Man oh man....

I failed the SND 642-552 yesterday morning. It was the first cert test I've ever failed and felt terrible, but, I really just barely failed. What happened is I gave myself about a week to prepare for the test. I work with Cisco routers, switches and IDS hardware, but my VPN and firewall experience is limited to other vendors' products. I watched the 642-551 CBT Nuggets videos and read the Cisco Press book that Cisco recommends for this exam, but neither mentioned SDM at all, which I have, as of yet, not touched. Those were the parts of the exam that killed me, and there were about 5-7 questions (out of 60) on there specifically related to SDM. The reason I'm taking this one first is because I know it's the easiest CCSP test, and my CCNA expires at the end of April, and I just decided about a week ago to renew it by passing a 642 exam instead of taking the CCNA test again. Forward progress and all that. I'll take SND again in a couple of weeks after learning all I can about SDM!

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Webmaster

Sorry to hear about that, but now that you know your weaker areas you'll get it next time.

chager00 wrote:

after learning all I can about SDM!

SDM 2.3 User Guide

Based on your reply on another topic, you especially want to check out the Security Audit section.

Good luck on your next attempt!

chager00

Yep, thanks! I'll have to focus in on something...it surely wouldn't help me much to read all 784 pages of that massive book. I do love how much documentation Cisco puts online though. Great company.

Ahriakin

We all trip one time or other, think of it as a practice run

. It's regarded as the easiest as the majority of folks sit it after the appliance specific exams at which point it's a doddle. Since there is no official study guide and you have to gauge just how deep to go over 5 appliance groups I think it would be reasonably hard to sit first time. You might want to try the SNRS as it covers routers/switches and (imho) is the easiest to start into.