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