CCIE R&S progress

They do not have a digital copy which annoyed me a little bit!!!

Is this the "How to prepare for your lab guide"?

I read it cover to cover in 2 hours and there is some good stuff in it.

it is, the "non technical guide to CCIE LAB", forgotten the "correct" name, but i believe it was you who posted it originally so i purchased it also!

Yes it's definitely worth the read.

....Still not arrived grrr..... To some one who has done the maths, whats the cost of running a full INE lab at home (electricity wise)

I have not done the maths, but I lab regularly and we saw our bill go up about $30/mo.

fast reply there, appreciate it! and hows the countdown.... 60ish days left for you i believe? hows the prep? just took the plunge for the 3560's

Yup, my countdown app says 61 days! Scary. It's going well, I am trying to get my mind right so I have a shot. With regards to the prep itself, I am labbing about 6 days a week currently, so if I can maintain that for the next 60 days I will be have a chance at passing.

I love my 3560's. I only have 2x, but wish I had 4x.

nice, made me feel a little better

, ouch 6 days a week, how many hours a week is that? Guess that separates the wonnabe's from the willbe's!

i wish i could afford 4 also but budget says otherwise!

Right now it's 6 days, and probably this week I'll have put in about 45 hours. I had some vacation from work this week so that's why it's so high. For all of July I'll probably put in about 6 hours in the evenings Monday through Thursday (I'll be on the road, so I'll be alone in the hotel). I'll take off Fridays, and study 8 hours Saturday, and about 2 hours Sundays. Then repeat for all of July.

Once we hit August I am hoping to have more downtime from work, so if I do, I'll probably lab 7 days a week for 3 weeks leading up to my attempt. If I fail I'll probably scale back a bit to 5 days and regroup, then sit it again in 2-3 months. Sounds extreme, but it's now or never for me!

sounds dedicated to me, you'll be fine!

another 5 hours on QOS done today.

Looking at kit on ebay....whats the difference between the 3560PS-S, PS-E, TS-E etc etc versions? Can i buy any of these and just re-upload the IOS or should i specifically aim for the TS-E version. First time i have ever looked at buying my own stuff, hence NOOBISM.

64:61:6e

silver145 wrote: »

another 5 hours on QOS done today.

Looking at kit on ebay....whats the difference between the 3560PS-S, PS-E, TS-E etc etc versions? Can i buy any of these and just re-upload the IOS or should i specifically aim for the TS-E version. First time i have ever looked at buying my own stuff, hence NOOBISM.

The PS-S is a PoE switch running IP Base and the PS-E (again, PoE) runs IP Services IOS. The TS-E is the non-PoE switch that is loaded with IP Services. You could load the IP Services image on either if you have proper licensing. There's nothing that you need to install on the switch to enable the IP Services feature set but need to have the paper license to legally be licensed to run it. Once VIRL is released, this will resolve any of these licensing concerns for a lab environment. From what I've seen on Twitter regarding VIRL, right now it only supports Layer 3 but Layer 2 is supposedly coming. It's supposed to be released sometime this summer (not sure with or without Layer 2 functionality) so you might want to hold off on a home lab and utilize rack rentals or GNS3 where you can until more announcements are made.

vinbuck

64:61:6e wrote: »

The PS-S is a PoE switch running IP Base and the PS-E (again, PoE) runs IP Services IOS. The TS-E is the non-PoE switch that is loaded with IP Services. You could load the IP Services image on either if you have proper licensing. There's nothing that you need to install on the switch to enable the IP Services feature set but need to have the paper license to legally be licensed to run it. Once VIRL is released, this will resolve any of these licensing concerns for a lab environment. From what I've seen on Twitter regarding VIRL, right now it only supports Layer 3 but Layer 2 is supposedly coming. It's supposed to be released sometime this summer (not sure with or without Layer 2 functionality) so you might want to hold off on a home lab and utilize rack rentals or GNS3 where you can until more announcements are made.

I just "informed" our Cisco SE and Sales guy about VIRL in a meeting today and they were blown away. I guess none of them had heard about it

true.....ill have to weigh that up, hypothetically, would it matter if i had the paper license or not....(from a "will it run" perspective) for my home lab? Thanks guys.

64:61:6e

silver145 wrote: »

true.....ill have to weigh that up, hypothetically, would it matter if i had the paper license or not....(from a "will it run" perspective) for my home lab? Thanks guys.

To legally be able to run the IP Services on the switch, you need to have the paper license. Technically you can load the IP Services image and it would work. Kinda like the 3550-SMI; you can load the EMI image and it would work just fine but you need the paper license in order to legally run that image.
Cisco never really addressed the issue of lab hardware. They had an internal dynamips-like solution called IOU which ran on Solaris but was not available to the general public. Now with VIRL being released (for free which is surprising), that will help with the home lab costs and will probably develop more engineers down the road since the cost of studying will be lowered significantly. Building large-scale networks will be easy.

VIRL will be free?

/swoon

Something to remember with regards to VIRL is IOU- IOU *still* isn't totally up to par on switching, but definitely getting there. It has taken a couple of years to get to this point. I wouldn't be surprised if VIRL released as basically re-canned version of IOU, then later introduced better switching and such. In short, I wouldn't necessarily wait for a "what if" regarding VIRL when it comes to lab prep. Just my $.02 though.

vinbuck

The Cloud Services Router is available free right now in a VM from Cisco. I believe the CSR is going to be part of the VIRL - if you look, cisco has several free VMs out there for various products. My guess is the VIRL will tie them all together.

64:61:6e

Mrock4 wrote: »

Something to remember with regards to VIRL is IOU- IOU *still* isn't totally up to par on switching, but definitely getting there. It has taken a couple of years to get to this point. I wouldn't be surprised if VIRL released as basically re-canned version of IOU, then later introduced better switching and such. In short, I wouldn't necessarily wait for a "what if" regarding VIRL when it comes to lab prep. Just my $.02 though.

You're probably right. VIRL even looks like IOU from the screenshots that were posted on Twitter. Seems to just be IOL (IOS on Linux). Rumors also have it that it's also supposed to be drag-and-drop but we'll see if that happens.

Absolutely. I'm looking forward to it in a big way (Having NX-OS in VIRL will be amazing for lab studies!), but I guess all we can do is wait and see!

Hey, slacked off a little yesterday, did an hours reading but looked at items to buy for my "home lab"

I have ended up following the GNS3 route as i am starting a grad scheme shortly so moving in with 11 routers/switches, any landlord will give me the finger!

So i ended up purchasing;

Intel Core i7 4770K
Asus Z87-K, Intel Z87, S 1150, DDR3
Fractal Design Define R4 Arctic white
[FONT=verdana,arial,helvetica][SIZE=-1]Corsair HX650 Professional Series
[/SIZE][/FONT][FONT=verdana,arial,helvetica][SIZE=-1]Corsair 16GB Vengeance 1866MHz CL10 DDR3[/SIZE][/FONT]
250GB Samsung 840 SSD
2x 3550
2x 3750
3x Sun Quad 501-5406 4 Port NIC's
12 x Cross over cables
20 x Straight through cables
4 x DB9 to Rj45 Console Cables
1x 4port RS-232 DB9 PCI-E card

Will be installing Ubuntu on this and dedicating it to GNS3 only to stop me from playing games etc!!!!!

vinbuck

Sweet setup man looks good! I've been hitting GNS3 hard this week!

How are you finding GNS3 and what setup have you got VIN, just looking for hints and tips for setting mine up as i am new to ubuntu and pretty much GNS3 ha!

I love GNS3, but never rule out IOU/IOL. You can run a full INE topology at about 15% CPU..really impressive. I like GNS3 better for it's usability (it's easy to create new networks/reconfigure your connections), but IOU/IOL no longer requires you to have a high powered computer. It's ultimately up to your own taste, of course, just a comment!

When it comes to GNS3, though, I'd say just make sure your IDLE PC is set. Once you do that you should be good. I occasionally still run a 6-8 router topology on GNS3 on my old desktop, which has 4GB of RAM, and is an Intel dual core (2.4ghz). With this relatively low powered machine, I still run at about 40% CPU, so you should be able to run pretty much anything you could ever think of with 16G of RAM.

Cheers for the info, is IOU freely available to use?

It's technically a cisco internal product (and for select customers), but it's out in the wild somewhere. I actively use GNS3 right now, but I've heard IOU is really stepping up with regards to Layer 2 functions- but as we mentioned earlier on this thread, it seems VIRL's release might just be IOU re-canned with better layer 2. If that happens..I'll jump ship!

Ah good stuff! and yes i probably would do the same!

Google can turn up interesting solutions if one is in search of IOU.

Did I say that?