Re: CCIE #30131 - My Story - [Long Read]

Congrats!!!!

Regards,
Raghava Rao

-Sent from my Vodafone BlackBerry.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll.
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

-- Taken from "Invictus" by William Ernest Henley

-----Original Message-----
From: Jim Smith <jimsmiff_at_gmail.com>
Sender: nobody_at_groupstudy.com
Date: Sat, 24 Sep 2011 14:55:26
To: <ccielab_at_groupstudy.com>
Reply-To: Jim Smith <jimsmiff_at_gmail.com>
Subject: CCIE #30131 - My Story - [Long Read]

Hi Guys,

I've been a long-time lurker on this mailing list and have taken away
and used some cool stuff over time - both in the lab and in real-life
(yes there's a big distinction) so I thought I would try to give a
little bit back to encourage you on this difficult journey. First up,
I managed to pass first time, much to my complete surprise, so if you
take anything away from this rambling waffle know that it IS possible
and you CAN do it. Even if at times it seems like you'll never get
there - and I know that feeling oh too well :)

I'd like to apologise for the length of this, if it's too much just
delete it - I won't mind :)

A little bit about me. I got my CCNA in 2001, CCNP in 2004 (amazing
to me that we could go from dial-up modem pin-outs to today's advanced
technologies in 7 years) and then had a bit of a study-lull while I
travelled around a bit, moved from London to Sydney and worked in
various roles in the Enterprise and Telco space and these days at a
large Cisco reseller. In October 2009 I got a job punching a little
above my weight doing network design, implementation and consultancy
work and so I decided to pursue CCIE R&S so I could have some
confidence in myself and what I was implementing rather than just
flying by the seat of my pants a lot of the time.

The first thing I realised is most things I thought I knew, I really
didn't know well at all or worse was just plain wrong about, even as a
competent CCNP of many years.

DISCLAIMER - I am not suggesting for one second that the following
approach is the best one, or even a recommended one, it's just what
worked for me and I thought it might be of interest.

My Approach

For the written exam I studied the Cisco CCIE Routing and Switching
Certification Guide Fourth Edition and Routing TCP/IP vol 1 by Jeff
Doyle - that was enough to see me through.

July last year I started studying in earnest for the lab with a view
to having a shot at it in 12 months time. Cisco 360 was the only CCIE
training vendor material I used as well as the following resources -

Routing TCP/IP vol 1 - Jeff Doyle, Jennifer Carroll - I read this
three times in the end, what I enjoyed was that each time I returned
to it, I understood things that little bit more. Legendary book
Internet Routing Architectures 2nd Edition - Sam Halabi - Good intro to BGP
BGP Design and Implementation - Randy Zhang, Micah Bartell - Advanced
BGP book, gets pretty deep, pretty quick! In hindsight probably more
suited to the SP track but in my view you can never know too much.
Cisco QoS Exam Certification Guide, 2nd Edition - Wendell Odom,
Michael J Cavanagh - I had this anyway and sometimes use it as a
reference, good basic QoS guide, not everything you need though
Routing-Bits Handbook - Ruhann du Plessis - Brilliant book which
contains low-level technical detail on all of the topics in the R&S
Blueprint down to the command level. I used this a lot in the final
stages of preparation, awesome resource.

From July to December I just studied and read as well as watching all
of the videos on Cisco 360, a little bit of practical but not much, I
constructed my home network during this time too - I used Dynamips on
my laptop, a breakout switch (3550) and 2 x 3560s and 2 x 3550s. My
job can be incredibly full-on and to be honest I was kind of dipping
in to study as and when I could but not with any real structure, then
I made a huge mistake, I went overseas for three months, didn't think
about CCIE at all and put myself all the way back to square one.

So round about Feb / March of this year once I returned from overseas
I was still dipping in and out of study but with no real cohesion so I
decided enough was enough and booked the lab for 6 months time, this
was the point at which I really started to take it seriously and in my
opinion is an essential step to focusing the mind to the task at hand.
 To pass the lab requires such a level of intensity that I think is
hard to generate without the pressure of that looming lab date. At
this stage I decided I'd done enough "learning" so to speak and now it
was time to get practical and pick up anything I hadn't learnt or had
missed along the way through practical experience rather than through
reading or watching videos etc. I guess I should say I have been very
hands-on with most networking technologies for the best-part of a
decade so it's not like the CLI was a new thing to me, 6 months would
probably be too short a time if I had less experience but it was
enough for me in my personal situation to get through it.

The last 6 months of my life up to last Thursday has consisted of
practice lab after practice lab after practice lab after practice lab.
 I told everyone I know in the world I was disappearing for 6 months
and created a schedule of 2 x 8 hr practice labs each Saturday and
Sunday up to the date of the real thing. The first thing that took me
by surprise was how hard those labs were, especially at first, 8 hour
labs were sometimes taking me a whole weekend, sometimes more, once
again I was struck by how little I actually knew, the gaps in my
knowledge seemed to be getting larger and larger, not smaller, the
deeper I got in to it. I would spend weeknights - work and partner
permitting - going over the lab explanations and reading about the
things I had got wrong, or just plain couldn't do, always using the
Cisco Configuration Guides and Command References to look up formal
explanations of things. This is very important and I can't stress it
enough, if you don't know how to do something and you need to look it
up, do not Google it, use the Cisco documentation on their website,
this is all you will have available to you in the lab and you need to
know it back to front (what used to be and still often is known as the
Doc CD).

With a few months to go I was starting to be able to finish the
practice labs in around about 8 hrs, nowhere near good enough but
getting closer, to get to this stage was HARD. There were so many
times I would get stuck on a problem for hours and hours and would
almost hit the point of despair but I would stick at it, trying things
out, learning the alternatives, I realise now this is what the labs
are designed to do, force you to learn all of your options, if you
don't know all of them, for every technology (certainly the core
topics) you will fail. At this point I started to try to focus on
what the real lab would be like, so I would give myself an 8 hr
deadline for a practice lab and I would treat it like the real thing,
really putting myself under pressure and trying to do things quickly
and accurately, learning how to leave a 2 point advanced question for
later in order to keep making progress through the scenarios. There
is SO much to get through, it is really important not to get bogged
down on a minor issue for hours, this is a difficult thing to do for
us engineers, we like to keep plugging away at things until they're
fixed to our level of satisfaction, you must be more pragmatic in the
lab - time is short and it flies by quicker than you can imagine. The
troubleshooting portion is an extreme example of this, you need to fix
8 out of 10 tickets in 2 hours, time-management is so important, if
it's not happening, move on, I came so close to failing this section
because I spent too long on a few things and started to panic.

In the run-up to the lab I took 3 weeks off work and devised a
schedule of 5 straight practice labs, one per day and then a day of
reading / study and configuring anything I'd had issues with over the
course of the previous labs. If there was a question or scenario that
I didn't get 100% right I would read the entire Configuration Guide
making sure I knew all of the commands and recommended configuration
examples. The other thing I did was print out the CCIE Lab blueprint
and went through every single item rating my knowledge of each one, if
I didn't feel I knew something well, I would read the Config Guide and
also practice a quick config on my home network, just to familiarise
myself with the commands again. Two days before the lab I stopped
everything, no more study, no more practical, if you're not ready with
2 days to go you're not going to learn anything new in that time, you
need to go in to battle with a fresh mind (a 2nd try CCIE - and a
brilliant one at that - gave me that advice and I thank him for it).

I could say a lot more but I'm going to leave it here, a few words
about the lab itself (mindful of NDA of course) and then some tips
from me and then I'll leave you in peace.

The Lab

Be under no illusions, this is the hardest scenario you are ever going
to encounter in your career for two reasons. Firstly it is
technically very challenging, for the config section you must know
your Layer 2 technologies, IGPs and basic BGP so well that you can
configure them and all of their options without thinking, there is no
time to be dwelling on this stuff and you need to knock it out to
build your confidence levels and give you time for the advanced stuff
that comes later. Likewise for troubleshooting, the scenarios are not
as technically tricky but you have on average 12 mins a ticket, there
isn't time to be wondering about things, you must know it, it must be
there at your fingertips. Secondly, and this is what very nearly did
for me, there is the mental aspect of the test. In my opinion your
ability to be pushed to the limits and stay calm is being tested, the
pressure is there from the first minute you start the test, I found
the troubleshooting knocked me for six, I panicked in the first 20
minutes and I had to fight to stay calm for the rest of the day. In
some ways it's a battle with yourself, be ready for it. It is
designed to trick you and to force you in to mistakes, it is
structured so that something you may do with an hour to go may break
something you did an hour in, you must be calm to detect this, it's
hard. But it's possible, it is just a test at the end of the day, all
mountains can be climbed :)

Anyway, I think I've said enough, one of the greatest feelings of my
life was seeing the word PASS appear a few hours after the lab. I
just about hit the roof and I'm not sure I've totally floated back
down again yet, it's still sinking in to be honest and I'm not sure I
will ever do something that is as tough but ultimately as rewarding.
Good Luck!

My Tips

- Know the documentation back to front, it can save you if you know
where to look
- Know the core fundamentals well enough that you can configure them
without thinking (Layer 2, IGPs, BGP)
- Learn time management, you must be able to leave something and come
back to it later, don't get stuck on a minor thing
- Read the questions slowly and then re-read them again. I am a quick
reader and I struggled with this, there are hidden tricks and issues
in most scenarios, you must not miss them
- Understand the guidelines and limitations. They will tell you what
you cannot do very clearly, remember this. Anything else is fair game
- Don't solve a something you have been asked to solve. For example,
if routing is sub-optimal and they haven't asked you to make it
optimal - leave it, you have bigger fish to fry
- Do not take troubleshooting lightly. This was a killer for me, it's
the first thing you do and it can knock you right off balance. Be
ready. The proctor told me so many people can get through the config
but fail TS, I'm not surprised to be honest
- Don't give up. At times it can seem like you just can't get through
it all - you can, it's amazing how quickly you can knock off 4 or 5
sections, don't be intimidated by the amount of content.
- Breathe :)

All the best,

James Smith
CCIE #30131

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Received on Sat Sep 24 2011 - 05:13:57 ART