Passed the lab, some tips: "a week before the lab".

First of all I want to say thank you guys, all and each of you contributed
in my number: CCIE#27705

I'd like to share my "story".

1.5 months ago I took the lab in RTP and failed the TS but passed the
configs. I was so confident about the TS that I thought I'd have an hour
spare time. When I got to the 3rd ticket I realized that I'm going to need
that "spare hour". During the TS it felt like the clock was going 1.5 times
faster, no bathroom, no going to a breakroom. (in RTP the bathroom is kind
of far, not like in SJC - across the hole.) The config section took me over
5.5 hours, I had about 20 minutes to verify. All this 6 hours I was worried
that I had only 8 tkt solved and most-likely some of them are incorrect, but
I was trying to stay as positive as I could be. On the plane home overall
feeling was that I failed both sections, because I didn't have enough time
to verify the configs and not enough tickets solved. The next day I got the
results and I was ready to see "FAIL".

I booked the next attempt in 6 weeks in SJC since the RTP was booked until
February. I took it easy for a week or so, than started building a TS
scenarios with 30+ devices and all possible trouble tickets. A friend of
mine Charlie (who passed as well) and I used the approach : "To become a
criminal you must think like a criminal". You'll be surprised how much you
can learn by "breaking" stuff for your buddy. So what we did is we made a
.net topology in dynamips with 30 + routers, put some preconfigs (basic
routing, BGP, MPLS etc..), we also included almost all possible "ip
services" and other "stuff" that you see on the blueprint. Each of us made
2 full TS scenarios for each other. By a "full TS scenarios" I mean 16+
tickets, and we made the tickets a bit harder that we experienced in the
lab. A week before the lab each of us had 2 "Super-sessions", 2 hours TS + 6
hours configs, (let your friend to pick the lab for your, whichever vendor
you use). These "super-sessions" with harder that in reality TS helped a
lot (we did it twice with one day delay). I'd recommend not to touch the
keyboard 2 days before the lab.

SJC, the TS session started, 10 minutes passed 2 or 3 tickets done, power
outage :), believe it or not, I didn't worried at all, I went and made some
tea (another tip, don't drink coffee if you don't usually drink it, it
WON"T make you smarter/faster), went to the bathroom. It took the proctors
20 minutes to fix the issue, we got lucky - the configs were saved but I
verified each solved ticket, just to make sure. I finished the TS with 30
minutes left. The clock was going 0.8 times slower this time, everything was
like in a slow motion, I don't know maybe because our TS was too hardcore
than the real one. The config part was fun, went to the proctors like 20
times, it wasn't clear, looks like somebody from another planet wrote it.
(my first attempt the lab was very clear, I went to the proctor only 3-4
times). Before going to the proctor made 3 different versions of the
question in your head and be prepared to hear "I can't tell you it", "do
what the question says". Take a moment and really think how to rephrase the
same question, show the proctor that you know the "stuff" and you just need
some small details to make the right decision.

For preparation I used 4x3550 and dynamips, I made a little blog about it
ccie4you.info , for stuff that don't work on 3550 or Dynamips rented a real
rack a couple of times. Use SRS twice a day, I used Anki, so far it's the
best I've seen. (My anki deck has like 1300 cards).

Again, thank you all.

Blogs and organic groups at http://www.ccie.net
Received on Mon Dec 13 2010 - 21:03:27 ART