rack rentals for CCNA voice?

ehnde

----Optional reading----
Hello! I started studying for CCNA:Voice at the beginning of November and now have 72 hours of study time in. Yes, I know a heck of alot more than I did in the beginning (started by knowing nothing) but I feel that working on live equipment is essential to gaining real competence. This is very important to me because I was just promoted to be a Voice IP engineer.
----End Optional reading----

----Meat & Potatoes----
Is it practical to do an INE rack rental for CCNA:Voice? I've looked at the costs of building a voice lab and don't want to go that route.$100 of INE tokens (their lowest package) will get me 25 hours of lab time. Is this a good idea? I don't think I'd need ANY real gear to get through CCNA Voice (correct me if I'm wrong) if I went this route. I'm also not sure how to go about beginning labs using an INE rack. I've been reading the INE rack rental guide...
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I live in a 1200 square foot apartment with a family of 7. There is no room here for a lab, and I don't want to spend a bunch of $$$ on the gear. If it's relevant, I feel like CCNP:Voice will be a goal for me in the next 2 years.

Iristheangel

Let me know if you find anything. I've been using the Profsims sims to go through command-line, an extra 2951 at work, and playing around with our production CUCM without making any changes. If you find a rack rental, please let the rest of us know

shodown

If people are really intrested I can setup my rack for use so they can play around with Voice Gateways with Real PVDM's and CUCM 8x. PM me. I can have the rack setup most weekends with some sort of VPN and we can work out pricing.

ehnde

Just want to say that I really appreciate you offering that. One issue I'm seeing right now is what to do to get some actual lab experience in....such as exercises to work through. I suppose working through the examples in the Cisco press book is a good idea.

I've thought about copying our CUCM production VM and putting it on an isolated vlan with some spare ISRs and a 3750.

I've been using the Profsims sims to go through command-line

Is this it? NetworkSims.com ProfSIMS Cisco CCNA Voice Simulator

It says it's only $38, that's pretty cheap. Has it been worth it?

shodown

well I can charge a tad bit more, and we can do 1 on 1 sessions. Just as a quick glance of what I have done. I've worked on Voice deployments since, CUCM4 and currently I do deployments anywhere from 1500 to 60,000 endpoints across the globe I also do Video now as well, and I don't know it all, but I have all the resources in place to ensure you get your monies worth.

pitviper

ehnde wrote: »

I've thought about copying our CUCM production VM and putting it on an isolated vlan with some spare ISRs and a 3750.

I would setup a clean CUCM cluster and just use the built-in demo licensing. The actual license is bound to a virtual MAC – and it’ll balk if you try to use it somewhere else.

ehnde

shodown wrote: »

well I can charge a tad bit more, and we can do 1 on 1 sessions. Just as a quick glance of what I have done. I've worked on Voice deployments since, CUCM4 and currently I do deployments anywhere from 1500 to 60,000 endpoints across the globe I also do Video now as well, and I don't know it all, but I have all the resources in place to ensure you get your monies worth.

I may take you up on that when I've become more familiar with the material. You might have seen me post about taking one of the officially sanctioned Cisco courses for CUCM/CUC. The instructor was great, and had a CCVP like yourself. Unfortunately due to my complete newness to voice, the depth of what I was able to absorb was severely limited! It felt like starting med school with no prior background in anatomy, chemistry, or biology. After reading much more and stumbling through some examples, hopefully you're not too busy for a session like that before my exam. There are several of us prepping for CCNA:Voice in this subforum that could probably use your help.

@pitviper: +rep to you, sir, for saving me time doing something that would not have worked I actually do remember being told this in the Cisco class I took last week now that you mention it. Amazing what you cannot recall when information is spewed at you at 1,000mph.