Brocade BCNE scheduled for this saturday

PhildoBaggins

Any advice?

Ivanjam

@PhildoBaggings - good luck on the exam!

it_consultant

I am doing my BCNE tomorrow. Have you already logged in to the Brocade training portal and reviewed the BCNE Nutshell guide and taken the practice exam? I don't expect it to be as difficult as the CCNA but I won't know until tomorrow. I actually sat for the BCNE training and it was interesting in comparison to CCNA. Much less in some areas (for example, hubs were never mentioned, nothing about broadcast domains) and more in others, like VRRP and LACP. Based on your CCNP experience you should be able to do the BNCE and BCNP.

PhildoBaggins

I purchased the CNE250WBT for $100 and have been going through the material. Other than product specific stuff there is nothing new in the exam, and they have the passrate publically available: 58% I don't expect it to be killer but I like to prepare. The training material is pretty good for the price. Althought I would have preferred a true command simulator or emulator the config sims that come with he $100 training due help you learn the difference in commands between cisco and brocade. I'll run through the training a couple times. Please let us know how your test went. I'm very curious GOOD LUCK.

it_consultant

Will do! I am lucky because I have a roomful of Brocades to train on. My learning curve was actually HP to Brocade, Brocade is much more similar to Cisco (esp in their SP switches which are nearly identical to Cisco) than it is to HP. Are you doing the Brocade thing for fun or is your company going to them?

PhildoBaggins

I love HP switches. They are the easiest and the best warranty. I'm doing brocade certs for myself. I want to be more versed in other gear. I pretty confident in my skills with cisco, hp, sonicwall, dell, fortinet, and others. I want to close some gaps on Brocade and Juniper then tackle some more Cisco, CCNP Security looks pretty easy cheesey.

Aveni

I am too preparing BCNE and then i will go for BNCP .
I would schedule before the end of this month.
I already am good with CCNA,NP & IE Level but yup there are gaps i am sure.
I searched alot nothing is found except nutshell.
Anything would be much appreciated
here is my address
nadiaccie at gmail dot com

PhildoBaggins

Go and sign up for brocade.com, create an account, go into the my education area and follow the instructions and purchase the CNE250WBT course for $100, it includes a promocode for a free shot at the BCNE as long as you go through the training. The training material is pretty good for the price and you cannot beat the free cert promo code.

Aveni

Thanks phildo for detailed info.
I will surly do that. But just curious as i already know ccna ccnp and already attempted CCIE will that be enough for BCNE ?

it_consultant

I took the BCNE (2012) exam yesterday and I was surprised about how difficult it was. I did pass, but I attribute that more to my years of being in the industry than my studying. The BCNE is at least as hard as the CCNA composite, probably harder in some ways. There are at least a few questions that you wouldn't see on the Cisco side of the house until you were on the CCNP switch exam. I think that is really the best way to describe this test, it is a SWITCHING test. I would suggest focusing very hard on layer 1 and 2. If you solely knew CCNA/NP and never touched a Brocade or read their guides you will fail this exam fantastically.

I only know one other BCNE personally, and he is a networking guru. I know a few Brocade certified SAN guys and they have told me that the Brocade SAN tests are similarly not for the faint of heart. Brocade is an engineering company - their documentation for their 6910 (a 12 port switch) is thousands of pages long. Expect the tests to be just as detailed.

Phildo - I think you will probably pass but I warn against overconfidence Let us know what your impressions are being so deep in the Cisco track.

PhildoBaggins

I have been through there Cisco to Brocade Bridge training for BCNE and the online labs. There is really nothing knew for me conceptually and I now have a real good feel for the command structure. I have read through the configuration guides, its better actually than the cisco config guides (which are also 1500-2000 pages depending on device). I have been able to get 80%+ on the practice exam so hopefully with the 58% passrate it wont be toooooooo difficult. My Routing and Switching is around mid carrier, I do what you would study in the CCNP daily on a large production ISP network so we will just have to see what happens. Certs are a hobby, I love the challenge, and I'm really digging brocade right now!!!

it_consultant

Yeah, there was at least one question on Brocade's SP switches, which I would not have known except I have deployed about 40 of the temperature hardened 6910s. It is an honest test, but I think that since this is an entry level cert and you are career level, you should be able to pass. Let us know tomorrow.

bryguy

Yeah, I think you'll be fine... I remember it being somewhere between the Network+ and the CCNA exam in terms of difficulty. Good luck, today!

PhildoBaggins

I passed, it wasnt that bad. I would say the material is CCNP level but the questions themselves were fairly straight forward. They were definitely not tricky cisco questions or at least they didnt feel that way. So woo hoo BCNE with a week of study and the exam only took me 25 minutes.

it_consultant

25 minutes? That is impressive! Congratulations, if we can get more people on these boards interested in Brocade we could drive some activity for on the Brocade ethernet side of the house. Unfortunately, if you didn't already have the background in networking, I am not sure the BCNE study materials that are out there would really prepare you.

spiderjericho

I'm going to give the BNCE a shot and purchase the 250 course. Hopefully, the simulations give enough hands on a Cisco guy.

Aveni

Congratulations For both of you .. Feeling great of being into BCNE track really...
Its true that Cisco "Twist and Turn" questions but for long run thats o.k in some sense though .
Thanksfor a bit inside about BCNE will note that for my preparation..
Best of luck for all

spiderjericho

I'm having a hard time registering for the 250 course. I created a Brocade account using a work account but the way to add the course and purchase is so ridiculous.

I had to create a purchase order since I only had the option for PO or training units. Brocade could make the process easier.

Aveni

Its not That hard spider . When you signup there are 2-3 options you should care about while selecting who you are eg Partner,Customer etc..
I went through that process too but after spending sometime i knew what took long

Best of luck for your studies ...

PhildoBaggins

I second that its not that difficult, its not as streamlined as i'm used to for cisco certs but it wasn't bad and the folks at brocade had like a 5 minute turn on communication which is amazing.

it_consultant

I am signed up for the CNP 300 course this March.

http://www.brocade.com/downloads/documents/course_data_sheets/CNP300-DataSheet.pdf

bsimpson

Hi everyone!

Found this thread while searching for some more information about the BCNE. Good information here, but could anybody please give me a bit more information about the topics? I'm not asking stuff that would violate the certification policies, I'd just like to have some info about the "weight" of the topics. I bought the WBT from Brocade and feel pretty comfortable with the stuff, but it would still be nice to have some info about which topics to study harder and which are not so important.

Regarding my CCNA experience there where a lot of subnetting questions and what type of cabling should be used (pretty easy *G*). Are such questions on the BCNE as well? Which topic had the most questions on your exams??

If somebody has some similar info regarding the BCNP please also let me know that as this would be my next goal...



BIG THANKS!

it_consultant

In order to answer this without violating Brocade's NDA, I would say (having done both) that CCNA and BCNE are similar except for 4 things, in my opinion.

1 - There are no lab simulations on the BCNE
2 - You will be expected to be able to recognize and troubleshoot LAGs
3 - You will be expected to know QOS
4 - You will be expected to have some detailed knowledge about POE and POE+

BCNE is an honest exam and I found it challenging. One thing that becomes abundantly clear is that Brocade is an engineering company. Whether you are studying for their FICON, FC, FCOE, Ethernet Fabric, or regular Ethernet exams you can expect their to be detailed and challenging questions on the exam(s).

I did the BCNP course (haven't taken the test) 2 weeks ago and this was their focus:

1 - REALLY know QOS
2 - 802.1D, rSTP, rSTP, rSTP, rSTP
3 - OSPF, OSPF, OSPF
4 - BGP

I don't have my lab guide but I remember looking at its table of contents and it went like that. We spent a very long time on OSPF packet types - I was under the weather unfortunately and I didn't retain very much from that day.

*EDIT* I forgot that VRRP and VRRP-E is covered in BCNE, which is also not covered in CCNA.

it_consultant

Interestingly I picked up the CCNP SWITCH book today and looked at some contents. It covers PaGP and VLANs with an external router, which I would be surprised if I learned anyone actually used those. I also had to relearn "encapsulation dot1q", something unnecessary in non Cisco switches. To the point though, the switching questions in BCNE are about CCNP switch level, maybe a little easier on VLAN'ing.

bsimpson

Hi it_consultant!

Thanks for your reply!!!

Well, looks like they left some easy stuff out and put some hard stuff in (compared to the CCNA)
I suppose Frame Relay, WLAN and the other CCNA stuff is not on the BCNE?

In the Knowledge Assessment for the BCNE they ask some questions about their products, like which HBA to use, which switch has PoE and so on. Are such questions on the exam as well or is it more technically?



Thanks again!

it_consultant

Yeah, they toss in a "you are in a campus...etc' and they want you to know what kind of switch to get. There are only one or two softballs like that. There isn't any frame relay or any of that esoteric non-sense, but they make up for it in the layer 2 (stp, stp, lag, lag) stuff so watch out.

bsimpson

Thanks a lot, it_consultant! Great information!

Maced129

spiderjericho wrote: »

I'm having a hard time registering for the 250 course. I created a Brocade account using a work account but the way to add the course and purchase is so ridiculous.

I had to create a purchase order since I only had the option for PO or training units. Brocade could make the process easier.

email [FONT=&quot]education@brocade.com and ask if you can pay via credit card.

That's what I did, only took a day for them to process.[/FONT][FONT=&quot]


[/FONT]

spiderjericho

Maced129 wrote: »

email [FONT=&amp]education@brocade.com and ask if you can pay via credit card.

That's what I did, only took a day for them to process.[/FONT][FONT=&amp]


[/FONT]

Sorry, I haven't responded in awhile. I actually did what you recommended several months ago. I just haven't gone through the material due to family emergencies and restarting at WGU. I hope to have it knocked out before summer.

spiderjericho

it_consultant wrote: »

In order to answer this without violating Brocade's NDA, I would say (having done both) that CCNA and BCNE are similar except for 4 things, in my opinion.

1 - There are no lab simulations on the BCNE
2 - You will be expected to be able to recognize and troubleshoot LAGs
3 - You will be expected to know QOS
4 - You will be expected to have some detailed knowledge about POE and POE+

BCNE is an honest exam and I found it challenging. One thing that becomes abundantly clear is that Brocade is an engineering company. Whether you are studying for their FICON, FC, FCOE, Ethernet Fabric, or regular Ethernet exams you can expect their to be detailed and challenging questions on the exam(s).

*EDIT* I forgot that VRRP and VRRP-E is covered in BCNE, which is also not covered in CCNA.

I just took the exam today. I'm a little disappointed. I scored an 83 but felt like I could've scored higher. There were a few areas I was really weak in.

1) The Sales Brochure Portion of the exam. Exam takers need to become familiar with the Brocade portfolio of network devices and modules.

This is a key difference with Cisco. Their exams focus on configuring the operating system, protocols and concepts and troubleshooting. You don't have to know about ISR2s, CRS1/3 (though it does creep into some of the exams obviously).

2) Foundry protocols and open-source data link protocols. This wasn't really covered in the Nutshell guide.

3) Quality of Service (It's been awhile since I really delved into QOS, last time being CCNA Voice a few years ago).

4) Physical Layer (copper, fiber, wireless, etc).

5) Multicasting (Last time I delved into it was CCNPv5).

The exam is extremely fair. It's not the old Cisco bait and swerve or mind duck.

There aren't any simulations, which is good since I have 0 exposure to Brocade devices (and the lab element of the Cisco to BCNE course is terrible).

I will say that the exam is not for a CCNA. It's more geared toward a CCNP or someone studying the new CCNA material. A lot of the concepts are more advanced and are not touched upon in the old exams (like QOS, POE, Link Aggregation, Multicast, BGP, etc).

Not a bad exam and I don't feel like I threw away $150.

bsimpson

spiderjericho wrote: »

I just took the exam today. I'm a little disappointed. I scored an 83 but felt like I could've scored higher. There were a few areas I was really weak in.

1) The Sales Brochure Portion of the exam. Exam takers need to become familiar with the Brocade portfolio of network devices and modules.

This is a key difference with Cisco. Their exams focus on configuring the operating system, protocols and concepts and troubleshooting. You don't have to know about ISR2s, CRS1/3 (though it does creep into some of the exams obviously).

2) Foundry protocols and open-source data link protocols. This wasn't really covered in the Nutshell guide.

3) Quality of Service (It's been awhile since I really delved into QOS, last time being CCNA Voice a few years ago).

4) Physical Layer (copper, fiber, wireless, etc).

5) Multicasting (Last time I delved into it was CCNPv5).

The exam is extremely fair. It's not the old Cisco bait and swerve or mind duck.

There aren't any simulations, which is good since I have 0 exposure to Brocade devices (and the lab element of the Cisco to BCNE course is terrible).

I will say that the exam is not for a CCNA. It's more geared toward a CCNP or someone studying the new CCNA material. A lot of the concepts are more advanced and are not touched upon in the old exams (like QOS, POE, Link Aggregation, Multicast, BGP, etc).

Not a bad exam and I don't feel like I threw away $150.

Thanks so much for the update!


PS: AND CONGRATS!