My CCIE Data Center Thread

Iristheangel

Yep. Going to be in Vegas next year for CLUS. I'll definitely be there too

down77

In that case we'll have to celebrate @ CLUS 2016 when we both attend the CCIE event. Drinks will be on me!

Iristheangel

Just checking in. Another good week of labbing. I did my CCNA DC study group and had about 20 people show up in the Webex. Pretty engaging session and thankfully people asked questions and kept it interactive. I plan on doing another one in a week and a half and try to get local people to meet me for labbing sessions where I'll guide them through labbing. Professionally, I've taken a peer under my wing who wants to take the CCIE DC and am doing 1:1 labbing sessions with him to get him up to speed.

I haven't gone through the whole INE and IPX workbooks yet. I've still been focusing on the PEC labs, been watching the Jason Lunde videos as a refresher, focusing on the topic list to configure everything I feel fuzzy on, reading/labbing best practice guides, and focusing on teaching others. My IPX bootcamp is coming up in April and after that, my scheduled IPX labs begin every few days until my lab date. I'm going to force myself to work through the workbooks then.

I'm starting to feel pretty good about my chances... I still have a long ways to go but it's really clicking and dare I say (*knock on wood*), I am starting to feel like I have a decent shot at this

gorebrush

I have no doubt about you acing it, to be honest.

deth1k

d4nz1g wrote: »

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.

OTV and FP do work, just control plane though

d4nz1g

deth1k wrote: »

OTV and FP do work, just control plane though

Didn't know about that...Seems good for practicing, then!

Iristheangel

I figure I should update this before everyone assumes I quit my CCIE chasing... :P

I've just been super busy to be honest. I'm now hosting data center lessons and making Nexus and UCS pods available for sessions for free over at Routergods. It's been both fun and educational to be teaching and having to config/answer questions on the fly. I'm doing about 1-2 lessons a week.

As far as my individual studies, still labbing daily and reading config guides on my Kindle as I go. Next week, I'm going to the IPExpert CCIE DC bootcamp so that's going to be fun. After the bootcamp, I have 8 hours of rack rental sessions per weekend on IPX and I'll try to find ways to use my INE tokens here and there when other people aren't using the pods.

183 days until lab day. Pass or fail, I'll keep going until I get those numbers

joelsfood

I think you'll be very happy with the bootcamp. I know I was. And as usual, Jason's still giving me advice on what to study, etc.

Iristheangel

Thanks! Good luck next week! I'm rooting for you!

Iristheangel

Alright, I'm back and I'm updating this thing

I had a great time at the IPExpert bootcamp. I'm really feeling confident that I'm 80% of the way there. Jason Lunde was an excellent teacher and we had our own racks for the entire week and weekend so I really burnt the midnight oil labbing and relabbing everything. I know I'm pretty strong on most of NX-OS, MDS, and UCS and it really brought to light some of the things I need to hit harder: iSCSI/iSLB (Spent a weekend on this since the bootcamp and am a lot stronger), some of the NPV little isms, and just general speed. Since I'm allowed to retake the bootcamp one more time and there's a live bootcamp in San Jose from Sept 28th to October 2nd, I rescheduled my lab day for October 5th. I figure I'll bootcamp it the week before in San Jose, stay the weekend relaxing, and take the lab on Monday morning.

My labbing strategy has been pretty straightforward: My boss approved me to buy another 25 rack sessions at IPX so that brings me to a total of 55 4-hour lab sessions I have with IPX. I have already scheduled them starting now until October. My company also have an internal lab that basically looks like the equivalent of 2 data centers. Time on that rack is limited in the next couple months but I have 20 hours a week booked in August and the beginning of September. Between IPX and my work's internal lab, I should have over 300 labbing hours before I take the IE. On the days I can't get on IPX or the internal lab, I'm working my way through what I can of the IPX workbook on the PEC labs and UCS emulator and I'm practicing writing my configs in notepad to improve my time, accuracy and syntax.

tldr: I'm in beastmode now 164 days and counting.

ninjaturtle

Epic!! You've got some serious labbing going on. Go get those digits!!

Iristheangel

Working on it, Ninja! BTW, I plan on doing the in-person meetups probably once a month. Hope to see you there I'll probably still be doing my remote meetups though too. Next lesson for you guys: Storage! That's a beast that most network engineers have a hard time wrapping their head around at first. It's probably going to be multiple lessons but I wanted to at least start heading in that direction.

ninjaturtle

I'm there!!! Looking forward to it!

Iristheangel

Guess it's time for a weekly update...

Ever since getting back from bootcamp, I've been using IPX's labs from 9PM-1AM every other night and Sundays are my full lab days. Got through Vol 1 of the IPX workbook and will be tackling other labs. One of my really good friends failed the CCIE DC lab on Monday... He was beyond ready and scored pretty high in every section except the last one. He suspects it was him misreading something in the instructions and failing that whole section. I think he'd pass if he retook it tomorrow but unfortunately, the earliest lab date he could find was October.

Thinking about it now, I don't think I'm scared of failing. I know most people fail on their first go and I wouldn't be ashamed if I did fail. I think what I'm scared of is failing and not being able to find a lab date for 5-6 months and having this eat that much more of my life. Especially if I fail within a few points of a pass. Oh well. It is what it is though. I think I set myself up with a great labbing plan and enough time to truly prepare myself for the lab. At least I'm going in giving myself the best chance I can.

joelsfood

That is definitely the problem with this test right now. I really wish they'd add some more CLUS spots, so I can not only get it over with (hopfeully ) but also so I don't have to pay for two sets of travel. But all you can do is prepare as well as possible, hope for 1, plan for 2, and just do what needs to be done

Iristheangel

Interesting thing to note that I discovered today: IPExpert raised their rack rental prices. Prior to this week, it was $1,000 for 25 4-hour sessions. As of checking today, it's at $1,750 for 25 4-hour sessions. They always have 50% sales you can find on their FB page or Twitter so at 50% off, it's $875 or $8.75/hour for a full DC rack. Still not bad but it's always sad to see the prices raise.

They probably also did this because they're adding 4 more Mock Rack Pods which means they had to purchase 4 new UCS Fabric Interconnects and chassis, 4 fully licensed new 7Ks, and 8 new fully licenses 5Ks so if anyone is interested in getting more mock rack time, keep an eye out on Proctor Labs because there are about to be a lot more openings coming up once those pods are added to the scheduler.

joelsfood

Not thrilled about the prices going up, but really happy Wayne signed off on the purchase. IPX already had the best rack availability b far, and with 4 more mock lab racks, that just pushes them that much further ahead.

PsychoFin

Looks like you are really going strong here Iris! Just wanted to stop by and wish you good luck with your labbing. Seems IPX has a whole other reputation in the DC space as compared to the RS one

d4nz1g

How are your studies going?

xnx

Here was me thinking the CCNP was expensive....

gorebrush

You ain't seen nothing.

CCIE R&S can be done relatively cheaply, but the DC is a tricky one because of the cost of lab rentals...

Iristheangel

Hey guys,

Sorry. Was busy at Cisco Live and traveling for a couple weeks. Studies are good. Work is busy!

Zartanasaurus

gorebrush wrote: »

You ain't seen nothing.

CCIE R&S can be done relatively cheaply, but the DC is a tricky one because of the cost of lab rentals...

God bless having this gear at work.
Once the L2 stuff comes to VIRL, getting DC will be almost as easy as getting RS. SAN will probably be the hold up.

joelsfood

Oh, it still won't be easy.

Iristheangel

I imagine it won't be easy when they add ACI onto the CCIE DC test. And despite what I thought previously: yes it is coming to the DC track.

gorebrush

ACI? As if the rack rentals etc aren't difficult enough.

L2 coming to VIRL - is this so? If so I can bin the rest of my physical equipment.

d4nz1g

Not worried about l2 support. I felt that 70% of DCUFI test was focused on SAN, so...

Zartanasaurus

Iristheangel wrote: »

I imagine it won't be easy when they add ACI onto the CCIE DC test. And despite what I thought previously: yes it is coming to the DC track.

Removing or marginalizing OTV/FabricPath in favor of ACI makes sense. Adding ACI would make every DC rack rental obsolete though. They'll probably get rid of ACE in v2.0 so that's a plus.

Iristheangel

Hello All,

Still studying and still labbing like crazy. I just wanted to check in to this thread to let you know that I haven't given up or anything along those lines. I had sort of a crazy month at work where we were short staffed and I was having an issue getting enough study hours in but that issue has resolved itself since Cisco Live so I've been back in my labbing

I think the biggest struggle for me lately isn't understanding the material, it's not getting bored by it. I am spicing up my study ADHD by doing little side projects. For example, I spent an hour a day in the morning to get through the ISE ATP training for Cisco Partners just to spice up my routine a little. Did a little ACI work before that. My next project after I'm done with the CCIE DC will probably be a lot more ambitious and definitely something I'll start a thread about once I'm ready.

Beyond that, things are going well. I'm starting to feel more and more comfortable as my lab date approaches. Am I going to pass the first go? No clue whatsoever but I'm going to give it my best shot. Even if I do fail though, I'll book my lab the second it's confirmed and try try try again. I'm spent over a year and a half getting ready for this time. I don't want to be that person who quits just because I have a fail - I've sacrificed time with my friends, spouse, etc for this. I don't want that to be wasted time.

I also wanted to post my highlight of the week:


Narbik's homebase is down the street from where I work and a couple of my buddies are in his class this week. I decided to stop by and say hello. I ended up sitting in his class for about 10 minutes and I can see why he's considered the best. If I wasn't trying to stay focused on one CCIE at a time, I would be begging my boss to pay for the class. From what I could tell, Narbik is hilarious and delivers the content in a way that I've never seen an instructor do so well. Anyways, shameless plug for anyone who's going the route and switch path. As far as Data Center, he's going to be starting a "Zero to Hero" course for the CCIE DC focusing on delivering the content online on weekends over a course of 7 months and my understanding is that he'll be allowed access to racks during that time. I'm not sure how much it's going to be and since I'm already a little to far down this path, I don't think I can really use it but if anyone is interested, e-mail his company and see if you can jump on.

Iristheangel

87 days until my exam.

Been labbing until the wee hours of every night now. Been through every workbook I own and then some. At this point, I need to work on my labbing stamina. I'm finding myself a bit ADHD and distracted while labbing so I need to start tuning out the world and focus. Haven't been updating this as much since I'm either doing studying/labbing or working so no free time for much else.