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My Journey for 642-617: Firewall v1.0 (1 of 4 exams required for CCNP: Security)
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Initial Update:
Certification: 642-617 FIREWALL v1.0 Deploying Cisco ASA Firewall Solutions (FIREWALL v1.0)
000.00% - Overall Preparation
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000.00% - Reading
000.00% - Labbing
000.00% - Confidence
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Header Explanations (this will only be done for this initial posting)
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<insertword> Update:
Which update I'm on. I like to use initial, second, third, etc. Hopefully, I clear the exam before the thirtieth update!
Certification: <title>
Title of certification I'm working on
Overall Preparation:
Basically, a mathematical average of the numbers of Reading, Labbing, and Confidence.
Reading:
Reading will have to come from cisco.com, as I've decided to try this one without buying a book for it. I believe that I posted in another thread that someone should be able to study for a vendor certification test, using the information freely available on the vendor's website. If this is not possible, then either the vendor does not have adequate documentation on their website, or I do not know how to properly study for their exam, from using the freely available materials.
Labbing (Doing the labs):
1. Labs will have to come from cisco.com, as I've decided to try this one without buying an actual book, just to see what result I get.
2. Focusing on exam objectives, not on doing a million different configurations.
3. Lab EQ: SDM/GNS3/3550 Switches will have to rely on using ASA at work, and the emulated ASA in GNS3.
Confidence (How confident I am in being able to pass this exam, if I took it today.):
Not very at this point, LOL. I don't use all the features of an ASA in day-to-day work, we tend to just use them for firewalling, and *rarely* to VPN, as we tend to use Juniper for VPNs.
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Now with that said, what would be my notes for studying for this test?
1. The official objectives:
https://learningnetwork.cisco.com/docs/DOC-8974
2. Looked at the table of contents of this book:
CCNP Security Firewall 642-617 Quick Reference
3. Looked at the table of contents of this book:
CCNP Security FIREWALL 642-617 Official Cert Guide, Rough Cuts
4. The CLI Guide for ASA
Cisco ASA 5500 Series Configuration Guide using the CLI, 8.4 [Cisco ASA 5500 Series Adaptive Security Appliances] - Cisco Systems
5. The ASDM Guide for ASA
Cisco ASA 5500 Series Configuration Guide using ASDM, 6.4 - Cisco Systems
I may branch out to other links, but these are the main things I am studying from for now.
I found it particularly interesting that the "quick reference" guide broke out AAA to an entire section, but it wasn't spelled out in the exam syllabus ... needless to say, I'll make sure to review AAA, as well as weigh the rest of those table of contents against the exam objectives, just AAA stuck out like a sore thumb.
I was going to post a table of links, but according to the exam objectives and the guide table of contents that I saw, about the only thing I didn't see taken from the CLI and ASDM guides was the items about VPN, but even with that said, I'm not going to ignore those, so I'm basically studying from the complete CLI and ASDM guides for the ASA.
We'll see how this goes.....
