1st CCIE lab attempt blog and help for candidates.

jovan88

Turgon wrote: »

With a good base in R&S and other things you can learn almost anything.

What other things do you speak of Turgon?

Turgon

jovan88 wrote: »

What other things do you speak of Turgon?

Any 'box' knowledge/experience can help you. Particularly the networking of an OS. Aside from that some VoIP/SP even wireless exposure can be useful, or just the theory.

Turgon

Managed to document the INE Vol 1 QoS material in my spreadsheet on Sunday. The legacy configurations at least. MQC and beyond is the next task..

Turgon

Got as far as clattering in just over half the QoS configs in Vol 1 into my spreadsheet. Calling time on that activity now as it is very hard going and I have a full on day ahead at work. Full on week for that matter..

Had no time to look over the explanations or the verification commands. That effort can come later once I have it all typed in and begin the revision. So far as I can see the Vol 1 section on QoS is exhaustively documented in terms of explanation with many useful drawings. But the subject is very heavy going. Definitely one of those topics I will need to *game* to some extent. I think with QoS, unless you truely get it its going to be very difficult to get mastery unless you are working it extensively in the field or teaching it. Fortunately some good QoS projects have opened up at work that Im engaged in so that is helpful. But while that covers a decent range of QoS techniques in no way does it cover the breadth that the Vol 1 section on QoS offers. The plus side is that the QoS configs seem more intuitive to me. The downside is being able to pull them together off the bat.

That is going to require some real effort on my part. In terms of my trajectory the last three weeks have taken my energy and focus away from my studies. Rightly so as work pays the bills. I think I have some payback on that on the workfront. On the studyfront the imperative now is to get these notes finished asap and really batter them through July. This would leave August/September/October/November for hands on TS practice and practice labs and mocks. This is going to be a real stretch to get the hours I need in so Im up for the lab. With a long commute and a tough job Im needed at home when I get in, and also usually very tired. I will need to balance my needs to get rest vs labtime very carefully so I stay on track with the study program, whilst being able to perform properly at work the next day. It's just no good turning the ignition at 7am feeling knackered.

Keeping the home balance will be touch and go as well because Im going to have to give up some evenings and important family time over many weekends.

This all saps your energy levels and you are then left catching up with the family which can make what should be a pleasure another energy sap. Managing your time is one thing, but you are also managing other peoples time and expectations as well..family and employers all have needs. You also need some space for yourself so you dont go nuts.

Let's see if I can get it right because 2010 is my last attack at this thing. If I cant get into the lab by the end of this year with a realistic chance of doing well I'm going to call it a day. I will have learned a great deal during the entire process but was simply incapable of living as a stranger with my family for 12 months straight to get properly lab ready. There just hasn't been anywhere near enough window 9 - 5 when Im fresh to get the hours in, so the family was always going to have to take a big hit evenings and weekends while I plod away at this. They take some, and in my opinion enough, but I wasnt prepared to ask anymore from them than I already take. Spending four weekends straight doing nothing but practice labs just wasn't practical in our family dynamic and would have been unfair and lunacy in terms of impact on our personal lives.

I have a good career and a great family and that at the end of the day is all that really matters to me. The progress over the last 6 weeks will probably determine what is practical and sensible.

miller811

Wow, you need to not be so hard on yourself. Is it tough being such a perfectionist?

Your lead up to this has inspired me to continue, but even if I attempt the written or the lab, I would never commit to the amount of time and effort you have already completed.

In my opinion, you know your stuff, why not roll the dice and take the exam, and then kick its ass!

jovan88

You're totally right about needing time for your family. You should still give the lab a shot, even if you feel you aren't ready. Apart from the exam fee there's not much to lose

Ahriakin

Honestly I think you were ready to give it a shot last year. I understand your qualms and trying to plan ahead but you don't have to pass first time (it's nice if you do and you should aim to, but don't let the fear of it stop you trying). One of my colleagues is a triple and he jokes that he went in reverse order of attempts to total done: R&S took 3, Security 2, SP 1
Anyway, my point is try it first before setting any deadlines, you are a lot closer than you think.

Turgon

Ahriakin wrote: »

Honestly I think you were ready to give it a shot last year. I understand your qualms and trying to plan ahead but you don't have to pass first time (it's nice if you do and you should aim to, but don't let the fear of it stop you trying). One of my colleagues is a triple and he jokes that he went in reverse order of attempts to total done: R&S took 3, Security 2, SP 1
Anyway, my point is try it first before setting any deadlines, you are a lot closer than you think.

It's not a pass first time fear thing. In fact there is no fear. My objective is to be sufficiently prepared to be able to get around the topics satisfactorily in the allotted timeframe without leaving big gaps in config. I understand the material, what has evaded me so far is sufficient daily time on configuration to bring it all together so the agility is there to build things out without choking. It's all down to regular practice over the next four months. Everything is laid out for revision now. If I can accomplish that this year I should be fine!

Yahe007

CCIE lab preparation.Number of hours lab practice = 871 Number of hours reading = 456

Oh mine God thats insane keep up the good work

Turgon

Busy day at work with BGP design. Some lab work with HSRP. Too tired when finally home and done with dinner and getting the youngster off to bed to do any study. 10:30PM here. Maybe some QoS study tommorow.

Turgon

Way too busy at work again to study. A working lunch and finally home at 7:30PM. Had dinner and our son is done with bathtime and in bed. It's 10pm so now for a quiet evening in with my good lady wife. A busy morning with the chores ahead, but perhaps I may get some QoS study tomorrow late afternoon after the shopping.

burbankmarc

could you record some audio tapes or something for notes and listen to those when you're doing chores?

Turgon

burbankmarc wrote: »

could you record some audio tapes or something for notes and listen to those when you're doing chores?

No. If I did that at the weekend when there is so much to do together that would drive my wife to distraction. If I used headphones that would only serve to reinforce the perception that I am obsessed with my studies. Sometimes disconnecting with Cisco completely is the best medicine for a happy homelife. I dont know if you have kids but Im putting in 12 - 13 hour days during the week (3 + hours on the road) while my wife manages at home alone with the little one, so by the time the weekend comes around there is a lot to catch up and help out with!

But Im starting to cut back on the commuting to work at home two days a week so that will help a lot with studytime M-F. I also had a chat with my boss and he is supportive of one day a week dedicated to lab prep closer to my exam. This will all really help as in the past CCIE prep on works time just wasn't happening.

Well that's the bathroom done. My wife is looking after the youngster and sorting out curtains. Spare room next then shopping for berries. Then QoS!

Turgon

Cleaned the house, had lunch indoors with the family. Berries are out of season apparently so we cancelled going out. Back on with finishing my spreadsheet with the QoS configs in INE Vol 1. Hard going as there is too much to type..but with all topics clattered in so far the spreadsheet is starting to look like an impressive piece of work though. I have some reflections on study approach for the next fortnight coming soon enough so stay tuned..

Turgon

It's done. The largest section of INE Vol1 is now in the can. All the QoS configs are now listed in my spreadsheet. That was one of the most tedious and timeconsuming exercises I have done for CCIE preparation and Im so glad it's finally out of the way now..

More than half of the ring bound subject sections for Vol 1 have been covered now, with all useful configurations recorded in my revision spreadsheet. Only five topics remain to be covered, so I now know I can finish the exercise. But anymore work on that front will be undertaken on another day because I need to take a break now.

All that effort was to pick out all the essential QoS configurations and type them in. This in itself took a long time and I spent no time pouring over the configurations to understand them properly, much less dive into the lengthy explanations, verification commands and outputs and impressive charts and diagrams. That activity comes later when I revise this stuff from the spreadsheet over the course of the next couple of months. It will come to work with me so I can look it over each day during lunch.

As for QoS itself. Formidable. But I must say that a lot of that config looks pretty intuitive to me these days. With revision I should get upto snuff on enough QoS to be able to handle it on lab day.

Turgon

Sunday morning - 7AM. Prepared my sons breakfast so a brief chance to gather my thoughts and update the blog with my study plans for the next few weeks. After I have my coffee..;)

Turgon

Now the reflection on where we are and the task ahead. To get up for the lab exam I reckon I need to be clattering through the 1200 lab hour mark by the end of the year. This will be a huge challenge for me. My job has big requirements in terms of time, energy and attention span. It also presents a great opportunity to escalate my career within the company if I meet the challenges we are presented with internally to improve the service provision. The last five weeks I have thrown the kitchen sink at my new job and I think the flying start has been well received. But I must remain strong on the workfront. On the homefront my wife is managing alone with our son when Im at work and we have another on the way. When at home Im needed there and need to remain responsive and supportive. If Im not careful the toll of extra study hours will leave me less switched on mentally to empathise with the family. Very long hours working on configurations are not condusive to great social skills. So I need to watch it there.

An escalation in study hours will have an impact on my energy levels, and if I overdo it create problems on both the work and home fronts. I must avoid this. I need to be sure I disconnect from studies at the appropriate time so I refuel and reengage with people.

The secret sauce to CCIE lab success is regularity. Regular lab hours synthesise the theoretical learning into hands on configurations and verifications that become instinctive and crucially, faster. Things start to flow better. For as long as I have prepared for the lab life continued and threw up challenges..children..job changes with commensurate pressures that came along with those, like ensuring you do whatever it takes to get a contract renewal, and this year a cultural challenge working overseas on one month contract renewals in an aggressive delivery environment. This was quickly followed by a new job with a high profile that has taken my gas the last five weeks. Around all of this I have maintained a slow but steady approach to my studies. But the lab practice just hasn't been regular enough. For some periods it was intense. During others it tailed right off. I was always mindful of this so tried to keep some momentum going by turning over theory. In the case of my written recertification last winter this was inevitable anyway as trying to prepare for and pass that qualification exam without **** is a serious undertaking.

But the regular lab hours are the clincher now. Most candidates clearing within or just outside a 12 month window are getting in on average 2 -3 hours of lab practice Monday to Friday with whole slews of time devoted to it at the weekend. Given my foundation work accumulated over the last three years I do not feel that my lab study programme need be that aggressive, but it certainly needs to up in pace. Im in a strong position because I need not attempt to cram, stuffing my head with a lot of asinine lab work. All candidates do this to some extent as so much of the content at the CCIE level is very new and challenging. I was no exception to them and have already been through that process across 2007 - 2008 and to some extent 2009, and although my progress was slower with the constraints I either had to work with, or chose to work with, I do understand the stuff much better these days.

So what is the solution going forwards? I have two work from home days each week. With the commute out these are vital win days for lab prep. I will also need to engage with racks more at the weekends. Lunchtime during the week affords me a chance to turn over my configuration spreadsheet and revise the technologies.

The strategy has two phases which if I can execute them properly, I think are going to work well. I will expand on those now. Regular readers of my blog may recall I was on vacation last September. I was actually in Russia for about five weeks visiting my inlaws. I put in a serious amount of study while I was out there both in terms of daily notetaking of configurations from the INE Vol 2 and Vol 3 workbooks and regular study sessions on the remote racks. Whole mornings or afternoons and some evenings where taken up with this timeconsuming activity to the consternation at times of my wife and her family. I tried to make sure we had a decent holiday together by mixing up the study times a bit with some success so that the family vacation remained balanced. Everyone was very supportive. The consequence was I got a lot of studying done and some improvement in understanding both how to tackle problems better and lab practice that enjoyed over time much better process and efficiency. Things got a bit slicker and less ponderous. I even got through two mock exams while out there with the result that the second actually scored slightly better than truly awful. The important thing as we packed and prepared to come home to Great Britain was I felt that approach had pulled things together well and had I been able to spend more time working like that the results would surely come. This was pleasing.

I tried different ways of working labs while out there which yielded results. One approach was to work the same technology section across different labs over the course of the day. This worked very well as I was able to load up different labs at the same point on the INE racks and concentrate on for example multicast scenarios for a full session. In this way I was able to dedicate a full day to a particular technology from both a scenario and solution perspective. I expect to be doing the same in the weeks ahead.

If I can hit 15 hours of labtime a week I should be good to go. We start on my two work from home days. The Vol 3 labs cover the basics of Switching, Frame and IGPs and are doable in three hour slots. Hitting a couple of those each week will shake off the ring rust and get me moving on the core technologies. That leaves 9 hours to make up on another evening during the week and across the weekend. In those sessions I will pick a technology for the week and use the 'Russian Method' getting around the topic across multiple labs on a remote rack. Each week I will hit a different topic. We are busy with QoS at work so it makes sense to go there first.

This still leaves the problem of what I call 'tail drop' in a Cisco study sense. With this approach it can take a very long time to recycle back to technologies for a second or third pass. This brings all sorts of issues with recall. For phase 1 I will be working in this way throughout July, so to counter the issue I will study my spreadsheet daily to get around all the technologies. Once we are into Phase 2 starting in August I will be hitting one multiprotocol lab a week which will eliminate the problem.

That's the plan, lets see how we go, particularly at the weekends when 3 or 4 hour study sessions can sometimes be a burden at home. I need to get as much done during the week as I can so the weekends are not too taxing for all concerned over the course of the next five months.

notgoing2fail

You mentioned you had a blog? What is it?

peanutnoggin

notgoing2fail wrote: »

You mentioned you had a blog? What is it?

I think this is it... Turgon has been documenting his studies here on TE like no other that I've seen.

Keep it up Turgon, excellent write up!

-Peanut

notgoing2fail

peanutnoggin wrote: »

I think this is it... Turgon has been documenting his studies here on TE like no other that I've seen.

Keep it up Turgon, excellent write up!

-Peanut

Oh gotchya.

Thought maybe he had his own site where he blogged his thoughts on CCIE.

Turgon

Added system management content from INE Vol 1 into my spreadsheet last night. Amazingly got about an hour of lab time in today.

veritas_libertas

Turgon only has a little ways to go in order to hit 2,000 posts! That has to be a TE record

Turgon

Completed the note taking in my spreadsheet for the config content of 'System Management' in INE Vol 1. Only three sections remain to be covered; Multicast, IPv6 and IP Services. No doubt covering these will be painful. I started the spreadsheet trek on 5th May so its taken eight weeks of elapsed time to get to this point.The demands of the new job and the commuting took it's toll. But we are almost there! I have a rack session tomorrow.

While a deceptively small section, System Management by the accounts of Vol 1 has become more **** and took some typing in. These sorts of configs were seen as low hanging fruit in the actual lab exam, the same for IP services, however the latest material is more bloated in terms of config requirement. The actual exam will be *easier* than the workbooks, but if the workbook is anything to go by more time will need to be put in on this subject or you will tank what used to be easy points. Bummer.

Interesting to see how the topics played out. With Kron and EEM we see Cisco becoming more UNIX like in capabilities. The same can be seen in versions of Windows these days. I guess the UNIX hippies who got terrorised when NT 4.0 ruled the roost and their jobs got marginalised with the Microsoft wave in the late nineties finally get their revenge!

Turgon

7AM - Rack Time. INE Vol3 Lab no 1. This one was last attempted on 28th July 2009. Lets see how I get on today.

gateway

Another early start Turgon!
My head would be useless at getting up at 7am and immediately starting technical work - need a few brews before the cogs start turning properly

Turgon

gateway wrote: »

Another early start Turgon!
My head would be useless at getting up at 7am and immediately starting technical work - need a few brews before the cogs start turning properly

So do I

Turgon

INE Vol III - Lab no 1 (Half done)

Juggling work, things at home (breakfast) and racktime was difficult this morning. I got as far as the OSPF section before the rack session timed out.

But what I did went well. Switching and Frame. With no racktime available today I will see if I can make a bastardized version of this lab with what I have at home. I have no switches but can create bridge groups. It would be good to complete this lab if at all possible.

Turgon

Well a glance at the topology for the INE Vol III Lab 1 and what I have to work with at home left me cold. I would have had to spend probably an hour converting what I have in my rack to something that resembles what the lab entails, with many compromises. A friend offered me some remote rack time but I got so busy at work this afternoon on calls etc I simply didn't have time to go near it. Work is finally done and its family time now. Have a good weekend!

Turgon

Bagged racktime for Sunday morning. Only time available Saturday was 11PM. No thanks. Will start at 7AM Sunday morning instead. Rack session finishes at 10:30AM so that leaves the rest of the day free for the family. On that note we are all out for a ride now. The sun is shining.

Turgon

Saturday 7AM. Added notes from the IPv6 INE Vol 1 section into my revision spreadsheet. Then took the family out to the coast for an afternoon on the beach.

On IPv6 the notes are in now. No major surprises although certainly some revision ahead. There are marks on IPv6 on the lab, and while I must not underestimate it if I can get the addressing and summarization technique down and revise the NAT and Multicast stuff I should be there or there abouts. The IGPs and filtering mechanics flow quite well from what I can remember. I should be able to revise and bottom out IPv6 without too much trouble. Watch out for tunneling types.

Multicast, Security and IP Services are all that remains to be documented in Vol 1. With the demands of the new job its taken nearly two months of elapsed time to get Vol 1 into the spreadsheet. I spent many hours doing so, mostly at the weekends and Im happy with the material I have put together as it will be an invaluable study aid in the months ahead.

Rack session 7AM Sunday morning next. A revisit of INE Vol III lab no 1.