Iristheangel

Some related humor: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PncQiFZBEkg

Saw this on another site. Has to be the worst actors ever. And WTF is up with the last 30 seconds?

Rent those racks :P

ninjaturtle

Iristheangel wrote: »

Some related humor: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PncQiFZBEkg

Saw this on another site. Has to be the worst actors ever. And WTF is up with the last 30 seconds?

Rent those racks :P

ROFLMAO! So this is what we've come to, showing a girl top to bottom "passing" her CCIE. Wow!! What a sales team those guys have.

That's the same group that was on the forums, promoting their content right? Forgot the alias they were using.

Iristheangel

No clue. I saw the video posted in jest on another site. their "success stories" obviously are full of crap. Amusing video but probably just another shady place.

TBickle

That is a very interesting video. All of a sudden i feel compelled to rent some rack time.

Thanks for sharing.

inscom.brigade

hey great news that your going for it. I go in for my 2nd lab attempt real soon.

Have you tried the new cisco virl, nx os is available. VIRL - Virtual Internet Routing Lab

d4nz1g

NX OS on Virl = Titanium = No support for fabricpath, LISP, OTV, VPC, etc etc etc

Pec labs are great, btw, but IPExpert Mock labs > all.

Iristheangel

Completely agree with you, d4nz1g. I'm not bothering with VIRL for DC studies when I can just pull up PEC labs and do OTV, vPC, etc easily...

Quick update: Got a lot of great labbing done this week. I worked my way down the PEC labs and was able to get the lab owners to fix a bunch of stuff that was wrong. I'm pretty sure I'm not their favorite end user but I'm fine with that One of the big things I really felt weaker in has been SAN technologies but I'm happy to say that after this week of just focusing on FCoE, FCIP, MDS, etc, I feel rock solid now in configuring and verifying. I'm about at the point where I'd like to start just heavily labbing on INE or IPX and give up the smaller PEC labs for now.
Also... I have my first CCNA Data Center study group tomorrow where I'm teaching about 30 or so people. That should be fun. After I get done with the CCNA DC concepts, I'll move quickly into teaching them the CCNP-level stuff and give them the opportunity to lab remotely through PEC. Teaching others should reinforce a lot of what I'm doing so I'm happy for the opportunity.

down77

Great job so far Iris! Just curious, which video set did you like better: INE or IP Expert? I may have missed this earlier in the thread

Iristheangel

IPExpert for sure

down77

I kind of figured you would say that. I've met Jason Lunde a few times and he is a great guy. He should be @ Live this year, so if you are headed there stop and pick his brain!

Iristheangel

I'm definitely going to Cisco Live. It's a 2 hour drive south for me so pretty hard for me not to find an excuse to go If you end up going, let me know. I'll be wandering around all week.

BTW, Jason Lunde is awesome. He's pretty responsive on the Facebook group and by email as well.

down77

No CLUS for me this year unfortunately. Between my daughter being born last week, recent lab attempt, and also about to start competition prepping for a NPC show I'll be busy as ever! Maybe next year when I believe it'll be in Vegas.

Sleep, who needs it!