Lab and Workbook Direction

I just got my JNCIA. My goal is the JNCIE-SP but I realize stick time is required, as I don't work with the CLI everyday. I put the following lab together for more experience.

Clclades CS4016 (remote access)
2 X APC Power Switch (remote power switch)2 X EX2200
3 X SRX210
5 X J2300

It's in a rollable cabinet so I can move it. It sits in my home office.

I'd like to query the group for advice on the following three items.
1. I'm in Phoenix. Powering the lab in summer kills me. From one side I pay to power the lab that throws heat into my home office. From the other side I pay a huge cooling bill. The power company has me coming and going. For that reason I tend not to work on it in the summer. That's a bad solution.
2. I travel a bit so I sprung for the remote access server and APC power switches. Now that Junosphere is out would I be better off purchasing time on their system and sell the lab? The problem with moving to the cloud is timing. A 24 hr chunk of time is hard to bite off. I'd prefer it in 4 or 6 hour windows, specifically in the evening.
I have a Mac Book Pro running Virtual Box. I can run 4 olives, doing it now, but wonder how far I can scale that solution...6, 8, 10, instances before I run into issues? I need find out what my limit is here.
Moving to the Olive or Junosphere solution has limitations, right? Limited switching on Junosphere and Mulitcast with Olive?
3. This is my primary issue -- Lets presume I can get the lab sorted...Olive, Junosphere, keep my lab etc. What then? Pick up a workbook (Proteus or Inetzero) and start plugging away? Dive into the Sybex books and create my own material where they come up short? If I keep the lab Juniper training material is out, unless I upgrade the 2300's to SRX's. (J2300's are at 9.5, Juniper labs are at 10.4?) I don't feel like I have the time or the experience to come up with the workbook on my own.
If the Proteus or Inetzero workbooks are a good resource then I'm leaning that direction using my Mac with Olives. Sell the lab, spend $4-500 on workbook, max the memory in my mac, and be done!
What's the reality?

2012-05-23 17.35.06.jpg

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spiderjericho

Good question. I'll check back in when there's an answer. I want to go ENT IE.

Aldur

First of all NICE lab! I have to say that I'm impressed.

keyser wrote: »

1. I'm in Phoenix. Powering the lab in summer kills me. From one side I pay to power the lab that throws heat into my home office. From the other side I pay a huge cooling bill. The power company has me coming and going. For that reason I tend not to work on it in the summer. That's a bad solution.

Yeah, cooling a lab (and your house) in the summer time sucks. I remembered when I lived in Utah, not nearly as bad as Phoenix, but the summer times got into the high 90's/low 100's. I lived in a small guest house with no AC. At the time I had around 10 olives that worked great at heating the house in the winter time but they became unbearable in the summer time. To combat this, and keep my studies going, I virtualized everything down to 3 olives by using logical routers. Granted you can't do logical routers on the equipment you have, but you might want to look into virtual routers to keep some of the gear off during the summer months. Another great option is JunoSphere, as you mentioned later in your post.

keyser wrote: »

2. I travel a bit so I sprung for the remote access server and APC power switches. Now that Junosphere is out would I be better off purchasing time on their system and sell the lab? The problem with moving to the cloud is timing. A 24 hr chunk of time is hard to bite off. I'd prefer it in 4 or 6 hour windows, specifically in the evening.
I have a Mac Book Pro running Virtual Box. I can run 4 olives, doing it now, but wonder how far I can scale that solution...6, 8, 10, instances before I run into issues? I need find out what my limit is here.
Moving to the Olive or Junosphere solution has limitations, right? Limited switching on Junosphere and Mulitcast with Olive?

Currently JunoSphere has limited switching and security features, of which should be resolved next year. Olives do run multicast just fine, they just lack the presence of a tunnel PIC which you need for your RP. But if you keep your first hop router as the RP you will not need a tunnel PIC at all. But, in my experience Olives are only good for the SP track, and most, if not all of the features, are lacking for the ENT and SEC tracks.

keyser wrote: »

3. This is my primary issue -- Lets presume I can get the lab sorted...Olive, Junosphere, keep my lab etc. What then? Pick up a workbook (Proteus or Inetzero) and start plugging away? Dive into the Sybex books and create my own material where they come up short? If I keep the lab Juniper training material is out, unless I upgrade the 2300's to SRX's. (J2300's are at 9.5, Juniper labs are at 10.4?) I don't feel like I have the time or the experience to come up with the workbook on my own.
If the Proteus or Inetzero workbooks are a good resource then I'm leaning that direction using my Mac with Olives. Sell the lab, spend $4-500 on workbook, max the memory in my mac, and be done!
What's the reality?

Picking up a workbook from Proteus or Inetzero would be a great place to go. I've always just developed my own labs for situations like this, but it is nice to have something to work off of. Selling the lab might be the way to go, especially if you're going on the SP track. If you plan to go the SEC or ENT track, then I'd recommend keeping the lab.

HTH

keyser

Thanks for info and props on the lab.
I'm seeing discounts on JunosPhere that make it more affordable and desirable. Haven't had time to test olives on my mac but will soon.
I work in the SP space and don't see ENT or Security as a focus anytime soon.

Aldur

Cool, since you're looking at the SP stuff, I'd definitely recommend JunoSphere.

varyes

keyser, can you point me to the discount you found on junosphere? I was waiting for them to offer discounts, but haven't seen them yet.. Thanks.

keyser

Vayres...Sorry I didn't see this post sooner.
I believe I saw it on a jnet forum. If I find it I'll post it up.

It's sold in 24 hour chunks. There's no way I'm going to use a 24 time slot. I doubt I'll get 4 hours in, unless it's on a weekend.

varyes

Thanks keyser.

keyser

Saw this today...50% off...tempting but I already spent some funds on SRX's. Might be worth it for stick time on an MX for the SP cert I'd like to get.
Cheers--
https://learningportal.juniper.net/juniper/user_activity_info.aspx?id=6621