What has your CCSP path been like?

Thought this would be an interesting question, especially from those that already have the CCSP cert but also from those on your way, How did you get there?

Meaning, in what order did you take your exams and how many times did you take each exam?

In my case, I´m just starting, so for I´ve been lucky (well I studied alot too hehe)...

CCNA 640-802 Passed 1st try
SND 642-552 Passed 1st try

Planning to take the SNRS this month...

How bout the rest of you?

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Ahriakin

I can't remember the exam numbers offhand and I'm too lazy to go look them up right now but:

CCNA (2nd attempt, the only exam I've failed...so far

)
SNRS
SNPA
VPN
IPS
SND

shednik

Best of luck to you on your path to the SP!

Lizano

Ahriakin wrote:

I can't remember the exam numbers offhand and I'm too lazy to go look them up right now but:

CCNA (2nd attempt, the only exam I've failed...so far )
SNRS
SNPA
VPN
IPS
SND

May I ask which one you found to be the toughest ? ...

dtlokee

I thought the VPN exam was the most difficult.

Ahriakin

Lizano wrote:

Ahriakin wrote:

I can't remember the exam numbers offhand and I'm too lazy to go look them up right now but:

CCNA (2nd attempt, the only exam I've failed...so far )
SNRS
SNPA
VPN
IPS
SND

May I ask which one you found to be the toughest ? ...

At the time SNRS as I had a week to study for it

, and barely pased it. In hindsight though it was the SNPA for me (Since it already covered a lot of the VPN stuff and I took it within a few weeks of the SNPA I found that one easier). The most 'alien' in that it has very little overlap with any of the others is the IPS. It's not that the material was that hard but you can't use much of your experience on other devices to help understand it - whereas ACLs are ACLs whether on routers or firewalls, IPSec is IPSec whether on a router,firewall or VPN etc.

Lizano

ok, so I'll just take this off this thread so I don't spam the CCSP forum, but I just finished reading the CCSP Self-Study: CCSP SNRS Exam Certification Guide, and I can tell you it's not enough on it's own to go for the SNRS from what I have seen in practice tests, but it is a pretty good book, covers AAA services well in depth and VPN, SDM, and EasyVPN. Now the book was the guide for the 642-502 exam, the current exam is 642-503 and will soon be retiring, 504 is on the way.

I read the book and the SNRS Presentation Files, and I've been practicing with Dynamips and NetworkSims, anybody have another piece of literature that you can recommend from experience for the 503 exam?

Ahriakin

The "Cisco Network Security Troubleshooting Handbook" is well worth it. Besides being an excellent real-world resource it does explain each technology area concisely before launching into verification and troubleshooting so it is a good source of base knowledge aswell as technique.
If you're having any trouble with IPSec (which features in a lot of the CCSP exams in some fashion) "The Complete Cisco VPN Conifguration Guide" is superb, very easy to read and informative.
Though not cheap both of these are of value in multiple exams (even to CCIE level).

Lizano

Well, I followed your advise and I got "The Complete Cisco VPN Conifguration Guide".

That plus some docs I had, I passed SNRS today with a score of 986.

Honestly, I thought the labs in the exam were going to be a lot harder, I was under the impresion from what I had heard from friends that this was the toughest exam in the path, honestly after doing I didn´t find it THAT hard...

CCNA 640-802 Passed 1st try
SND 642-552 Passed 1st try
SNRS 640-503 Passed 1st try

Finally moving forward in the CCSP path...

mikej412

Lizano wrote:

I passed SNRS

Congratulations!