1st CCIE lab attempt blog and help for candidates.

Turgon

jason_lunde wrote: »

Dude! Where have you been? You fell off the face of the earth for a while there.

I think Mrock's CCIE studies collapsed once his wife had the little ones. Understandable. We have a six week old indoors.

Turgon

I will be spending more time with the family. Ccie suspended

reaper81

Ouch, sorry to hear that. Not that spending time with family is bad, it's great but was hoping this would be your year. Do you mind if I ask how you came to this decision?

Turgon

reaper81 wrote: »

Ouch, sorry to hear that. Not that spending time with family is bad, it's great but was hoping this would be your year. Do you mind if I ask how you came to this decision?

Simply not practical at this time with the amount of work I have on and all the help I need to give my wife after work. That's life

mikej412

Turgon wrote: »

Ccie suspended

But <ArnoldSchwarzeneggerVoice>You'll be back</ArnoldSchwarzeneggerVoice>, right?

veritas_libertas

Turgon wrote: »

Simply not practical at this time with the amount of work I have on and all the help I need to give my wife after work. That's life

Family first, I respect that!

Turgon

veritas_libertas wrote: »

Family first, I respect that!

Yeah its impossible at the moment. Struggling to stay afloat at work. When home Im on constant alert helping with the kids sometimes late into the night. No time for reading or rack sessions man.

Turgon

Lets get through February. Once the work/home routine settles I can start to do all the Vol 1 exercises on remote racks through March. Should be able to find 1 hour a day, 2 hours on less busy days during the week. Weekends will remain difficult for lab practice as I spend more time helping with the kids.

reaper81

Glad to hear you're still giving it a try Hope everything settles down for you.

Turgon

reaper81 wrote: »

Glad to hear you're still giving it a try Hope everything settles down for you.

We are getting there. February will be difficult but I think I can squeak an occasional hour of lab time in on Vol1. Im done with reading for now, lab time is the key. Things at home and at work are finding some balance so if I can do a bit of study in February, March should be back on track! Thousands of meetings at work at the moment but things are getting planned for the year ahead which will help. 22.14pm, baby just stopped screaming and sleeping at last so some time with my wife now.

mikej412

Turgon wrote: »

February will be difficult but I think I can squeak an occasional hour of lab time in on Vol1.

Are you running Dynamips or GNS3 yet? Or will you just do some labs your home lab hardware will support?

Or have you found a rack rental place that rents by the hour?

Turgon

mikej412 wrote: »

Are you running Dynamips or GNS3 yet? Or will you just do some labs your home lab hardware will support?

Or have you found a rack rental place that rents by the hour?

Hi Mike,

I never took time out to invest in hardware for dynamips and the setting up time and fine tuning put me off in anycase. All my labtime has been on real gear since 2007. My homerack (mostly 2500's) served me well for the core technologies but that has since gone into storage to convert the study into a bedroom for our 3 year old. I use remote racks a lot when I have time, the only issue there is a 5 hour slot often gets mostly wasted as its often only practical to get two or three hours in. It will be remote racks when I get started again.

gorebrush

I honestly don't think GNS/Dynamips costs much in the way of time to get setup.

Certainly a lot cheaper than buying a stack of routers

Turgon

gorebrush wrote: »

I honestly don't think GNS/Dynamips costs much in the way of time to get setup.

Certainly a lot cheaper than buying a stack of routers

Renting isnt that costly. You need a decent PC or laptop and we have none to spare at home, you also need the switches. Lots of people have problems setting it up and tuning it, followed by bugs when doing complex labs. It kinda puts me off.

aldous

not to mention when your halfway through something and it mysteriously dies thats what made me (after much swearing) build a home lab:)

gorebrush

aldous wrote: »

not to mention when your halfway through something and it mysteriously dies thats what made me (after much swearing) build a home lab:)

OK I can't deny this... I haven't used GNS in a while so I need to get back into the swing of things and start using it really

Forsaken_GA

Turgon wrote: »

Hi Mike,

I never took time out to invest in hardware for dynamips and the setting up time and fine tuning put me off in anycase. All my labtime has been on real gear since 2007. My homerack (mostly 2500's) served me well for the core technologies but that has since gone into storage to convert the study into a bedroom for our 3 year old. I use remote racks a lot when I have time, the only issue there is a 5 hour slot often gets mostly wasted as its often only practical to get two or three hours in. It will be remote racks when I get started again.

I've actually begun to use dynamips a bit more, just for the convenience factor. Only when I'm working with something that involves routing scenarios though, haven't gone through the hassle of setting up a dedicated box and connecting it to my physical switches. But if all I need is something like six to eight routers to work out a concept, dynamips has been pretty solid for me.

Turgon

Forsaken_GA wrote: »

I've actually begun to use dynamips a bit more, just for the convenience factor. Only when I'm working with something that involves routing scenarios though, haven't gone through the hassle of setting up a dedicated box and connecting it to my physical switches. But if all I need is something like six to eight routers to work out a concept, dynamips has been pretty solid for me.

I think once you have it all running it could be very good for that. I guess Im just stuck in my real gear ways and full on labs.

reaper81

I have done most of the INE vol1 labs on Dynamips, I used rack rental for switching and multicast since I knew those areas have limitations/issues in Dynamips. My Dynamips setup is running very smooth so far but I did have to put a lot of time investigating things and writing a script to convert configs but now that it's done it's working great.

Turgon

Work and things on the homefront becoming more stable thanks to the study hiatus through February. Roll on March when I can begin daily lab practice again.

Turgon

March looms. 3 hour lab sessions Monday to Friday. Yeah baby. 60 hours lab time for a couple of months should leave me in good stead for mock exam weekends. That plus troubleshooting practice, Doc CD and note revision should leave me well placed for the lab attempt later this year.

Turgon

Too many meetings this week for labwork. Still March has begun so we try again next week

Turgon

Monday is slaughtered with 6 meetings planned already for design projects and customer solutions. Hopefully with a big push at the beginning of the week a chink of study light will emerge if I can get a few things moving at work. Itching to get some racktime in.

Turgon

The studies slipped necessarily since New Year to focus on key projects at work and help at home with the family. A lot of progress was made thanks to sheer hardwork including a good deal of time away from home for meetings. Now we have a space to study again. The counter offensive begins with racktime slated for Tuesday and Wednesday! INE Vol1. The show is back on the road.

reaper81

Glad to hear you're back on track! What areas are you focusing on from Vol1?

Turgon

reaper81 wrote: »

Glad to hear you're back on track! What areas are you focusing on from Vol1?

I plan to tramp through the whole of the workbook through March labbing each day. In April I begin the Vol II config work. For reading I will just print off the Vol II labs and look them over this month.

Turgon

Not of lot of labbing done today but I at least got on a rack. Printed out the physical diagram to help with tomorrow's session. Started reading INE Vol1 Bridging and Switching this evening. Back on the horse anyway. Managing my time very carefully at work.

Turgon

A shocker at work with all my labtime sunk into pulling things together for the company. Yesterday and today's rack sessions just sitting idle. Terrible waste of money. On the positive note I hit my deadlines. So far as studies go I have at least found *some* time to turn over a spot of reading of Vol I. So I think for the moment I will just have to manage with 20 minute stints of workbook reading in between meetings and design tasks to refresh my memory with configurations, identify the things I need to rinse and repeat on a rack, and book a rack session when I actually have time to do it properly.

Not in the evening though, now work is done we will be flat out with the kids until late by which time we will be too tired to do anything other than watch 30 minutes of TV and go to bed.

So it's mealtime, playtime, bathtime and bedtime for the eldest and help with the baby during the course of the evening while we try to get him settled.

Turgon

With labtime impossible at the moment I have fallen back on reading and actually that's going pretty well. Almost done with Vol I Bridging and Switching reading. A really good refresher leaving only a few things of note I can polish off with some practice.

gateway

Sounds like things are beginning to come back together again for you now. Great stuff.