From: John Jones (acer0001@gmail.com)
Date: Fri Jun 22 2007 - 23:18:15 ART
Interesting background Colin. The company I work for has interests in the
storage world and recently the Cisco variety. I was considering at one time
doing the Storage IE after R&S, but first things first (the R&S). Is it just
me or do others think about the next challenge even before finishing the one
they're on?
John
On 6/20/07, Colin McNamara <colin@2cups.com> wrote:
>
> My background is all over the place. It goes from running a small ISP
> when I was 18 to managing international CallManager clusters, to
> enterprise data center design and migrations. I swear that I have tech
> ADD. I see something new and I am like.. oooooh shiny, lets do a sniff
> and see how it works.
>
> I actually attempted the Route Switch lab twice in 2002 (still had token
> ring and dlsw still) but got activated for the war before I could get my
> number. I can tell you.. that sucked horribly.
>
> So, why did I choose to get my Storage CCIE first instead of finishing
> up my Route Switch first? Well, over the past couple years I have done a
> significant amount of IP storage (NFS, ISCSI, ATA over Ethernet, etc)
> including building my own IP storage heads based on linux. I had also
> done a little bit of fiber channel work. I felt that I had a significant
> advantage compared to most network engineers in the storage networking
> space. And, I think more importantly, the topics that I had to study
> were new and fresh. Whereas when I cracked open my Route Switch books..
> I honestly wasn't to excited about it at the time ( I think I was
> holding a grudge from my first attempts in 2002).
>
> The partner e-learning central portion of Cisco has an Excellent lab
> access to labgear.net. It gives you 2 hour segments of time with 2 mds's
> (both with IPS blades), 1 2 port jbod, and 2 2 port servers. They also
> have introductory tutorials for most major technology segments.
>
> I did all of those, along with the every E-learning class that was on
> PEC. I think the major ones were the Design, Support, and CASSI classes.
> I took that, sat for the design and support specialist exams, and took
> my written last December.
>
> After doing all that work, I was honestly 70% there. I took a little
> break for january and febuary (There was no open lab dates) and then
> started hitting the labs I think at the end of febuary.
>
> For the majority of my practice I used the labs available through PEC. I
> also was able to weasel my way into 8 hour sessions every sunday from
> our channel SE. (I owe him plenty of drinks at networkers this year) For
> those 8 hour sessions I had labs created to summarize the major
> technology areas and to be as evil as possible to myself.
>
> I had one attempt which didn't work out as well as I would have liked.
> In RTP the lab starts at 7:15. This means if you are from the west coast
> like I am you will be getting up at 3:00 am in the morning for your lab.
> That royally kicked my but. I diverted from my attack plan and ended up
> running out of time. It was a classic example of letting the lab run
> you, instead of you running the lab.
>
> Luckily a data opened up just over a month later. I spent that time just
> working on my speed (speed is the secret sauce). I migrated to using
> Fabric Manager (gui interface) instead of command line. After 2 practice
> runs my time had dropped 25%. I also flew out to RTP 3 days before, and
> made sure to relax and get on east coast time.
>
>
> For my final prep I got access to iementor's lab. Their lab is
> excellent. I cannot reinforce enough how much it contributed to my
> confidence in that final week. Roman was really cool about working with
> an existing candidate to get me squeezed in. They are really cool guys,
> and they have the only workbook on the market right now.
>
> So, I used their lab 2 days before mine, and then just chilled the day
> before. The day of the lab I had 70 points by lunch, and had completed
> configuration of the lab by 12:30. I spent the rest of the day reviewing
> my configurations (found 2 errors), fixing one bug, and generally
> harassing the proctor to make sure I didn't misinterpret anything.
>
> So.. if I had it all to do over again what would I do.
> I would still do the PEC stuff, and continue to primarily live in the
> Doc CD. Though I would probably pony up the cash and buy the iementor
> book and more lab time with them.
>
> --Colin
>
> On Wed, 2007-06-20 at 12:34 -0500, Scott Thornton wrote:
> > Welcome to the group!
> >
> > If you don't mind me asking, what material did you use for the Storage
> > IE? I've been looking at pursuing that. What was your background
> > prior to taking it? Can you recommend any material to purchase?
> >
> > Thanks!
> >
> > On 6/20/07, Colin McNamara <colin@2cups.com> wrote:
> > Good morning,
> >
> > My name is Colin, I currently hold my CCIE in Storage
> > Networking, and
> > live in San Diego. I am planning on making my Route Switch
> > attempts in
> > the late fall (haven't really decided on a date yet).
> >
> > I look forward to studying with the people on this list
> >
> > --
> > Regards,
> > Colin McNamara
> > CCIE #18233
> > "The difficult we do immediatly, the impossible just takes a
> > little longer"
> >
> >
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> >
> > --
> > Scott C Thornton
> >
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