BCVRE Passed

I took the Brocade Certified vRouter Engineer exam today. Passed with an 80% after about a week and a half of study. I would say that with a CCNA and a couple weeks of study, anyone could easily pass this one. The pass score is a REALLY low percentage and I easily passed with a 80%. The only two things I scored low on was upgrading the system :P and NAT. I didn't remember the upgrade requirements too well and NAT I could configure easily enough but I was hazy on some other Brocade-specific stuff.

Oh well... a pass is a pass. At least I come out of it with a better understanding of Brocade's CLI. Not a huge fan of it but it's always good to know more since they do have a footprint out there.

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mistabrumley89

Congrats

J_86

Do you do this as part of the free exam? Is the material they provided all you used?

Iristheangel

This was the free exam. I only used the study materials they provided. About 5 hours of videos and the BCVRE nutshell pdf. I set up 4 vRouters on VMware to play around with the configs. Here's the general topology (pardon my messy handwriting):

I played around with vifs between vRouter 3 and 4, configured my "WAN" interface on vRouter 1 for DHCP, the firewall feature on vRouter 3, configured different areas of OSPF between some of the routers (this wasn't on the exam but since I know OSPF a bit more indepth, I decided to play), NAT on vRouter 1 from the LAN to the WAN (masquerade), originated a default route from vRouter 1 into OSPF, played around with port aggregation, etc.

You get the idea. I only really needed to play around hands-on for a couple of days. I also took some decent notes from the videos. The Nutshell guide doesn't go into OSPF or firewalling in as much detail as the videos and you definitely need to know both for the exam so I would recommend watching the videos first and using the nutshell pdf as review.

Here are my notes from the videos: https://app.box.com/s/ok6b0wpy6xtfmvpf3fz8

IMAG0073.jpg

J_86

Awesome, thanks for sharing! Starting working on this today.

mihir009

Hi Iristheangel ,

Can I pass the Exam with reading your notes and also with nutshell pdf.
Is ur note is sufficient to pass the exam without seeing the videos?

jaywalker

*Taking notes on how to take notes* Very detailed, thank you!

Iristheangel

My notes, some labbing, and the nutshell guide should be plenty if you have an existing CCNA. If you don't, I'd recommend watching the videos so you can have a lot of the networking concepts explained to you. I really didn't notate the theory as much because I had those concepts down

spiderjericho

Thanks for the insight and notes, Iris. I want to take the exam maybe tail end of the week/beginning of next. I'll fire up some VMs and plow through the course.

Congrats on the speed bump...err certification along your CCNP Data Center studies.

Vask3n

Congrats on the pass, this parked my interested in the exam again!

Edit: Sparked, not parked, lol

Iristheangel

@Spider and Vask3n - Given your certifications and experience, I'm sure you can polish this exam off in a week or week and a half if you wish

Krusader

Congrats on the pass.
Brocade's CLI is very similar to cisco's. It's just Vyatta Router that's different, kinda looks more like JunOS

evarney

@ Iris
I would agree that having multiple venders certs across the board can't hurt careerwise. I hear alot of places are looking to get off one product line and move to another vendor all together or end up w/ a either a Hetereogenous network with a more robust core or a homogeneous network all together when the economia is on the up turn.

I've taken the BCNE and it was a joke. Its evident that they wanted to give the cert away to get more of a market share but I'll take another cert for the portfolio. I had worked in a large Foundry LAN network with Fast Irons and Big Irons long enough to migrate the entire access layer (some 300 switches) and core/distro layer to Cisco and so that exam was nothing.

May I ask what hardware was required to build this lab?

RouteMyPacket

What can I say, some people like the low hanging fruit.

mistabrumley89

Can't beat free. Spun up some VM's and started watching the training material. Brocade exams are rather easy though. Always such a low passing score. Usually in the upper 50% to low 60%. Scheduled my exam for Sept 10th. Gonna take it before I finish off TSHOOT.

RouteMyPacket wrote: »

What can I say, some people like the low hanging fruit.

I have to go for the low hanging fruit. I can't jump that high yet. Let me get some serious experience like some of you have and I'll be able to jump over trees like you haha.

Iristheangel

@evarney - No hardware needed. It's all VMs. You're right. The exam is a joke at 60-something percent for a pass. I did it to learn a bit more about Brocade's CLI but it's pretty obvious that it's an easy pass.

@RouteMyPacket - Forget the CCIE. It's all about the BCVRE.

zcarenow

Iristheangel wrote: »

@evarney - No hardware needed. It's all VMs. You're right. The exam is a joke at 60-something percent for a pass. I did it to learn a bit more about Brocade's CLI but it's pretty obvious that it's an easy pass.

@RouteMyPacket - Forget the CCIE. It's all about the BCVRE.

how long did it take you to study for this? so just the training modules and vrouter stuff that brocade provided and it should be good enough to pass? no practice tests? thanks.

Iristheangel

Took me a whopping 1.5 weeks of study. You're good to go with the training modules, nutshell guide and vRouter VM they provide. The pass score is 62% so it's low hanging fruit as one guy mentioned before

zcarenow

Iristheangel wrote: »

Took me a whopping 1.5 weeks of study. You're good to go with the training modules, nutshell guide and vRouter VM they provide. The pass score is 62% so it's low hanging fruit as one guy mentioned before

Thanks...appreciate it.

Iristheangel

I'm thinking about taking the Brocade Ethernet Fabric Professional one now. It's free (Code: CEF250EthFabric) and the guide is about 100 pages. I don't work in a place where I'm going to be configuring Brocade by any means but I definitely will get some recognition for cross-training. What others said about Brocade exams is right. It all looks like low hanging fruit. Even their "architect" exams only require a 62% to pass. They're definitely using certification for marketing, not to actually challenge you.

zcarenow

IristheAngel

I agree. The good thing though is that maybe in a year or two, their products might be in more demand and prices drop since i heard their products are expensive, but working in an oil and gas firm, our company uses Brocade quite a bit though i do mainly sys admin work. Once their products take off, we can see a demand in brocade certification and by that time, you will be in a good spot having been certified already.

Iristheangel

I don't really see them taking off much more than they have now. They're already known for lower prices so I don't see that being the issue keeping them from market domination. They've got a lot of support issues. They bought Foundry a while ago in an attempt to get into the route/switch space but they never rally took off from there. One poster called them "Broke Aid" for a reason.

That being said, it can't hurt to know their CLI because you never know when you'll run across them in a troubleshooting situation and it's nice to be able to get around the CLI.

it_consultant

Keep in mind what BCVRE is, it is a debian based firewall/router. Brocade bought the company Vyatta a year ago and this was their signature product. It is known to be used as a virtual router/firewall in datacenters where having hundreds of physical routers isn't feasible and paying for VMWARE's router is also too expensive. It isn't a drop in replacement for any hardware firewall unless you are cool with your main router being run on commodity silicon, which if you think about it, many firewalls already run on a plain old intel chip so it shouldn't really cause any great issue with SMB clients. If you are looking for a like to like comparison with Cisco then this is not the correct certification or product. The product that directly competes with Cisco routers are the netiron CER series and the MLX-E series which underpin a good deal of the internet. For example, if you live in San Francisco and enjoy internet access there is a good chance your traffic is going through an MLX-E.

mistabrumley89

All I have to say is wow.... The CLI in the Vyatta is much more different than the typical Brocade XMR/MLX/FastIrons/BigIrons/NetIrons I have worked with. I felt alienated. It was a very uncomfortable place to be. If this was the only Brocade device I had touched, I would have never enjoyed it.

niru.win

Hi Iris,

Thank you for the excellent notes. I am just in prep for BCVRE and planning to hit it in a week or two. I got the 60 day trial of .iso image but it doesnt work with the VMware I have. Spent lot of time debugging it and fed up. Now I need to know if I can pass the exam without working hands-on with the Vrouter software.

- I have work exp in configuring Cisco routers. So, pretty OK with these basic config CLI's on a Cisco device.
- HAve done CCNA already and OK with the concepts in this certification.
- Will go through 5hr videos twice, read nutshell and notes by IRIS without a hands-on.

Will I pass ?

I just want to know if the exam specifically tests with something that can be answered only when a person did hands-on. Like, ordering a group of CLI's in which they had to be configured, hitting the CLIs in the router (if a Vrouter is given in the exam) and answering based on its output, etc.

Others who passed the exam. Any suggestions ?

Iristheangel

I'd recommend getting your hands on VMWare Workstation 10. That's what I used and I had no issues running the Vyatta routers. As far as CCNA-level knowledge, you would have enough to understand most of the theory but not the commands. Brocade's regular IOS resembles Cisco IOS quite a bit but the Vyatta vRouter is a little different. Brocade purchased Vyatta a year or two back so their IOS is a bit different. I would say that it resembles Juniper more than it resembles Cisco IOS.

Could you pass just watching the videos and reading notes? Probably. The passing score is something ridiculously low like 50-60%. Plus you could just reuse the exam voucher code to retake the exam into oblivion. But would you learn anything that would stick getting the minimum score or brute forcing the test? Unlikely. I would recommend some hands on labbing just to retain it a bit more.

niru.win

Iristheangel wrote: »

I'd recommend getting your hands on VMWare Workstation 10. That's what I used and I had no issues running the Vyatta routers. As far as CCNA-level knowledge, you would have enough to understand most of the theory but not the commands. Brocade's regular IOS resembles Cisco IOS quite a bit but the Vyatta vRouter is a little different. Brocade purchased Vyatta a year or two back so their IOS is a bit different. I would say that it resembles Juniper more than it resembles Cisco IOS.

Could you pass just watching the videos and reading notes? Probably. The passing score is something ridiculously low like 50-60%. Plus you could just reuse the exam voucher code to retake the exam into oblivion. But would you learn anything that would stick getting the minimum score or brute forcing the test? Unlikely. I would recommend some hands on labbing just to retain it a bit more.

Thanks Iris. I am getting the trial of VMware workstation 10. Will let you know if it worked for me.

And the promo code is applicable only once. You cant use it to get the exam for free for more than 1 attempt. Confirmed with Brocade certification centre through email.

mokaz

Hi all,

Took the exam yesterday and passed it with 90%. Invested roughly 20 hours in this having solid networking skills already..
All in all a good experience and for free its always welcome.

i've used this:

Iris noted (found them around these forums, thanks Iris )
BCVRE nutshell document
BCVRE online trainings from Brocade

Best regards,
m.

ccnpninja

Congrats Iristheangel

Shiamak27

Can Someone please suggest me How to get going with the preparation for BCVRE Because This is my first certification exam. Any suggestions p,ease. I am stuck in this and I need some help

.

I got some stuffs from IRIS notes and they are really helping me out But need some serious suggestions.

J.Tot

Currently studying for this, I scheduled my exam for OCt 30th but I'm going to be pushing it up. Didn't realize how easy this is.

As someone with an expired CCNA this is cakewalk. A lot of it is just learning the syntax and the order of it.