Failed SITCS 300-207 Today....

So I am sad to say I got owned by this test today. This was my last test and I would have been done with the Security track.

I went in confident and thought I was ready. To me it appears that I studied the wrong exam or something.

The sad thing is that I studied the Cisco docs, googled, read and labbed the 642-647 v7 Ciscopress book. My job got me a 4240 IPS to lab with and I still got owned. What really gets me is that I followed the blue print and looks like Cisco has some secret blueprint hidden somewhere else. Passing score was 846 and I got 699. That's right...I got whooped, but taking it like a man...or at least trying to.

Do I think the test was fair? Nope!

Worst of all there's still no OCG for this test. >

I'm going go and cry myself to sleep now....

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Comments

10Linefigure

Don't worry man! Everyone gets knocked down. Switch 300-115 took me down twice this month, going to sit again on Friday. You can pass, study up!

Edificer

Oh man, just remind yourself of the person that failed his CCIE 19 times! Channel your energy into a driving force for accomplishments!

Pretty impressive to tackle on the 300-207 without the OCG, I don't know if I could have done that myself, for that reason I decided to go for the 300-208 instead, tackling that now and hope to sit for the exam end of January.

Pretty lousy, unprofessional behavior from Cisco Press authors for not being able to even offer a deadline or completion date.

viper75

Edificer wrote: »

Oh man, just remind yourself of the person that failed his CCIE 19 times! Channel your energy into a driving force for accomplishments!

Pretty impressive to tackle on the 300-207 without the OCG, I don't know if I could have done that myself, for that reason I decided to go for the 300-208 instead, tackling that now and hope to sit for the exam end of January.

Pretty lousy, unprofessional behavior from Cisco Press authors for not being able to even offer a deadline or completion date.

Yeah man....Cisco and Ciscopress really screwed us on the Security track. Not having the OCG makes it tough to study for this exam. What I did is go on the Cisco site and pretty much gathered material from the blue print and studied like that. I watched the INE CCIE Security videos, but unfortunately it was not good enough.

I reached out to our Cisco account manager to see if I can get access to WSA and ESA virtual appliances with eval licenses so I can lab them up. That's what pretty much did me in on the exam. I have a Cisco 4240 IPS device at home to lab with.

Like I mentioned before, it felt like I studied for the wrong exam...

Now that I have some idea of what it's on the exam I will try to hit up those topics. I'm more pissed about tossing $250 down the toilet and not having anything to show for it.

I'm getting over my failure, now I'm reading every doc I can and labbing what I can. I'm going to pass this last test if it's the last thing I do!!!

I want to start the Data Center track but I can't until I finish the CCNP Security.

koz24

Sorry to hear the bad news. The CCNP Security interests me as well but the lack of content is discouraging. How are you guys labbing for this other than just following book examples? The only labs I know of are from Cisco partners like Global Knowledge but the courses are something like 3.5k per course! I wonder if it would make sense to go for something like this: buy CCIE Security lab workbooks and pick out labs relevant to the CCNP topics and stash the rest. I would so go for this certification but without hands on practice I'm afraid I'll get killed on the hands on portion as well.

viper75

koz24 wrote: »

Sorry to hear the bad news. The CCNP Security interests me as well but the lack of content is discouraging. How are you guys labbing for this other than just following book examples? The only labs I know of are from Cisco partners like Global Knowledge but the courses are something like 3.5k per course! I wonder if it would make sense to go for something like this: buy CCIE Security lab workbooks and pick out labs relevant to the CCNP topics and stash the rest. I would so go for this certification but without hands on practice I'm afraid I'll get killed on the hands on portion as well.

Yes...the lack of study material is horrible to say the least! However, the IPS portion can be labbed with a cheap Cisco 4240 from ebay for under $300. The WSA and ESA are simple. If you don't have access to either of them at work, you can download the virtual appliance from Cisco and get an eval license which is what I did. I feel like I am a WSA Pro now! The ASA-CX portion of the exam is more like the ASA and MPF\Service-Policies.

I deal with ASA's on a daily basis and have a few at home. I however, have not touched an ASA-CX model. After the my failure, I know now what I need to focus on more.

Am I happy that I failed? HELL NO!!! However, I'm looking at the brighter side of things. It's making me REALLY look at the exam blue print in more detail. At least I have an idea what to expect. As far as books and other training material goes, I'm watching iPexpert's SITCS Videos, INE CCIE Security Videos, reading the configuration guides on Cisco.com for the WSA, ESA, and ASA-CX models.

It's a real pain in the a$$, but what can you do? I need to get this done ASAP! This is my last exam before I achieve my CCNP Security.

I believe Cisco and Ciscopress really, really dropped the ball and screwed all of us with this. For the SITCS exam, there's still no book release date in sight...WTF?!?!?!

Vask3n

viper75,

I feel exactly where you are coming from, this is the last test for me as well (SITCS) and I basically got discouraged after failing it twice. I am pretty surprised by just how long its been since this test has been out, and there are no materials for it besides some older IPS books that were published for Cisco Press. I have heard that part of the reason there is no material out for this exam is because they are implementing the new SourceFire material into the test and might re-release SITCS as a different exam.

I really want to finish this track, but after seeing how gnarly SITCS is, I'm finding it hard to muster up the energy to read the User Manuals for the ASA-CX, WSA, and ESA once again (this was the primary study source I used).

I felt that the labs were not that bad, but I didn't get hit by as many as you state in the original post. I felt the rest of the questions (multiple choice) were the problem for me.

Edificer

CiscoPress Authors are really responsible for all of this. I don't know if they are just lazy, incompetent, and entirely oblivious to all of these. I don't think we can appeal to CiscoPress as it is the Authors steering the books, and to solve these problems these Authors need to be named and shamed and fired.

How do you lab for the SISAS? I am reading and taking notes but it's just so heavily ISE based it would make a better impact on me if I could lab along with it.

Oh and by the way, what do you guys/gals think about ISE? Does it really have a good impact on the real world? What is the appeal for ISE in the real world?

viper75

Edificer wrote: »

CiscoPress Authors are really responsible for all of this. I don't know if they are just lazy, incompetent, and entirely oblivious to all of these. I don't think we can appeal to CiscoPress as it is the Authors steering the books, and to solve these problems these Authors need to be named and shamed and fired.

How do you lab for the SISAS? I am reading and taking notes but it's just so heavily ISE based it would make a better impact on me if I could lab along with it.

Oh and by the way, what do you guys/gals think about ISE? Does it really have a good impact on the real world? What is the appeal for ISE in the real world?

I was able to download a virtual ISE server that my Cisco account rep. was able to provide from Cisco with an eval license. That's how I was able to lab ISE stuff. I otherwise I would have been dead in the water. I don't have access to ISE in a real world environment.

We're alike...I need to have hands on for it to stick. I can read a book or documents until I'm blue in the face, but the labbing part makes it stick for me.

This has been a real drag for me...I wish I had passed that dam exam. Now I can't move on until I pass this. I was going to go the Data Center route since I work in a Data Center, but I'm thinking of going the NP R\S now.

sucanushie

We are doing an ISE deployment now.

We use ACS now, so with Tacacs now a part of ISE we will be able to replace ACS fully with ISE.

ISE is really powerful and it looks like Cisco is really looking to leverage it with other applications.

VPN Auth, 802.1X, WSA for identity, Sourcefire

I'm excited to get it all up and working.

viper75

sucanushie wrote: »

We are doing an ISE deployment now.

We use ACS now, so with Tacacs now a part of ISE we will be able to replace ACS fully with ISE.

ISE is really powerful and it looks like Cisco is really looking to leverage it with other applications.

VPN Auth, 802.1X, WSA for identity, Sourcefire

I'm excited to get it all up and working.

Nice jealous!!!