Well, I took the v4.0 lab last week and even though I walked out
knowing I failed, I was actually quite impressed with the test as a
whole. I took my test in San Jose, mostly so that I could take
advantage of gaining 2 extra hours (I live in Central time zone).
First time I took my test, I went to RTP and lost an hour which really
took a toll, since I had to wake up earlier also. Anyway, I did get
my full 8 hours of sleep the night before, ate a decent breakfast and
went on to Building C.
There were two other candidates, one taking R&S, the other taking SP.
I chatted it up with the other R&S candidate for about 20 minutes
talking mostly about what I had read about regarding the new test
format. If you haven't done so already, read these posts:
http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/46561 and
https://learningnetwork.cisco.com/thread/8262. One other thing, I
won't mention any specific topics that I got on my exam due to NDA,
but I'll describe as best as I can the overall look and feel, as well
as my impressions.
The proctor took us to the lab room around 8:20am, gave us our seating
assignments, then gave me and the other R&S candidate an extra 5
minute set of instructions on how to log into the new web interface.
Then we sat down and started our test.
For those of you interested, you get 2 sheets of writing paper, and a
3rd sheet that has login info for the troubleshooting/lab config
portion. You're in a half-height cubicle with one neighbor. You get
a hodge podge of colored pencils and a really nice widescreen monitor.
I use a 20" widescreen at work and these were way bigger, maybe 24"?
I don't know. But they were nice.
The core knowledge/OEQs (open-ended questions) are 4 questions of
which you must get 3 correct or you fail the whole exam. The proctor
told us to use short, concise answers. He said it's because they
don't like to read really long answers (that's not official, just
something he said). When I failed the v3.0 test back in August, it
was because of these OEQs. I made it a point to read any/everything
in the Cisco Documentation site that pertained to a v4.0 Blueprint
topic. I also made it a point to do as many show commands during my
lab work, just so I'd know what I was look at. That definitely paid
off because I got 1 question which I knew without thinking about, 2
others where I was 90% certain, and 1 which I had never seen before.
Needless to say, I passed the section and I didn't even think twice
about those questions once I started the troubleshooting section.
Word of advice: Read the questions several times before answering.
On the 2 that I was 90% sure of, I actually had written a different
answer the first time, but based on specific words in the
question/diagram, I ended up changing them. I'm glad I did.
Next came the troubleshooting section. You have to bring us IE and
log into a webpage using the 3rd piece of paper on your desk. Once
in, you're given an opportunity to view screenshots of what the new
interface looks like. Basically, the main page of the new interface
is a full diagram of the network topology with menu buttons across the
top. For the troubleshooting section, one menu opens a popup window
showing one ticket at a time, another is a popup showing all tickets
listed on a page, another is a control panel to reboot/restore configs
on routers(troubleshooting only), another is some documentation about
what to do/not do, and then there is the end exam button. The first
menu also has diagrams showing things like BGP, routing, cabling,
MPLS, etc. There's also a countdown timer in the upper right corner
of the main page during the troubleshooting section, but not in the
lab configuration portion. To bring up the console of one of the
routers, just click on the picture within the diagram and SecureCRT
opens up. One annoying thing is that if you have several router
consoles up, then you click on the trouble ticket window, the main
page covers up your console windows. This is described in more detail
in one of the review links I posted up top.
The troubleshooting section itself is not too bad, but can be a bit
overwhelming at first. Keep in mind that you are learning a new
interface and trying to understand a new topology and you only have 2
hours to do it in. You really need to keep calm, and focused, and not
spend too much time figuring out how the topology is set up. Rather,
go through the tickets, find the devices referenced in the tickets,
and work the specific issues. I found most of my fixes were
reasonably simple. As with any CCIE lab, time management is
important. I got caught up on the first 2 tickets and wasted 30
minutes before giving up on them and going after the remaining
tickets. I was able to knock out the other tickets (except for one
because I didn't understand the new topic well enough) and came back
to the first pair that I missed. Another word of advice: click on
everything. I was able to fix one of those first tickets only after I
clicked on a device I didn't know I could access. I think I clicked
on it more out of frustration, and when the console window popped up,
a quick "sh run" and about 20 seconds of reconfiging later, and I had
a working solution. Unfortunately, I ran out of time so I could
attempt the other ticket that I wasted time on. Btw, I've read in
various posts that you can have from as few as 6 devices to as many as
30 devices. I've read that these devices are virtual and if you have
to reboot/restore config on one, it comes up in less than 30 seconds
(maybe faster). I restored config on one and I want to say that in
around 30 seconds, I had router adjacencies forming back up, so I
believe there's truth to this virtual thing. This is definitely a
good thing because you do only have 2 hours for the section. And
don't worry about your command set, because as far as I could tell, I
had access to all my show, debug, and exec commands. As far as I was
concerned, I was in a fully working router. Another piece of advice:
don't rely solely on show run. On some of the "easier" tickets, I
could do a show run, see the problem, and fix it right away. On
others, I had to do various show commands or debugs to see what was
happening or not happening. On these tickets, "sh run" looked
perfectly fine to me.
I ended up failing because you need to score 80% in the
troubleshooting section in order to pass the lab. You can get
anywhere from 8-12 tickets (I think this was mentioned in one of
Maurilio Gorito's webcasts, I don't remember). So you'd need to
answer 8 of 10, 9 of 11, 10 of 12, etc. in order to pass. I was
pretty confident in all except one where I questioned the wording of
the ticket. I asked the proctor, but somehow didn't get a good
feeling based on his reply. But, I "fixed" the ticket based on what
he told me. At the end of the day, it was a new topic that got me,
and if I knew more about that topic, I wouldn't have had to worry
about the questionable wording. I'll definitely remedy that when I
re-take in 30 days.
Once the troubleshooting section is done, you're presented a button on
the page to start the lab configuration portion. This uses the same
web interface as troubleshooting, except you don't have a menu option
to reboot/restore original configs on a router. There were only 5
routers and 4 switches and the config tasks are just like any others
that you've seen. I felt that Cisco did a good job of incorporating
the new topics into both troubleshooting and the lab config, so make
sure you know them. But, since you only have at least 5.5 hours,
you'll have to make sure you manage your time wisely. I, personally,
like drawing maps, but I didn't for this lab. I felt that the
provided diagrams were well done and I could follow them just as
easily as if I had drawn it myself. The only drawback is that whole
web browser window covering your terminal windows (mentioned
previously).
Based on my score results, I think I ended up failing the lab config
section mostly because I got burned on a post-L3 configuration task
that ended up breaking most of the work I did in the L3 config
section. I lost most of those points because of it. And, I didn't
even know it had broken until the proctor told us we had 5 minutes
left. Even when I discovered it, I scrambled to un-do what broke
everything and restore the original working config, but I was missing
something and it just didn't come back up right. Even if I was
somehow able to restore it back to a working state, there were a few
tasks that I left untouched just because I didn't know how to do them.
Some were new topics, some were not. But keep in mind that you now
need to score at least 80% in the lab configuration section in order
to pass the lab.
After the exam, the other R&S candidate walked out of the building and
we talked a little about how we felt about the web interface. I told
him that I actually liked it, except for the one drawback. He said it
reminded him of the Cisco Assessor practice lab, except bigger. We
both generally agreed that it wasn't as painful as we thought it was
going to be. This new lab is definitely passable, and I've already
got my next scheduled for late November. I do plan on spending a lot
of time learning the new topics, i.e. MPLS, OER/PFR, IOS zone
firewalls, etc. I also need to work on time management better. Hope
you find this helpful.
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