CCIE R & S Lab v4 Beta Review

Another review on the R&S Lab version 4. This time from Wendell Odom at NetworkWorld.


http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/46561

A Sneak Peek at the CCIE R/S Lab

Wendell's Fun Time Beta Testing the New CCIE R/S Lab

By wendell on Wed, 10/21/09 - 10:58am.

CCIE R&S Version 4 Beta Review

https://learningnetwork.cisco.com/thread/8262

A review covering a Beta experience of the CCIE R&S updates over at the Cisco Learning Network by

Denise Donohue

"For those who don’t know me, I’ve been a CCIE since mid-2002 and am the co-author of several CiscoPress books, including “CCIE Route/Switch Exam Certification Guide 4^th edition”, “Cisco Voice Gateways and Gatekeepers”, and “CCNP Quick Reference Sheets”.  I recently took the beta of the new version 4.0 CCIE R/S lab exam to offer feedback to Cisco.  With their approval, I'd like to offer my impressions to those preparing for, or considering, the CCIE R/S lab exam.  A big caveat – my job does not routinely involve configuration anymore, and I didn’t get a chance to study until on the flight there, so a prepared candidate’s experience will definitely vary from mine! 

Overall, I was favorably impressed.  It has some cool and interesting new features.  The most visible difference is the computer interface.  All documentation is web-based now, including the lab instructions.  No more binder on the desk.  The main web page has the overall diagram and links to instructions and documentation.  You click on a router to open a SecureCRT console session with it. There is also a link to manage the devices (reboot one, for example.) You can access CCO documentation from a link on the main page also.  You can’t search CCO, though, unfortunately.

I didn’t know what to expect from the core questions since they weren’t on the lab when I took it seven years ago, but I thought they would be trivial.  They weren’t.  But they also were well within what one would expect someone sitting the exam to know easily. 

The two-hour troubleshooting section is new for the one-day exam and follows the core questions.  There are multiple trouble tickets, all relating to the same network so you don’t have to learn a new network for each one.  You can do them in any order. I felt that the questions were fairly representative of things you might run across in a production environment.  If you’ve set up your own lab and done all the experimenting you should while studying, you’ve probably already made most possible mistakes anyway!  Probably the best way to ace the troubleshooting section is to have a very in-depth knowledge of all the technologies covered in the lab.  One thing you should know is that the computer closes the exam exactly at the end of two hours.  You don’t have any wiggle room to finish things up, so keep an eye on the time.  If you finish early, you can end that portion and start the configuration portion of the lab.

The configuration portion is the last 5 ½ hours.  I found it easy to get used to the web interface and having the instructions on the screen rather than on paper.  The monitor screens are big enough that you can have multiple windows open at once. However, it was annoying to move the windows to see the lab diagram.  If the actual lab doesn’t offer a paper version of the diagram, I recommend that you draw your own. The equipment was sometimes a little slow in responding to commands, because the actual routers and switches are in San Jose and I took the exam in RTP.  It was nothing to worry about, just something to be aware of.  I think the equipment has been remote for a while now, so if you’ve taken the lab recently then it’s familiar to you.  The equipment sat beside us when I took my lab.  There are some new technologies in the blueprint, and the configuration part is two hours shorter, so one would expect that portion to be scaled back somewhat. 

Studying for version 4.0 should be no different than studying for the CCIE lab has always been - know the core routing, switching, and WAN technologies cold. Practice them until you can do them in your sleep.  Then tackle all the other things on the blueprint, paying attention to the odd and unusual things you can do with them.  As always, having a strong understanding of as many technologies, techniques, and IOS features as possible gives you time to research the tasks you’ve never heard of. 

Good luck with your exam!  I'm interested to hear about your experiences with it!

CCIE R&S Updates from Cisco and CCBOOTCAMP

Link to recorded version for version 4.0 (may be a little while before being posted)

https://ciscosales.webex.com/ciscosales/lsr.php?AT=pb&SP=EC&rID=40520377&rKey=4a695ccb75726703

Some of the items that were discussed:

Lora O'Haver
- New economic conditions
- Intense competition for the BEST Human Capital
- Employers need to identify and develop talent
- Individuals need to adapt and enhance their value
- 15 years of performance based testing
- Avergae salary in US of 120,330 up 8% from 2007
- CCIE salary premium is 20% higher worldwide than network engineers without certification
- Numbers from Certification Magazine and PayScale.com
- Revision is key to program to align job tasks, deliver services, and encourage skill building and career development
- Network Engineering is often a path to specialist roles, or network architecture, and management

Maurilio Gorito
- New Skills - planning and evaluating network changes, performance routing, optimized edge routing, EIGRPv6, IPv6 Multicast, MPLS and Layer 3 VPN as non core items
- Equipment upgrade to ISR running 12.4(T) and 3560 Catalyst IOS 12.2 Advanced IP Services
- Scenario based questions added to Written Exam
- Troubleshooting added to Lab Exam, to be done on virtual environment like dynamips but better
- Less emphasis on professional level tasks
- Lab exam to remain 8 hours, short answer - 30 min, troubleshooting- 2 hours, configuration- 5.5 hours
- Troubleshooting includes multiple scenarios described through "trouble tickets" to diagnose and resolve faults on preconfigured topology, network must be operational to receive credit
- CCIE v4.0 blueprint publsihed May 5, 2009 and exames will be released on October 18, 2009
- Troubleshooting scenario coverage

Rick Smith
- Cisco 360 Learning Program and 4.0 changes
- Enhanced preassessment lab, performance assessments, and revised instructor-led workshops
- 5 additional lab added to workbook, 2 new self-paced lessons, and new content to reference library
- Cisco 360 LabSafe Program to cover a failed lab attempt, for those who complete all 4 performance labs and score 80% on 1 of them, and have instructor recommendation.
- Cisco 360 program coming to Security track in 2010, and announcements to come in ~November
- Cisco 360 LabSafe program will expire July 31st 2010
- Cisco 360 LabSafe program is not available to Cisco Employees

Brad Ellis
- Why did CCBOOTCAMP join the Cisco 360 Program
- High quality contentn alignedd with the exam, dedicated development team of CCIEs, and auto graded assessment lab
- Expecting CCIE Lab to change more frequently
- 11 years of CCIE training experience, largest authorized provide in the world, instructors are also field engineers, $7M in Cisco lab hardware, and a dedicated student coordinator
- Offer written Exam preparation and boot camp
- Discussed lab approach and methodology

Dawn Tesar
- Discussed CCBOOTCAMP training options
- 3 learning options, self-paced, self-paced with instructor led training, and instructor training only.
- 3 learning packes, premium, preferred, and essentials

General Statements and Questions
- CCIE Number Growth - cisco's opinion is that world does not have enough CCIE's to handle the growing world and all technology interaction and it intertwines where it did not use to in the past.
- There is documentation access during troubleshooting just like for the configuration section.
- Between 9 to 12 "trouble tickets" for the troubleshooting section.
- Need to pass all 3 sections individually to pass the lab, but still will not find out until after all is completed
- OEQ 4 questions, need 3 of 4 to pass, get direct to the point, i.e dont write a book
- Troubleshooting, 20-25 points, does not include switches in virtual environment, expect 30 routers, but that number to isolate trouble tickets so fixing one ticket will not effect another ticket
- Configuration, 70-75 points, items slightly lessened to account for less time allocated for this section
- MPLS is non-core topic and will simply need base configurations, as well as other new topics
- Configuration portion will be looked at to move to virtualized environment like the troubleshooting section, but no plans at this time

360 Lab Safe Promotion:

http://www.ccbootcamp.com/360/cisco-lab-safe.html

MPLS Video on Demand for V4 Blueprint:

http://www.ccbootcamp.com/news/mpls.html

For any additional questions/concerns/comments on the webinar, please post them here:

http://www.routerie.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=101;t=000001

Article on Cisco IOS 15.0 by Michael Morris at Network World

Article from Michael Morris at Network World on Cisco IOS 15.0
http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/45883

A copy of the text.:


Cisco today released IOS 15.0. This is the next major release after 12.4. It's been over 4 years since Cisco has delivered a major release of IOS code. 12.4 was released in May of 2005. Apparently Cisco was not interested in using the 12.5 name; or 13.0 or 14.0 names. I can't really say why this is. Perhaps internal code work in Cisco had a few other main line releases in the last 4-years that never materialized into real products.
15.0 includes a few new supported hardware devices and a large set of new software features.
Cisco removed only two software features in 15.0 - AppleTalk Phase I & II and Service Selection Gateway (SSG). I doubt anyone will be missing those. If you are still running AppleTalk forever live in shame after reading this blog. ;-)
There are a few notable hardware lines that are not supported in 15.0. The 2600XM, 3600, and 3700-series routers are now officially gone. A complete list of memory requirements and supported hardware in each router line is provided also.
Oh, and yes, there are those bugs...or as Cisco likes to call them in a new IOS release, "caveats". Here are a few scary ones (with my pithy comments of course):

CSCso97304
Symptoms: Configuring and unconfiguring hierarchical QoS may cause memory leak on a Cisco router.
Conditions: This symptom occurs on a Cisco router that is running Cisco IOS Release 12.4(15)T4.
Workaround: There is no workaround.
Hope you like your current QoS policy.

CSCsu66197
Symptoms: Cyclic redundancy check (CRC) errors increment on Cisco 2800 router.
Conditions: Occurs during normal operation.
Workaround: There is no workaround.
That's sort of the catch-all bug.

CSCsz38342
Symptoms: FTP traffic is not policy routed.
Conditions: Above symptom is seen on Cisco routers configured for local PBR with set IP next-hop clause.
Workaround: Add a static route to the next-hop network
ADD A STATIC ROUTE??? That's like my idea to fix anything with a tunnel!

CSCsz97091
Symptoms: Packet drop occurs when show version, show run, and write memory commands are issued.
Conditions: Packet drop will be observed as input errors accounted as overruns. The rate of packets being dropped will be proportional to the rate of traffic.
Workaround: There is no workaround.
New policy - no CLI use on the routers anymore. HTTP for everyone!!!

---

Ok, back to seriousness. One of the biggest changes in 15.0 IOS is the release model. There is a new release model that provides maintenance releases (labeled "M" releases) along with the traditional T-train code. Regular mainteance releases on a (somewhat) stricter schedule are also included. The defined life of 15.0 (and the birth of 15.1 and so on) is part of the release model. This should prevent another 4-year gap between main line IOS releases.
Cisco previewed the release model in graphical form to my team a few weeks under NDA. Alas, it is still not simple, as I have demanded in the past. Thus, a picture will help explain it better. Once Cisco releases that (or I find it on Cisco.com) I will blog about it.

---

Finally, we are jumping on the 15.0 code. We have been using 12.4 mainline as our standard IOS code for over 3-years and we are in need of an update. One of my engineers will be downloading the code tomorrow to begin lab testing. He will also be reviewing the bugs...err...caveats and checking feature support. As soon as we can identify an acceptable main line mainteance release, we will begin pilot testing and then deployment.

Jeff Doyle Article on Large Scale NAT

A good article on Larg Scale NAT by Jeff Doyle over at NetworkWorld.
http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/45776