Well, I finally passed my CCIE RS lab a few weeks ago. It was my second attempt; my first was in early December last year. It has been almost 14 months since I decided to go for the CCIE RS certification, and needless to say, I am very happy.
Firstly, I must admit to being a lurker here at techexam. I am not to familiar with the english language, so my confributions here have been slim to none. But I wanted to share my experience anyway, so here goes...:
I started doing Cisco certifications back in early 2009. Did the CCENT, CCNA, and a year later I was a CCNP. I then did the CCSP (CCNP Security), before drifting off into VMWare. My work has primarily been focused on virtualization, so it seemed like VMWare was the best path careerwise. After I while i started feeling the VMWare technology was kind of limited, so late in 2012 I decided to pick up my Cisco books again.
My work as a system admin hardly has any advanced networking, so I almost felt like I started from scratch again. I do a lot of Layer 2 stuff at work, but almost never any Layer 3 or other advanced networking technology. So I picked up my CCNP notes and started there. I even had to freshen up on several CCNA topics, but after I while it came back to me. I was great fun to see that most of the stuff that I learned during my early Cisco studies still stuck with me.
After brushing up on the CCNP topics, I dived into the new CCIE topics, first using Wendell Odoms CCIE Cert guide, and later supplying with more specific literature from the Cisco Website and internet technology blogs. I also had access to some lab workbooks that helped me practicing a lot of the the lab stuff. After about 6 months of studying, I took and passed the Written, and I felt like I could pass the lab any day. How wrong I was.... I started doing practice labs, and soon found out I had a long was to go before I was ready for the real thing. Let me just say - passing the written does not mean you are halfway there. The level of difficulty between written and lab is huge. HUGE! So it was back to the studyroom and back to practicing.
For the lab I used GNS for almost every L3-technology, and I had acces to a couple of 3560s and a buch of 3550s. The physical switches are a must, since GNS don't support L2 (yet). I used Network Visualizer from Routersim for my CCNA/CCNP, but it is useless for CCIE. So I needed physical switches. I also had the chance to combine GNS with VMWare, and this proved useful for QOS and a lot of the IP Services like syslog, snmp, netflow, and others.
In November I booked a lab (remote lab) i London, since this is more convenient than Brussels for me (I am Norwegian).
My first lab experience was overwhelming. I knew after 20 minutes that I wasn't going to pass troubleshooting, so I decided to use the lab a a learning experience, to see how it was set up and how Cisco presented the problems. I tried to solve the tickets, but I also spend a lot of time reading configs and examining the topology. Not to remember it, but to get familiar with the lab situation. When I started the config part, I had the same approach. Even though it was kind of disapointing to know that I was going to fail, it was still a great experience. I simply can not understand how people can pass on their first lab attempt. To me it was, like i said, overwhelming, but it gave me invaluable help on how to prepare for my next attempt.
On my way back home from London I got an email from Cisco that said they were announcing Ver5.0 of the CCIE RS. I decided there and then to book a new lab date, and I booked another remote lab, this time in Milan.
I spend the time between my two lab attempts to brush up on different technologies, like BGP, QOS, MPLS and IP Services. I also made some big topologies in GNS, and had coworkers mess them up so that I could try to get troubleshooting practice. This really helped, and I made some plans and strategies along the way the really became useful on the real lab.
In Milan, I showed up early, only to find that the five other lab takers were allready waiting outside the building. Everybody was tense and nobody talked to eachother. The proctor took us in and after a brief peptalk we started on the Troubleshooting. I felt good, and solved a lot of tickets rather quick. With 45 minutes left, I had only a couple of tickets left, but I was stuck. I felt the desperation coming, but I managed to solve all but one. I felt that I had the chance of passing going into the config section, and it really gave me a lot of energy. I started the config, and suddenly it was time for the lunch break. I felt good, and also got the chance to talk to the other test takers as well as the proctor. Turned out he was a 4xCCIE. Wow.
Anyway, time flew by, and I finished with about 30 minutes to go and started checking my configs. There were some sections where I had problems, and one that I didn't event attempt. I had a good feeling when I walk back to the hotel, but I got more and more uncertain as the evening went. I thought of things that I should have done different, and stuff that I knew I did wrong. I had a bad feeling going to sleep, and hardly slept at all in anticipation of the email I knew would come some time during the night. I am sure I checked my email once every 30 minutes, until I got the email from Cisco at around 3 am. I almost trembled while checking my Cisco account, so much that I wrote my password wrong two times. But there it was: PASS!
So there it is. I have my number, and I am extremly happy (and proud). 14 long months of late nights, long weekends and close to no social life, but it was sooo worth it.
I am a Cisco CCIE! Yeah!
