CCIE Data Center - home lab

Hey guys, Im getting pulled into more DC work. Im trying to find the best option here to learn it in a CCIE level. I dont think I want to take the test again.
Does anybody here build a DC home lab? Will VIRL or EVE-NG work?

So far INE have rack rentals. https://ine.com/products/rack-rentals?variant=25847785861
work book - https://ine.com/collections/workbooks/products/ccie-data-center-workbook

my problem with rack rentals is that I dont have time to work around its schedule.
Which would you guys recommend? I think I have 5-10k of investment to spend.

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Iristheangel

They don't have rack rentals. You will sign in and it'll say it's coming soon.... It's been "coming soon" for 1+ year now.

joelsfood

Building your own rack is prohibitively expensive, to say the least.

Back with v1, I think the cheapest rack I put together (single 7k, etc, so you'd have to work hard to get a full topology out of it), was something like 350k used.

Looking at v2, you start with a spine,a nd you're already over 10k (again, this is used prices)

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Cisco-N9K-C9336PQ-Nexus-9336-ACI-Spine-switch-with-36p-40G-QSFP-/232356683711?epid=1954504954&hash=item3619899fbf:g:QVcAAOSwDiBZMD6s

Unless you work at a partner and can convince Cisco to give you a lab out of Demo Depot, your best bet is rack rentals. And don't hold your breath on the INE racks. We're already a year past "Coming Soon!"

d4nz1g

we've run a few N7K in VIRL to take a look at VXLAN and EVPN, but i guess those virtual boxes can't do much (control plane ok + data plane issues for some features, etc)

i dont usually deal with 7ks, so i am a little bit outdated about protocol support and stuff like that for the virtual appliances.

here you can find good info on whats currently supported for those in virl:

https://learningnetworkstore.cisco.com/virlfaq/features

NOC-Ninja

I guess the only thing I can do for now is to create point to point so that I can lab the technology out.
Going through the INE CCIE DC, so far it is very close to RS technologies.
I have some DC devices at work but its not to a CCIE DC level.

Is there any other DC rack rentals available? Id really like to rent and lab it out since buying it is over my budget.

Also, I emailed narbik asking him to sell me his workbook and a rack rentals. So far, no reply.

MitM

I'm wondering if you have to take their bootcamp to get access to their DCv2 racks

Iristheangel

You do for the 7 days of the class but that's not enough. I know Micronics will be doing rack rentals soon enough for like $5/hour but there are some other free options:
- Dcloud.cisco.com - If you don't have DC labs, talk to someone at Cisco to give you access
- UCS Emulator - Free
- https://devnetsandbox.cisco.com/RM/Topology - Devnet sandbox

ninjaturtle

NOC-Ninja wrote: »

I guess the only thing I can do for now is to create point to point so that I can lab the technology out.
Going through the INE CCIE DC, so far it is very close to RS technologies.
I have some DC devices at work but its not to a CCIE DC level.

Is there any other DC rack rentals available? Id really like to rent and lab it out since buying it is over my budget.

Also, I emailed narbik asking him to sell me his workbook and a rack rentals. So far, no reply.

Unfortunately, Micronic's no longer sells the workbooks alone, you have to take the bootcamp to get the workbooks. I already asked Narbik a couple months ago, as I bought his R&S workbooks just to learn last year. His workbooks are epic! So I totally understand what you want them.

I built up the lab almost completely at work in my lab. I was just missing the compute part, actually just the FI's. I'm thinking about purchasing them myself and dropping them in my lab. I'm still waiting on work approval to see if they'll purchase them for me. But I was a shy on the N7K VDCs. I think I was 4 short, per the INE lab. Other than that I have the complete lab topology, all physical gear.

Cheers,

NOC-Ninja

I have to wait and start with the new employer. From there, I can ask their cisco contact and hope that I can get access to the DCloud.

ninjaturtle

NOC-Ninja wrote: »

I have to wait and start with the new employer. From there, I can ask their cisco contact and hope that I can get access to the DCloud.

So from my understanding, some DCloud content is available around the data center discipline, and some is not. This was the case for some SDA stuff I did a couple weeks ago. Went to ACI and SDA class, and we used the DCloud, which the instructor had to specifically add us to that DCloud pod.

I heard that GoldLABs was going away, and DCloud would replace it. I loved GoldLABs when I got access to it. I always needed a hookup for it. You know who you are that helped me with that, thank you very much!!

Cheers,