CCIE Chapter Two - Security

JoJoCal19

Good luck in your pursuit gorebrush! I'll be watching your progress closely as there are very few security related threads in this forum section.

gorebrush

OK! Time to record some progress. 10 hours of videos so far, mainly on ASA stuff, nothing really nasty encountered so far, which isn't a surprise given I did the Firewall exam when I started CCNP: Security back in '13. Still aiming for Late Feb for the Written, but think this may slip to early March. I want to get the written out of the way quickly in order to get a seat in September in London.

gorebrush

Up to 12 hours, progress a bit slow, work has been busy and I've got some life stuff going on. I've also appeared to have developed an unhealthy obsession with security, and I'm starting to really *learn* about how devices really work. Having now done an R&S and been through that beginning to ending learning process has changed how I approach any piece of learning I can do.

Seriously, I am on another level compared to two years ago!

OfWolfAndMan

Good luck, Gorebrush. I will be checking in here and there. What is your attack plan on ISE? I really enjoy that section of the IE Security and was just curious.

Iristheangel

You are making me very very very tempted to beastmode the CCIE Security, Gorebrush. If I end up changing tracks, I'm blaming you and Micronics :P

gorebrush

Do it!

I'm still slowly churning away. Bad time of year with Xmas and so forth, but I'm going to beastmode it for the next few months as well.

OctalDump

If I were to ever do CCIE, Security is what I'd likely go for. The question I have, though, is what level of R+S is recommended for the Security track? Same? One level lower?

gorebrush

You don't need to be a CCIE in Route Switch for CCIE Security (Or for any other IE for that matter), but you certainly need to be at least a CCNP. For example the videos I've been watching assume a CCNP in R/S and don't explain things like Route Maps for BGP because it is assumed that you know this.

gorebrush

OK enough messing about - just booked the written for end of March.

I'm hoping I can get a seat in London in September for this one, provided they don't change it to v5. If that happens then I'll probably do what I did with R&S and hold off to see some of the materials.

advanex1

Good luck, I don't think you'll need it though.

gorebrush

40 hours on the reading clock now, made semi-decent progress lately, but I intend to majorly step it up.

sucanushie

I would curious to see how soon they change the CCNP track again.

The new 300's are already out of date in some parts.

Focus on CX which looks to be end of life soon in favor for Sourcefire.

gorebrush

July 11th - I have rescheduled my written again. I didn't want to but progress has been terrible this last few months. I won't go into why, but I have some very serious life issues going on at the moment and that has impeded my progress more than I would have liked but this could not be helped.

Coming soon: - actual progress.

Iristheangel

Sorry to hear that. Hope the life stuff gets better.

Bardlebee

You'll get back on, I'm sure. Seems the dates I set too always get pushed back. While life isn't getting in the way too much, besides you know the first baby in June, I constantly push back what is in my mind to be a safe time for a lab attempt.

Good luck to you man. Keep strong!

gorebrush

Heh, the life stuff has actually been ongoing for quite some time, and I'm going through the worst bit now, but it's nearly over

Having done one CCIE I know full well that you need to be in the groove to get a lot of work done so whilst I've been disappointed, I know that this is par for the course so I'm not too worried about it. In the grand scheme of things I've done well to get to this point.

Nafe92014

Coming from an entry Cisco candidate, keep your head high sir! I recently had to take 2 weeks off from my CCNA studies to recover from not one but two tonsillectomies. Will follow your thread while rooting for you and the other Cisco Veterans!

NOC-Ninja

Goodluck! It is very time consuming test.

gorebrush

I know

gorebrush

OK no updates since March. Not good. I haven't touched any study in ages because, well, there are a number of reasons (personal). But luckily all of that is now finally behind me. I have the written scheduled in for Mid July now and I need to get on with it because at the rate I am going, I will have some problems by not sitting a written by early '17. So. I need to get on with this now in earnest. Have started to get myself mentally prepared to start, and reassess how far I got compared to what is left. Still a lot to go, need to get some books on the go. Nearly finished the video series that I did have but, no doubt, I am going to have to revisit the entire thing again from scratch between now and July.

I want the written done now and then I can make decision on when to head back to London for another lab. I'm thinking early '17 also, so I might be joining Iris with her plan for the next version of the lab - because it is probably on the way very soon..

So yeah, hopefully now I can start posting some progress to this thread, it is long overdue, I remember when I started the "first" IE proper, the first 100 hours were absolutely the worst. However, I must now make some progress otherwise I'm going to be left behind. Next year I intend to change jobs, and step one of that is to get the CCIE done. I also need to focus on some other very much neglected areas of my life, i.e. I've been living a bit too well lately and my weight is right back up again. But, with goals in mind, this helps me focus on getting the small tasks done.

Mid 2017 I want to either progress within my company, or think about going elsewhere. We shall see. Step 1 = CCIE and getting back into some kind of shape. Let's do this.

Simrid

Keep us updated, interesting to read your journey.

gorebrush

So, sadly - I'm hanging up plans for a lab. I need to do the written within the next month because there's a new job coming which takes me out of the shift pattern. Not to say I won't be keeping an eye on everyone in the CCIE threads here of course. But, never fear, there are plans afoot

gorebrush

So that's the written passed today.

2 year clock reset. If I do a lab? Tempted.

Iristheangel

Join me, Gorebrush! One of us! One of us! One of us!

gorebrush

I may well do that!

Simrid

Congratulations, great news. How did you find the written?

gorebrush

A big giant mixed bag of stuff. It was useful I'd done R&S that's for sure.

gorebrush

So twelve months on, and where are we now? I changed jobs mid July last year and well, I just did it again. Thing is, I am now a Senior Network Engineer for a cloud security company, and they're really keen on training and people having certifications. I'm in a position to get back into this thing now... I've got 6 months to attempt a lab, that isn't going to happen, so I'm going to need to sit the written again before going for a lab (18 months to attempt a lab after written, did mine July '16).

Going to take a slow and steady approach to this one - I need to get a written done to keep my actual IE active before Feb '19 - so I've got 18 months to get a written done. So my plan for this would be to head straight for lab and then do written on the way.

So the plan of attack then?

I need to first get my lab up to snuff. I need moar hardwares.

I have a production ESX server that runs all my main stuff, that will be left alone.

My old CCIE R/S lab machine is still in my rack - i7 2600 / 32GB DDR3 / 480GB SSD / ESX

I want to get a single machine that will take 128GB RAM. Tempted to go all out for a Ryzen Threadripper machine this month that I *know* will take 128GB RAM, but that's going to be at least 1K dropped on that. Might get me an older server, but them things are big and loud.

So if I were to get a new desktop machine (highly likely) then the replaced machine would then drop into my rack to join the machine above. That would be an i5-4570, 32GB DDR3, SSD, ESX etc. So job done then, we'd have 64GB RAM and 8 cores between those two hosts, and then I could run a bunch of stuff on the big beefy desktop.

Anyone got any ideas on what to do?

Could one run it all in the cloud?

EricsLearning

I run an old server with 8 cores and 64 gigs of ram and most stuff works fine. I really wish I had gone the workstation route though. The server is loud and pumps out quite a bit of heat.

gorebrush

Yeah, this is what I keep coming back to. Beastly workstation is more expensive, but has a much higher WAF (Wife Acceptance Factor)

The 128GB DDR4 RAM alone would be $1K by itself... However, if I am intending to run this thing for many years as a lab, then I think it would be a sound investment.