Passed CCIE Storage!! Triple CCIE!

After a little over 3 months of intense preparation I passed the CCIE Storage
lab today! Officially making me a triple CCIE :-D
I can't describe how happy I am at the moment as it was a very intense wait
for the results as this one is hand graded, so you don't get the results
overnight.

For preparation I used the Cisco Press titles on SAN, the excellent Fibre
Channel Bench Reference Guide and the ieMentor Storage Workbook and
Walkthrough Guide.

If you are preparing for storage be sure that you really build up your speed
as the storage lab is quite complex in terms of questioning as there are
usually multiple possibilities to solve things and they are very much looking
for 1 specific solution (it's the same in all tracks, but I found that in
particular with this one).
They really ask you about the whole blueprint! If you are familiar and
comfortable with the ieMentor labs you have all the technical knowledge you
need, just pay very close attention to the tasks and what you are doing.

As of hardware, together with Tyson Scott we build 2 full-scale racks with 3
MDS switches that we can do about 85-90% of all technologies. I also used the
ieMentor vRack a couple times to practice a few extra features that we didn't
have licenses for. That rack unfortunately doesn't hold a Storage Services
Module (SSM) or Generation 2 linecards (where you have to deal with
oversubscription).

I'd like to thank Tyson Scott for his support and building and maintaining the
racks, Roman Rodichev for his excellent workbook and personal support/coaching
and Antonella Corno for her alltime support on the Cisco Learning Network
community and the fantastic sessions she teaches almost every week.

--
Regards,
Rick Mur
CCIE3 #21946 (R&S / Service Provider / Storage)
Sr. Support Engineer  IPexpert, Inc.
URL: http://www.IPexpert.com
Blogs and organic groups at http://www.ccie.net