Wednesday, December 26, 2012

History of the CCDE Part 1

This article is cross-posted from the CCIE Flyer, published December 2012

If you are looking for the registration page for the January CCDE Practice Exams, please go to http://www.jeremyfilliben.com/p/ccde-practice-exams.html

What happens when some of Cisco's most senior CCIEs realize they don't have the correct knowledge of IOS trivia to pass the CCIE R/S written exam? They create a new certification program that more accurately covers their current roles, of course! In addition to this predicament, Cisco was getting pressure from customers and partners to develop engineers who could build more scalable and resilient networks. Many readers will agree that the CCIE program develops excellent network implementation skills. Active CCIEs know most of the IOS knobs that can be turned to make networks do things no one else could imagine. One thing the CCIE program does not develop, however, is a solid understanding of network design. The CCIE lab exam is an excellent guide for what not to do in a production network, with three (or more) active routing protocols in an eight router topology. Many CCIEs (especially senior ones) are looked upon to provide network designs and are given titles like 'Network Architect' or 'Network Design Engineer', but historically there was no way to differentiate CCIE-certified individuals who have design skills and those who do not.

In 2007 Cisco commissioned a team to develop a certification program that would test candidates on their ability to design and redesign networks that support the goals of resiliency, scalability and supportability. While I was not a member of this team, I have spoken with team members about this phase of the CCDE program. Cisco included several large customers in this program design phase to ensure that the resulting certification actually covered the skills that customers were seeking in the hiring decisions. The program was formally announced to the Cisco engineer community at Cisco Live 2007 in Anaheim, California. I was fortunate enough to be invited to this meeting. Russ White, Steve Barnes and Bruce Pinsky (all Cisco employees at the time) discussed the goals of this program and offered several example written exam questions. During the following Q&A period there was a spirited discussion concerning the focus of the exam. Was it a Service Provider exam, or an Enterprise exam? The team asserted that the skills being tested were universal, and that a good design engineer with proper technical knowledge of the tools at his/her disposal could develop network designs that meet the needs of either company. At the time this was an eye-opening concept. While I had worked in both the SP and Enterprise realms, I considered myself an Enterprise network engineer/architect and found little use for concepts like MPLS and L2TPv3 in my work. Follow-up discussions with other meeting participants revealed that many others felt the same as I did. I've come to find that even today the CCDE exam is a bit of a Rorschach test; engineers with an Enterprise background often remark on how SP-focused the exam is, while SP engineers feel the exam has too much Enterprise-related content!

The CCDE team, led by David Bump, invited all participants to take the CCDE written Beta exam in the Fall of 2007. They supplied an extensive book list, which was only slightly different than the current book list found at https://learningnetwork.cisco.com/docs/DOC-1673. I immediately decided that this would be my next certification goal, as I had recently taken and passed the CCIE R/S written exam to maintain my CCIE certification, but I too found the process to be difficult (I failed the exam once due to my lack of knowledge concerning L2 LAN technology).

After what seemed like an eternity, the CCDE team announced that they would unveil the CCDE practical exam format during Cisco Live 2008. The Cisco Certification Lounge hosted a computer with an early version of the CCDE Practical Exam Demo (the current version can be found at https://learningnetwork.cisco.com/docs/DOC-2438). For most of the week there was a crowd around this PC, and to add to the pressure the screen contents were simulcast to a large overhead display monitor so everyone within 25 feet could watch you take the exam. Talk about pressure! I earned a score of 22% on the demo and surprisingly that made it onto the makeshift leaderboard. I checked back at the end of the week and noted that the highest score achieved was only 44%. Clearly the practical was going to be a difficult exam.

The first offering of the CCDE Practical exam was an ungraded Alpha exam presented to selected Cisco employees in mid-2008. It did not result in any passing scores; its goal was to iron out any bugs in the testing engine.  At Cisco Live the certification team also announced that there would not be a large-scale Beta exam for the CCDE practical. While the first offering was referred to as a Beta exam, it was not restricted to CCDE Beta team participants and only CCDE Beta program participants were able to receive the reduced price ($980 instead of $1260; current price is $1500). This first official CCDE Practical Exam was offered in October 2008. While I was unable to attend due to a personal commitment, my friend Colin McNamara did a nice job of writing up the experience on his blog. The post can be found at http://www.colinmcnamara.com/my-experience-taking-the-ccde-practical-beta/. After ten weeks of grading, three of the forty-two candidates received passing scores.

Next month's article will cover the history of the CCDE program to the present time and the numbering system used to identify successful CCDE candidates.

For additional information about the early days of the CCDE program, see Michael Morris's blog at http://www.networkworld.com/community/morris. He no longer updates it, but he wrote extensively about the CCDE beta program and Michael was one of the first three candidates to pass the CCDE Practical exam.

About Jeremy:

Jeremy Filliben is a 14-year CCIE (Routing/Switching #3851) and a CCDE-certified network architect. Jeremy was a member of the CCDE beta program and passed practical exam in 2009. Jeremy has trained eleven of the roughly 63 individuals who have passed the CCDE practical exam since 2010 (more than all other training organizations combined). More information on Jeremy's CCDE training offerings can be found at www.jeremyfilliben.com.

Tuesday, December 18, 2012

January 2013 CCDE Practice Exams

Registration is now open for the January/February 2013 CCDE Practice exam offering. This offering consists of four scenarios based on the CCDE 2.0 Technology Topics and CCDE 2.0 Blueprint. The practice exams have been updated to reflect the CCDE Version 2.0 changes as described by Cisco. In addition to an overview of the CCDE exam, the overview presentation will also include:

  • Differential analysis of the CCDE version 1.0 and 2.0 blueprints
  • Overview of the CCDE Practical exam format changes between 1.0 and 2.0
  • Listing of all new technical content on the CCDE Practical exam, as listed in the Written 2.0 blueprint

The review sessions are scheduled for Saturday, January 26th at 9am ET and Saturday, February 2nd at 9am ET. This should give participants enough time to incorporate their practice exam results into their study plans for the actual Cisco exam on Tuesday, February 19th.

We will cover a broad array of technical content from the CCDE 2.0 Blueprint. Topics will include:

  • IP Routing protocols (OSPF, EIGRP, BGP, IS-IS)
  • Tunneling (MPLS, GRE, DMVPN)
  • Security (uRPF, Filtering, Encryption)
  • Quality of Service (Congestion Management, Congestion Avoidance, Packet Marking)
  • Network Management (Netflow, SNMP, IPFIX, OOB Management)

The exams cover an array of network designs, balanced between Service Provider and Enterprise topics. To be clear, I do not cover all the technical content that candidates will face on the CCDE Practical exam. That would be impossible to do in four practice scenarios. The primary goals of this offering are:

  1. Provide an experience-based overview of the CCDE Practical exam
  2. Familiarize candidates with the depth and breadth of individual CCDE Practical scenarios
  3. Share my methods for determining the correct answer for each type of question on the exam

I am confident that my practice exam offering meets these goals. I encourage candidates to use the link below to register for this offering. As always, previous participants are encouraged to attend these sessions at no cost. Just drop me an email and I will send you the Webex link.

If you have any questions about the offering or the CCDE program, please write me at jeremy@filliben.com.

CCDE Practice Exam Registration Link

Wednesday, September 12, 2012

November 2012 CCDE Practice Exams

Registration is now open for the November 2012 CCDE Practice exam offering. This offering consists of four scenarios based on the CCDE 2.0 Technology Topics and CCDE 2.0 Blueprint. The practice exams have been updated to reflect the CCDE Version 2.0 changes as described by Cisco. In addition to an overview of the CCDE exam, the overview presentation will also include:


  • Differential analysis of the CCDE version 1.0 and 2.0 blueprints
  • Overview of the CCDE Practical exam format changes between 1.0 and 2.0
  • Listing of all new technical content on the CCDE Practical exam, as listed in the Written 2.0 blueprint
  • The review sessions are scheduled for Saturday, November 3rd at 9am ET and Saturday, November 10th at 9am ET. This should give participants enough time to incorporate their practice exam results into their study plans for the actual Cisco exam on Tuesday, November 27th.

    To be clear, I do not cover all the technical content that candidates will face on the CCDE Practical exam. That would be impossible to do in four practice scenarios. The goals of this offering are:

    1. Provide an experience-based overview of the CCDE Practical exam
    2. Familiarize candidates with the depth and breadth of individual CCDE Practical scenarios
    3. Share my methods for determining the correct answer for each type of question on the exam

    I am confident that my practice exam offering meets these goals. I encourage candidates to use the link below to register for this offering. As always, previous participants are encouraged to attend these sessions at no cost. Just drop me an email and I will send you the Webex link.


    If you have any questions about the offering or the CCDE program, please write me at jeremy@filliben.com.

    CCDE Practice Exam Registration Link

    Monday, June 25, 2012

    VPN Article on Tech Target

    I was recently quoted in a Tech Target article focused on Enterprise VPNs. Take a look, if you have an interest (sorry for the advertisement redirect in the link):

    http://searchenterprisewan.techtarget.com/news/2240158523/5-connectivity-tar-pits-you-can-avoid-with-a-strong-VPN

    Tuesday, June 19, 2012

    July CCDE Practice Exam (Updated Information)

    Registration is now open for the July 2012 CCDE Practice exam offering. I am offering two new practice exams, in addition to the two exams that I have offered in the past. I am considering the new exams as beta and providing them at no charge to participants. The practice exams have been updated to reflect the CCDE Version 2.0 changes as described by Cisco. In addition to an overview of the CCDE exam, the overview presentation will also include:


  • Differential analysis of the CCDE version 1.0 and 2.0 blueprints
  • Listing of all new technical content on the CCDE Practical exam, as listed in the Written 2.0 Blueprint

  • The review sessions are scheduled for Saturday, July 14th at 9am ET and Saturday, July 21st at 9am ET. This should give participants enough time to incorporate their practice exam results into their study plans for the actual Cisco exam on August 3rd.
    I want to reiterate what I've said in previous blog posts about this offering. I do not cover all the technical content that candidates will face on the CCDE Practical exam. That would be impossible to do in two (or even ten) practice scenarios. The goals of this offering are:
    1. Provide an experience-based overview of the CCDE Practical exam
    2. Familiarize candidates with the depth and breadth of individual CCDE Practical scenarios
    3. Share my methods for determining the correct answer for each type of question on the exam
    I am confident that my practice exam offering meets these goals. I encourage candidates to use the link below to register for this offering. As always, previous participants are encouraged to attend these sessions at no cost. Just drop me an email and I will send you the Webex link.
    If you have any questions about the offering or the CCDE program, please write me at jeremy@filliben.com.
    CCDE Practice Exam Registration Link

    Thursday, May 31, 2012

    Cisco Live 2012

    I have chosen to attend Cisco Live again this year. Last year I attended VMworld to get a better understanding of virtualization and the challenges/opportunities it presents to network design. This year I’m going back to my networking roots.

    I have two of primary goals for this year’s event:

    1) Get a better understanding of how implementing L2 between two data centers will affect my network design and stability. I expect that this will become a requirement at my organization in the next year and I want to get a solid handle on how we can implement it without significant fate-sharing implications.

    2) Prepare for the introduction of IPv6 in our environment. While I do not have any specific IPv6 techtorials scheduled, I may end up switching into one or more during the course of the week. I would like to exit Cisco Live 2012 with enough knowledge to answer the following questions:

    1. Where should we implement IPv6 first? Test DMZ, Internal network, elsewhere?
    2. Which IGP should we use internally?
    3. How should we allocate our /48 subnet?
    4. Where do we implement NAT66? (just kidding)

    My secondary goals are to get a better understanding of the CCIE DC technology stack, figure out what TrustSec is and whether I should fear its introduction into my environment, and continue learning network design technologies.

     

    Here’s my tentative schedule… If you see me, say hi.

     

    Sunday

    Start: 10:30 AM

    End: 12:45 PM

    CCDE Written Exam

    CCDE Written Exam

    Monday

    Start: 8:00 AM

    End: 12:00 PM

    TECCCIE-9544

    Meeting Room 8

    CCIE Data Center Techtorial

    Start: 1:00 PM

    End: 3:00 PM

    BRKRST-2335

    Meeting Room 17B

    IS-IS Network Design and Deployment

    Start: 3:30 PM

    End: 4:30 PM

    GENSK-4356

    Ballroom 20D

    Solutions Keynote: The Future of the Enterprise Network in the Post-PC Era

    Tuesday

    Start: 8:00 AM

    End: 9:30 AM

    BRKCOM-2001

    Ballroom 20D

    UCS Deep Dive

    Start: 10:00 AM

    End: 11:30 AM

    GENKEY-4346

    Hall G/H

    Keynote and Welcome Address

    Start: 12:30 PM

    End: 2:30 PM

    BRKRST-2509

    Ballroom 20D

    Mastering Data Center QoS

    Start: 3:00 PM

    End: 4:00 PM

    PSOCCIE-9302

    Meeting Room 11B

    Cornerstones of CCIE Success

    Start: 4:00 PM

    End: 5:30 PM

    PNLRST-4001

    Ballroom 20A

    Panel: LISP Executive Panel

    Start: 7:00 PM

    End: 10:30 PM

    DISC4871

    Hard Rock Hotel Woodstock Terrace

    Data Center Virtualization and Switching Customer Networking Reception

    Wednesday

    Start: 8:00 AM

    End: 9:30 AM

    BRKDCT-2131

    Ballroom 6D

    Mobility and Virtualization in the Data Center with LISP and OTV

    Start: 10:00 AM

    End: 11:30 AM

    GENKEY-4347

    Hall G/H

    Cisco Technology Keynote

    Start: 12:30 PM

    End: 2:30 PM

    BRKDCT-2223

    Meeting Room 32B

    Evolution of the Data Center Edge

    Start: 3:00 PM

    End: 4:00 PM

    PSODCT-3863

    Meeting Room 11B

    Journey to the Cloud: Benefits of a IT-as-a-Service

    Start: 4:00 PM

    End: 6:00 PM

    BRKARC-3471

    Meeting Room 31AB

    Cisco NX-OS Software Architecture

    Thursday

    Start: 8:00 AM

    End: 9:30 AM

    BRKCRT-8862

    Meeting Room 8

    Cisco Certified Architect: How to complete the journey from CCIE to CCDE to CCAr

    Start: 10:00 AM

    End: 11:30 AM

    BRKSEC-2022

    Ballroom 6D

    Demystifying TrustSec, Identity, NAC and ISE

    Start: 12:00 PM

    End: 1:30 PM

    BRKDCT-2214

    Ballroom 6E

    Ultra Low Latency Data Center Design - End-to-end design approach

    Start: 2:00 PM

    End: 3:00 PM

    GENKEY-4358

    Hall G/H

    Closing Keynote: An Afternoon with Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman

    Start: 3:30 PM

    End: 5:30 PM

    BRKMPL-3101

    Ballroom 6AB

    Advanced Topics and Future Directions in MPLS

    Wednesday, May 30, 2012

    CCIE Data Center Written Exam

    I took the CCIE Data Center written exam yesterday. It’s still in the Beta period, so I have no results, but I felt good about the content. The Written Exam Topics on Cisco Learning Network is accurate (Login required).

    Speaking of ‘login required’ on Cisco.com… Is anyone else annoyed with the number of times you have to log into the various Cisco websites? It seems like over the last few years I’ve had to log in multiple times per day. Perhaps this is a security ‘improvement’, but I'd rather stay logged in for weeks at a time.

    I came at this exam with a fair amount of routing and switching knowledge, and a solid background in Nexus 7k/5k/2k/1kv. Where I occasionally ran into trouble was with the storage and UCS portions of the exam. I have a basic understanding of Fibre Channel and FCoE, but I’ve never been a storage admin. And while I’ve configured the UCS fabric networking portions, I have not been responsible for the activating server blades, nor have I been responsible for the UCS chassis itself. My biggest weakness on the exam was certainly DCNM; I haven’t used it and my organization does not intend to install it.

    I was slightly disappointed in the number of ‘trivia’ questions, such as ‘what is the format of the command to see XYZ’, with four different combinations of ‘show [x] [y] [z]’. Another trivia-style question is the ‘What is the default username and password for [hardware_x]?’ (Neither of these is a direct question from the exam… I believe in NDAs!) Knowing the answer to either of these questions doesn’t make me a better network engineer. They only save me a few moments of search engine time during an activation or troubleshooting.

    I hope these types of questions get weeded out during the beta process. I have been spoiled by the vendor-agnostic format of the CCDE program... I recall many of these sorts of questions from the now-retired CCIE WAN Switching program.

    Next Steps

    If I passed the beta, will I take the lab? I don’t yet know. If my current role takes me in a direction where I get more hands-on work with our UCS and MDS gear I may feel comfortable enough in my skillset to attempt the lab. I enjoy the challenge of learning and testing my knowledge, so I’m somewhat inclined to move in that direction. And if I didn’t pass the written, I’ll probably attempt it again, since I hate giving up on something. There is no shame in failing a Cisco exam, but once I pursue something it is tough to quit.

    Friday, May 25, 2012

    July 2012 CCDE Practice Exams

    (The below information is historical... updated information and pricing can be found at http://www.jeremyfilliben.com/2012/06/july-ccde-practice-exam-updated.html)


    Registration is now open for the July 2012 CCDE Practice exam offering. I have completed two new scenarios, which brings the total offering to four scenarios. This equates to a full CCDE Practical exam. The scenarios have been written with the CCDE 2.0 technology changes in mind. The review session for the first two scenarios will take place on Saturday, July 14th at 9am EDT. The second review session will take place the following Saturday, July 21st at 9am EDT.

    Pricing for the CCDE Practice Exam Offering is:
    Two Scenarios (one review session) – $1095
    All Four Scenarios (both review sessions) – $1795

    As before, all participants are invited to attend the CCDE overview which will take place on Saturday, July 14th at 9am ET. It generally lasts one hour, and is followed by the scenario reviews. And as always, previous students are invited to attend the overview and the review session for any scenarios they have reviewed in the past. Simply send me an email at jeremy@filliben.com and I will provide the Webex login details.
    In addition, I am extending a $400 discount to all prior participants for the new scenarios. If you previously participated in the two scenario sessions, I invite you to register for the new scenarios for a total price of $695. If you are interested in this offer, please write me an email at jeremy@filliben.com and I will provide you with a discount code.
    Additional details can be found on the registration page at  http://july2012ccde.eventbrite.com.

    Thank you for your interest,
    Jeremy Filliben
    CCDE #20090003

    Friday, May 18, 2012

    Tuesday, January 24, 2012

    February 2012 CCDE Practice Exams

    Cisco Certified Design Expert Program Changes

    It has been quite some time since Cisco last offered the CCDE Practical exam. During this time they have updated the exam to version 2.0 and made several noticeable changes to the covered technologies. Cisco has also updated the online CCDE Practical Demo. Here are links to the new resources Cisco has published:

    CCDE Written Exam Topics - This link lists the technologies covered on both the written and practical exams. This is the only Cisco-published listing of technology for either exam; Cisco does not publish a separate technology document for the CCDE Practical exam.

    CCDE Practical Exam Demo - This has been updated from the initial version. I do not know if all the bugs have been removed (ie, Is a perfect possible?)

    CCDE Practical Exam Checklist - This lists the types of questions you will face on the exam. It also provides general guidelines on how to answer the questions. I've spoken with several CCDE candidates who found this document to be less than useful, but I highly recommend spending time reading each line item. This links to the more detailed version, which is somewhat buried on the Cisco Learning Network.


    February CCDE Practice Exam Offering

    I have scheduled the next CCDE Practice Exam offering for February 25th and March 3rd. These dates will give participants sufficient time to incorporate their practice exam results into their study plans before the actual Cisco exam on March 29th. This offering will utilize the same base content as my previous practice exam offerings. I have updated the exam results presentations to identify the category of each question. I have also significantly revised the CCDE Practical overview presentation to include the following:

    • Differential analysis of the CCDE version 1.0 and 2.0 blueprints
    • Removal of all CCDE version 1.0 specific information
    • Listing of all new technical content on the CCDE Practical exam, as listed in the Written 2.0 Blueprint

    I want to reiterate what I've said in previous blog posts about this offering. I do not cover all the technical content that candidates will face on the CCDE Practical exam. That would be impossible to do in two (or even ten) practice scenarios. The goals of this offering are:

    1. Provide an experience-based overview of the CCDE Practical exam
    2. Familiarize candidates with the depth and breadth of individual CCDE Practical scenarios
    3. Share my methods for determining the correct answer for each type of question on the exam

    I am confident that my practice exam offering meets these goals. I encourage candidates to use the links below to register for this offering. As always, previous participants are encouraged to attend these sessions at no cost. Just drop me an email and I will send you the Webex link.

    If you have any questions about the offering or the CCDE program, please write me at jeremy@filliben.com.