CCIE "agile" blueprints

sea_turtle

FYI

https://learningnetwork.cisco.com/community/expert-level-certifications-agile-blueprints

OctalDump

It will be interesting to see how this pans out. Given how long it can take to prepare for a CCIE, I think some people might be upset with the possibility of the exam changing multiple times through their prep and needing to keep adding new stuff.

sea_turtle

i continue to feel that Cisco has lost touch with everyone in the community. between the bullshit written no matter the track, the lack of materials for non popular tracks, the lack of policing their material vendors, constant raising of prices on each of their certs no matter the level, the **** state VIRL is in and now the new changes to the blueprint.

ccie14023

I was actually kind of shocked by this myself, but I had a conversation with someone who works in the CCIE program and he convinced me it makes sense. I've been a critic of the program in the past (see my blog) but I actually think the program managers are quite aware of the candidates' situations and would disagree with the previous poster.

If you think about it, the way it works now is that every couple of years, there is a major overhaul of the CCIE lab exam. A large number of technologies are dumped and a large number are added. I passed both of my exams shortly before such overhauls, and I passed my JNCIE shortly after one. (Juniper has done it the same way.) This is very difficult for the candidates, who feel a desperate need to pass the exam before the overhaul happens. I had already failed CCIE Security twice before I passed, and had I failed it a third time, I would never have taken it again, due to the significance of the changes in the test. This also causes a loading of candidates shortly before the change happens, and it becomes hard for people to schedule an exam.

Candidates also end up studying worthless technologies because they cannot be removed quickly enough. For my R/S I studied ISDN and DLSw+, and for my security exam I studied PIX and the VPN 3k concentrator. How many of you are using those technologies? They were obsolete even when I took the test.

The idea here is that incremental, rolling changes will actually have less impact on the candidate. Instead of preparing for a massive revision, there will be smaller changes. This will more easily allow them to remove old technologies and introduce new ones with a lower impact on the candidates.

They are well aware of the impact on Cisco training and training partners. I'm sure there will be some kinks that need to be worked out, but overall I think this is an improvement.

Iristheangel

Yeah, I knew this was coming. They went over it here in December: https://learningnetwork.cisco.com/docs/DOC-31943

Basically like ccie14023 said, it's due to the fact that they go 4-5 years between updates and there's huge chunks that are so out-of-touch with what's in production and the CCIE Security was a perfect example. If you took the CCIE Security just 2 months ago, the blueprint was 70% different and you were studying pre-8.3 ASA IOS, ISE 1.1, and IPS 4200. I have folks hitting me up on FB and Linkedin who have FRESH CCIE Security numbers and yet they have zero idea on how to configure Firepower, ISE, AMP, etc. If you take an expert-level lab in the last 1 year and pass, I would hope you would want to be able to use some of that knowledge you studied so hard to learn.

JoJoCal19

ccie14023 wrote: »

The idea here is that incremental, rolling changes will actually have less impact on the candidate. Instead of preparing for a massive revision, there will be smaller changes. This will more easily allow them to remove old technologies and introduce new ones with a lower impact on the candidates.

This is key and I think after the initial outrage amongst some candidates, they will see how much better it is this way. If a candidate misses the lab before an incremental change and cannot attempt again until after, they wouldn't have to essentially start over from scratch due to 80% of the material changing.

I agree with sea_turtle's criticism on the training material situation. I wanted to pursue the security track and get my CCNA-S and CCNP-S but the CCNA-S OCG is garbage and doesn't cover all of the exam topics, they jacked the online training up from $300 to $1500, and don't even get me started on the disaster that is the CCNP-S books/training situation.

tunerX

Sounds nice in theory but it seems more like a money making gimmick. If you change the content too fast you will stiff students. Certifications should be foundational... while allowing to build on the foundation. As it stands now cisco press cannot even keep up with study material that matches the current long lived blue prints. People are forced to turn to third party content providers. I could understand a move to the agile process for recertification first but for initial certification it sounds like more harm than good with the only beneficiaries being learning\education providers.

If Cisco went to a CEU based agile recertification requirement I think it would seem a little more acceptable. As it stands, a person passes the lab and gets their number. For recert they can take any other expert written qualification exam and still be considered an expert in their original track. You can be a 10 year R&S "expert" while passing different written qualification exams and only doing CCNA level R&S.

The certification process should be fairly stable to allow for a solid framework for education and learning. The recertification process should be agile. The current Cisco plan only solves the equation for minting new experts and not keeping old experts from going stale.

sea_turtle

a few things to add here to not quote all the posts:

the blueprints were all overdue for updates, and a more steady stream of updates BUT:

• the written shouldn't have grammatical errors, they shouldnt be playing the game of obscure fact jeopardy. i just took the new SP written (4.1) in jan, it was rough.
• Cisco should at the very least publish a set of materials per track.
• vendors should be policed by Cisco to ensure they are putting out quality and completed materials.
• promises made by Cisco should be upheld (talking about VIRL and XRV here).

what good is it when i cant test EVPN (which is new on the 4.1 blueprint) due to L2VPN forwarding plane not working on XRv with anything that requires mac learning? oh but wait there are no materials for EVPN created yet. not like i can afford a few 9001's with w/e software load to test all this crap out. if i did have the money to purchase a stack of them out of pocket for lab testing would i really need to be studying for a CCIE-SP lab or creating materials to study for it?

i find it somewhat disheartening when i ask over on the Cisco CCIE SP CLN for Cisco to be held to their own standards i get silence. the second i ask Cisco for a quote on 2 9912's with RP2's, SFC2 and tomahawk 100G cards they cant pick up the phone and dial my number fast enough.

the other thing to add here is that i do appreciate Liz (SP track manager) and the materials she has pulled together for all of us on the SP track (spreadsheet, mcast preso's, etc) as well as Nick and his book. I can only speak to the SP track, i have no idea how things are over on the other non primary tracks (Wireless/Sec/Collab). so my view is jaded and i see this as the straw that has broken the camels back.

mbarrett

Iristheangel wrote: »

Basically like ccie14023 said, it's due to the fact that they go 4-5 years between updates and there's huge chunks that are so out-of-touch with what's in production and the CCIE Security was a perfect example. If you took the CCIE Security just 2 months ago, the blueprint was 70% different and you were studying pre-8.3 ASA IOS, ISE 1.1, and IPS 4200. I have folks hitting me up on FB and Linkedin who have FRESH CCIE Security numbers and yet they have zero idea on how to configure Firepower, ISE, AMP, etc. If you take an expert-level lab in the last 1 year and pass, I would hope you would want to be able to use some of that knowledge you studied so hard to learn.

Agreed, the technology in the field is evolving faster than the tests were. It's not realistic to test in-depth on stuff that's vastly different from their current product lines.

JoJoCal19 wrote: »

I agree with sea_turtle's criticism on the training material situation. I wanted to pursue the security track and get my CCNA-S and CCNP-S but the CCNA-S OCG is garbage and doesn't cover all of the exam topics, they jacked the online training up from $300 to $1500, and don't even get me started on the disaster that is the CCNP-S books/training situation.

This is going to place more pressure on the training companies to deliver training that's closer to the current blueprint. I took the Micronics Security Z-Hero, and the instructor was active in the field so he was able to bring up things that were different, relevant to the current curriculum, answer questions effectively, etc. I'm not sure if that is the case (to the same degree) for every training outlet.

waxtrax

I think if they could make the blueprints much more specific, things would be better. Granted, current blueprints are more specific than they've been in the past, but I still think it's not good enough.

Speaking for the R&S track, all of the information you need is available for free within Cisco's documentation. But because the blueprint is still pretty vague, the question becomes "how deep do I need to go" when reviewing the docs. It seems logical that this is where the Official Cert Guide would step in, but the material within it is copied and pasted from old versions of the text, there are topics still in the current book that have been removed from the blueprint for which the book is supposed to support, and there are several topics that the book claims to cover, but the "coverage" is only a sentence or two, maybe a whole paragraph dedicated to a topic. That's pretty damn lousy.

For the Service Provider side (and other tracks as well), there is no Official Cert Guide, so you're left with the official documentation. But once again, the issue is, how deep do you go?

Cisco even says not to try to ace the CCIE, just do what is minimally required. But with non-specific blueprints, how do you know where that line is unless you make multiple expensive exam attempts?

I'm not opposed to more frequent updates, and I do think it's a good idea. But I also believe having more specific blueprints are the only way to make this successful.

Fadakartel

waxtrax wrote: »

I think if they could make the blueprints much more specific, things would be better. Granted, current blueprints are more specific than they've been in the past, but I still think it's not good enough.

Speaking for the R&S track, all of the information you need is available for free within Cisco's documentation. But because the blueprint is still pretty vague, the question becomes "how deep do I need to go" when reviewing the docs. It seems logical that this is where the Official Cert Guide would step in, but the material within it is copied and pasted from old versions of the text, there are topics still in the current book that have been removed from the blueprint for which the book is supposed to support, and there are several topics that the book claims to cover, but the "coverage" is only a sentence or two, maybe a whole paragraph dedicated to a topic. That's pretty damn lousy.

For the Service Provider side (and other tracks as well), there is no Official Cert Guide, so you're left with the official documentation. But once again, the issue is, how deep do you go?

Cisco even says not to try to ace the CCIE, just do what is minimally required. But with non-specific blueprints, how do you know where that line is unless you make multiple expensive exam attempts?

I'm not opposed to more frequent updates, and I do think it's a good idea. But I also believe having more specific blueprints are the only way to make this successful.

Form the SP perspective. I personally think they are giving up this space to Juniper/ZTE/Alcatel(nokia) and Huawei

tunerX

Fadakartel wrote: »

Form the SP perspective. I personally think they are giving up this space to Juniper/ZTE/Alcatel(nokia) and Huawei

From a stock perspective yeah, if they lose some share they lose some points, you lose some 401K value. From an IT job perspective, total market share across all existing installs coupled with quarterly sales figures, I think it isn't time to go ccie emeritus just yet.

Last quarter of last year they dropped 3 percent for the quarter while still maintaining 42 percent SP market share with the 58 percent sprinkled across all other providers.

https://www.srgresearch.com/articles/ciscos-dominant-share-switching-routers-holds-steady

https://www.telecomlead.com/telecom-statistics/cisco-drops-share-router-market-huawei-juniper-gain-75251

“Despite challenges on a variety of fronts, Cisco is successfully maintaining its position as the dominant supplier of switching and router technology with revenues about seven times the size of its nearest rival,”

The sky isn't falling yet. But if you aren't doing labs with cross platform SP integration on brocade, juniper, cisco, and any other vendor you are falling behind.

Iristheangel

Fadakartel wrote: »

Form the SP perspective. I personally think they are giving up this space to Juniper/ZTE/Alcatel(nokia) and Huawei

Seeing less Cisco in the SP space in Trinidad != giving up the space as a whole worldwide. They wouldn't easily give up a space they have a 42% market share in because they dropped a few points. Especially if they have a majority market share there.

That being said, the level of $$$$ that Cisco puts into training materials does not equal the market strategy. Unfortunately, making CCIE training material (or even the exam itself) isn't a big money maker for Cisco. It's probably more revenue neutral which is why prices when up when they started spending a lot more money on getting rid of mass cheating. For the books that are written and material produced, most of the time it's not the author's full time job or something they're making a lot of money off of. I've had some conversations with Narbik about it and I'm always teasing him about retiring from his CCIE R&S OCG money

For the debates on "policing training vendors," Cisco does create training materials that are taught through Cisco Learning Partners but a big caveat is that there still requires to be a trainer with the ability to answer questions and thats a lot more of a fuzzy area. Like mbarrett mentioned, one of the nice things we both appreciated about Z2H is that our instructor was a professional services guy who was deploying all this stuff during the week so he brought a real world perspective to it. I've gone to other training providers where you have professional powerpoint readers (my SISE 1.1 class unfortunately). Hell, I think you can go to some of the larger grey market providers and if you have any experience whatsoever, you can usually point out the guys who've done this in production vs the ones that have done it in a lab.

In a perfect world, every vendor shovels an unlimited amount of money into their training program, there's low-cost training materials out there that only teach real world scenarios for all, all the trainers have years of hands on experience deploying the technologies they are teaching, dumping has been completely eliminated, and the costs of certifications are cheap as can be and we are all rewarded with high paying jobs. I don't think any vendor is perfect in that regards but that's the thing. We're all studying for or commenting on an expert-level exam thread. An OCG is never going to have all the answers for a CCIE - not even a written. I don't think anyone here can say that they used *just* the OCG and passed the lab with nothing else. Cisco provides a reading list of books, white papers, config guides, videos, etc and usually you have to take that + 1000+ hours of labbing every scenario out to get that pass. As far as the SP track, we're on version 4 now. I personally know two people who passed with less training materials than what's officially offered on the market today: Nick Russo and LRB. I'm personally studying for the Security v5 which INE claims will have material out for over the next year which probably means 3 years if they hold a similar timeline for the CCIE DC v2 "beta" racks that were supposedly available late last year but "jk! Not really" and still are yet to be released. I'm not waiting for anyone to make me training content - I'll go out there and hunt the docs, lab, and make my own and that's what I suggest you do. I give all the props in the world to Nick Russo. He took his studying and hard work and made a book out of it.

sea_turtle

i think im just tired of coming across like a whiner. i just want what i paid for years ago and i want it before INE decides to do away with SP rack rentals in favor of "use your own VIRL server at home" making my rack rental tokens another lost expenditure.

when it comes to creating materials, its not ready yet but enjoy everyone: https://github.com/CCIESP/CCIE-SP-V4

there are only so many people who are actively trying to pass the CCIE-SP lab so i have no plans on selling this and my work is not complete yet (both from a coding tasks and for verifying they work on each possible iteration of device that could be tested on).

the biggest issue with SP has been every vendor waffling back and forth across "we are gonna do it" vs "its just too expensive to get involved in that" and i get it 100%. working at an SP i can tell everyone we can/do not use CML or VIRL for anything at work, we need the real hardware to test on, the cost of real hardware for a CCIE-SP lab is just too much. i think that is honestly the SP tracks biggest fault, it casted its net too wide from legacy protocols to bleeding edge and it all has to be implemented on very expensive hardware with an OS that only runs on that very expensive hardware.

JoJoCal19

sea_turtle wrote: »

ii just want what i paid for years ago and i want it before INE decides to do away with SP rack rentals in favor of "use your own VIRL server at home" making my rack rental tokens another lost expenditure.

It's mind-boggling that folks still haven't hit them with small claims lawsuits to reclaim their money

Iristheangel

Definitely no hate towards you, Sea_turtle. I feel your pain. Remember my anger during DC at certain moments. I just don't want you to give up or stay frustrated. Don't let the vendors lack of materials be the reason you don't move ahead is all. I would definitely reach out to Nick on how he did it and definitely join that study group I told you about for support and to bounce ideas off. Nick Russo, Lrb, JP Cedreno, and other heavy hitters are there and it's a good brain trust

Fadakartel

Iristheangel wrote: »

Seeing less Cisco in the SP space in Trinidad != giving up the space as a whole worldwide. They wouldn't easily give up a space they have a 42% market share in because they dropped a few points. Especially if they have a majority market share there.

That being said, the level of $$$$ that Cisco puts into training materials does not equal the market strategy. Unfortunately, making CCIE training material (or even the exam itself) isn't a big money maker for Cisco. It's probably more revenue neutral which is why prices when up when they started spending a lot more money on getting rid of mass cheating. For the books that are written and material produced, most of the time it's not the author's full time job or something they're making a lot of money off of. I've had some conversations with Narbik about it and I'm always teasing him about retiring from his CCIE R&S OCG money

For the debates on "policing training vendors," Cisco does create training materials that are taught through Cisco Learning Partners but a big caveat is that there still requires to be a trainer with the ability to answer questions and thats a lot more of a fuzzy area. Like mbarrett mentioned, one of the nice things we both appreciated about Z2H is that our instructor was a professional services guy who was deploying all this stuff during the week so he brought a real world perspective to it. I've gone to other training providers where you have professional powerpoint readers (my SISE 1.1 class unfortunately). Hell, I think you can go to some of the larger grey market providers and if you have any experience whatsoever, you can usually point out the guys who've done this in production vs the ones that have done it in a lab.

In a perfect world, every vendor shovels an unlimited amount of money into their training program, there's low-cost training materials out there that only teach real world scenarios for all, all the trainers have years of hands on experience deploying the technologies they are teaching, dumping has been completely eliminated, and the costs of certifications are cheap as can be and we are all rewarded with high paying jobs. I don't think any vendor is perfect in that regards but that's the thing. We're all studying for or commenting on an expert-level exam thread. An OCG is never going to have all the answers for a CCIE - not even a written. I don't think anyone here can say that they used *just* the OCG and passed the lab with nothing else. Cisco provides a reading list of books, white papers, config guides, videos, etc and usually you have to take that + 1000+ hours of labbing every scenario out to get that pass. As far as the SP track, we're on version 4 now. I personally know two people who passed with less training materials than what's officially offered on the market today: Nick Russo and LRB. I'm personally studying for the Security v5 which INE claims will have material out for over the next year which probably means 3 years if they hold a similar timeline for the CCIE DC v2 "beta" racks that were supposedly available late last year but "jk! Not really" and still are yet to be released. I'm not waiting for anyone to make me training content - I'll go out there and hunt the docs, lab, and make my own and that's what I suggest you do. I give all the props in the world to Nick Russo. He took his studying and hard work and made a book out of it.

Not only in Trinidad but in a few other countries as well, Cisco is being replaced by other vendors such as Juniper due to the lack of training,(btw I work in a SP environment and our IP core is exclusively Cisco ASR 9000 upwards. The submarine network I manage spans a good few countries and I would like to keep Cisco as our IP core equipment.

I started networking in Cisco on the enterprise side and i would prefer it stay that way, however when it comes to training for the SP stuff they are way off compared to Juniper. I have had several CCIE`s tell me Juniper is the future of SP, which is sad to say the least.

No doubt Cisco is the lead in enterprise and that`s mainly because of their certification program if you know Cisco routers/switches then your going to buy Cisco gear most of the time.

And yes at the moment only Nick Russo can save us SP guys lol.

Fadakartel

tunerX wrote: »

From a stock perspective yeah, if they lose some share they lose some points, you lose some 401K value. From an IT job perspective, total market share across all existing installs coupled with quarterly sales figures, I think it isn't time to go ccie emeritus just yet.

Last quarter of last year they dropped 3 percent for the quarter while still maintaining 42 percent SP market share with the 58 percent sprinkled across all other providers.

https://www.srgresearch.com/articles/ciscos-dominant-share-switching-routers-holds-steady

https://www.telecomlead.com/telecom-statistics/cisco-drops-share-router-market-huawei-juniper-gain-75251

“Despite challenges on a variety of fronts, Cisco is successfully maintaining its position as the dominant supplier of switching and router technology with revenues about seven times the size of its nearest rival,”

The sky isn't falling yet. But if you aren't doing labs with cross platform SP integration on brocade, juniper, cisco, and any other vendor you are falling behind.

Agreed you need to learn both, however in a SP most of the stuff runs on fibre so you need to also learn SDH/DWDM/OTN stuff like Ciena/Alcatel/Huawei/Adtran and or Calix for the GPON/Transmission backbone.

Good articles you linked there, unless Cisco makes changes they will defiantly continue to lose market share in the SP world.

ccie14023

At the risk of turning this into a catch-all thread for CCIE complaints, I just want to drop a comment on the written exams, since some of you raised this issue.

I agree the written quality has had problems, and I also have discussed this with some folks in the CCIE program. They have been facing a huge problem for years (again, I cover this in a blog article), where unethical vendors release brain **** of the exams. There are various ways to combat this, but one of them is simply to make the question pool too large for someone to memorize. This is great, but then quality control becomes harder. When I was a question writer at Juniper we did writing workshops where we put every single question on the screen and evaluated it for clarity and consistency. In a room full of very sharp engineers, we produced quality exams. But we also produced a small number of questions.

For those of you who have passed the CCIE and aren't happy about re-certifying, please reach out to the program and become question reviewers. You can extend your recert without taking the test, and you will help improve the exam quality for people taking the test in the future.

I do agree that a CISSP-style recurring education requirement would be better than an exam, but there are challenges to implementing this and I don't know of any plans to do so.

Iristheangel

Fadakartel wrote: »

Not only in Trinidad but in a few other countries as well, Cisco is being replaced by other vendors such as Juniper due to the lack of training,(btw I work in a SP environment and our IP core is exclusively Cisco ASR 9000 upwards. The submarine network I manage spans a good few countries and I would like to keep Cisco as our IP core equipment.

I started networking in Cisco on the enterprise side and i would prefer it stay that way, however when it comes to training for the SP stuff they are way off compared to Juniper. I have had several CCIE`s tell me Juniper is the future of SP, which is sad to say the least.

No doubt Cisco is the lead in enterprise and that`s mainly because of their certification program if you know Cisco routers/switches then your going to buy Cisco gear most of the time.

And yes at the moment only Nick Russo can save us SP guys lol.

I think there certainly is a "know what you buy" aspect to purchases for sure but I don't think it's the #1 reason on the market. As far as Service Provider training, I think with most huge purchases, there's at least a discussion about learning credits for learning the products they're about to deploy. With that, there's at least 12 different courses on Global Knowledge alone for SP: https://www.globalknowledge.com/us-en/training/course-catalog/brands/cisco/service-provider/
I've had a couple friends go through some of those courses and instructors can sometimes be hit or miss but you do get a lot of lab time, lab workbooks, and I know at least for the ASR 9K class, there was pretty sizable book that came along with it.

As far as people "buying what they know," there's definitely some good marketing in there for an engineer's comfort on making purchases but saying that a market declining or increasing simply based on having a thoroughly saturated market full of books, I'd probably say it's highly unlikely. Juniper had a great spike during the mid-2000's and then lost a lot of market share for awhile there - but I very much doubt any of that had to do with their training content. Your conversations with with some CCIEs or your experience with your own company is as anecdotal as me saying that I sat next to a SP SE who just got off the phone with a large provider who just decided to buy a ginormous amount of Cisco - it's anecdotal and, to be honest, I don't think the market is as simply as "no books 4 CCIE == no sale."

Not to beat up on Juniper but they're getting a lot of pressure lately because while they've had better sales, they've had poor profit margins that have slipped and their stocks have been taking a hit for it:
Juniper revenue up, but profit slips for Q3
How Analysts Are Viewing Juniper Networks - Market Realist
Juniper Networks, Inc. performed Poor with a change of -0.25% in the Last Trade - Free Observer

That's not to beat up on Juniper - I like Juniper too but if was just cool features, badass support, and vision selling the product, I'd be inclined to say they're profit margins would be climbing with their increased revenue, not flattening due to the need for intense discounts. In the end, the CEO of Juniper is accountable to making the shareholders a profit so I suspect something will probably have to change in order to bring the stock to a healthier growth and make more profit given that back in Nov 2015, they were at $31/share and now they're at $27/share.

sea_turtle

Iristheangel wrote: »

Definitely no hate towards you, Sea_turtle. I feel your pain. Remember my anger during DC at certain moments. I just don't want you to give up or stay frustrated. Don't let the vendors lack of materials be the reason you don't move ahead is all. I would definitely reach out to Nick on how he did it and definitely join that study group I told you about for support and to bounce ideas off. Nick Russo, Lrb, JP Cedreno, and other heavy hitters are there and it's a good brain trust

no worries, i just feel like the horse is dead at this point.

as for the slack channel? or discord channel? if you want to pm me the info ill join up (i hope this weekend).

tunerX

ccie14023 wrote: »

For those of you who have passed the CCIE and aren't happy about re-certifying, please reach out to the program and become question reviewers. You can extend your recert without taking the test, and you will help improve the exam quality for people taking the test in the future.

I asked my cisco rep last night and he said I can still pursue the CCDE while assisting with the development of a different track. I just filled out the SME application and checked the boxes for CCNA, CCNP, and CCIE R&S topics.

I have no clue if I will be accepted into the program but I guess it is worth a shot.

Iristheangel

sea_turtle wrote: »

no worries, i just feel like the horse is dead at this point.

as for the slack channel? or discord channel? if you want to pm me the info ill join up (i hope this weekend).

PM sent. Used to be Slack but we migrated away due to the 10,000 message history limit for the free Slack. We were blowing past it every 3 days and not having that tribal knowledge saved past 3 days sucked

waxtrax

I'd be interested in this group as well. What are the invitation requirements? Thank you