Thanks everyone. Since I'm being asked, here's info about my CCIE studying.
Apologies for the long post... I had a three hour flight and I couldn't sleep :) Study resources: A bunch of security-related books. IP Experts End-to-End material (BLS + 10 day bootcamp) Yusuf Bhaiji labs Cisco's Documentation This email list. The journey: Some background info; I've been working with Cisco/Networking from late 2000. My main interest has always been security, but because of the small market (Iceland) it isn't possible to focus only on security. CCNA in 2001, CCNP in 2003, CCSP sometime in 2006-2008. The decision to start the CCIE process was in sept/okt/Nov 2010, when I had to recert the CCSP. I did so by studying for, and eventually passing the CCIE Security Written exam. (I took two weeks vacation off from work and spent almost all of my waking hours studying.) >From Nov2010 - July 2011, most of my studying was done by either reading >and/or testing induvidual items fromt he blueprint that I knew I needed to >work on. Very slow progress actually. In july 2011 I bought the CCIE End-to-End solution from IP Expert and started doing the IPExpert's labs along with the Audio and Video from IPExpert. The lab that I spent most of the time on was a dynamips/GNS3 based lab we setup at work, with real switches and two ASA5510. This was a really good starting point, but I also had to spend alot of time troubleshooting what turned out to be dynamips-related issues. That was frusterating. I tried as well to do some tests on my home-router, but other "users" in my home did NOT find this acceptable behaviour of a "production environment". ... And I thought my customers were demanding. >From that point and until the end of january all my studing was done in "my >own time", after work hours. A bit difficult to make everything fit together since I was already overloaded at work, and with two kids. (8yr old stepson and a daughter who is 2yr old today.) In the beginning of february I took a vacation from work, and from then and until mid-March I spent all the time that otherwise would have been spent at work, studying. Most evenings (after the kids were asleep) and weekends were used as well. (Still in GNS3) >From 19-30 March I took the combined 10day course from IPExpert in San Jose. >From 2-13 april (still on vacation) all lab time was now done on proctorlabs >and Cisco's ASET/PEC labs. Due to time differences and the "availability" at proctorlabs rack equipment, that basically ment that I woke up at 3am and started my labs at 4am (4-12), and studying until 15-16 in the afternoon and then going home. Practically the same scedule on weekends. The last lab I did was on 13. april During all the labs I took I used Evernote to keep track of my progress. (And also while listening/watching the VoD/AoD he mentioned something that I didn't know about.) I used it in the same way I used notepad in the LAB exam, I wrote down all the question numbers (1.1/1.2 etc) and checked them off when I had fininshed configuring. For each item I was unsure about, didn't know how to do, did wrong or did differently that the solution guide suggested, I made a note about that. I did the same thing during IP Expert's OWLE/bootcamp. Because my proctorlabs time was usually over at 1200(noon) (and very few days that I managed to schedule the time from 12-20, never anything available), I spent the time from 12-16 going over previous lab notes, re-organizing them into a checklist and the studying all induvidual items that I had been unable to configure without confidence (or unable to configure at all...) After I came home from IP Experts bootcamp and reviewed my notes, I ended up with a single note containing a list of 141 different bulletins with 68 sub-bulletins. Items that I needed (in my opinion) to review, reread and/or redo. (This is a combined note from both the bootcamp and all my labs.) I managed to go over and review most of the items on the list, but not everything. I arrived at Brussels on 14 april, and that day and evening was mostly spent revisiting all the Cisco's documentation to be sure that I could easily navigate it, and also reviewing my old notes and comments. On the day before the exam (15. april), I played chess. This is the only thing I remember from that day, eating, going out for a walk, and playing chess in my ipad. No lab time, no studying, no reading. In the actual exam, I was off to a bad start, I spent a good hour and a half to get some basic connectivity working. The main reason: It took time to get familiar with ip addressing and cable layout, which resulted in me configuring the wrong ports, and then troubleshooting my own mistakes. This is one way of getting your stress up a few levels... The fact that I took a backup of all the initial config from all devices into a single notepad document was a lifesaver here. When I found out that I had been configuring the wrong stuff I used that to revert my changes. This has been said before, and I'll say it again. The two Yusuf labs were EXTREMELY helpful. (In regards to wording and thinking.) It was also good to use a different rack every now and then,, since I had memorized proctorlabs/ipexpert both cabling and ip addressing schemes. (I realised this in the actual LAB, because I took too much time getting familiar with the ip addressing and cableing, I even configured the wrong ports a few times.) I have to point out, that the reason I started doing the Yusuf labs was because of other emails on this list that said that they were good/important. Thanks again! :) English is not my native language, and I *do* need help with wording and I'm very prone to not seeing words like "do" and "don't" in sentances. So I became best friends with the proctor and I have no idea how many times I stood up to go to talk to him to verify my understanding of a question. He was very helpful. I tried out a few different strategies during my studying before settling for something that worked for me, and for the 3-4 weeks before my LAB I was following the same exactly same strategy each day. During the lab however, my time management wasn't as good as I hoped it to be. It's difficult to leave an item unfinished when you can't finish it in a decent amount of time. I don't know how, but I managed to make alot of "basic" errors while doing the LAB. After I finished everything that I could do (two questions that I was unable to finish), I had a little more than 1 and a half hour left, and I spent that time re-reading the entire exam and re-verifying everything that I could do. I found so many mistakes that the last "change" I made was 30 seconds before the proctor said "Time's up! Please hand over your workbooks/paper." Most of these errors were in sections that I could't complete in the first attempt, but had moved on and came back to later on. Errors like adding or removing a line when verifying/trobuleshooting, and then forgetting to remove/re-add the line again before continueing. If there's one single item that I spent the most time on, then that's FPM. I spent over an hour getting that stuff to work correctly. Mainly because every time I modified the FPM configuration the router crashed. Basically I could build FPM config, and apply it to an interface, but if I changed it, or removed it from the interface/changed/re-applied, the router crashed. Regarding the docmuentation on the exam, the connection speed itself wasn't all that bad. However, if I opened two many browser windows or large pages, the browser started to stall/hang and become unresponsive. This is like working on a computer with 128Mb ram... There were two items that I had problem configuring correctly, and I didn't know exacly what document I should be looking for. I eventually gave up on trying to find the documentation and just went with what I thought was the correct solution. I now know that one of these items was incorrect (after finding the documentation when I came back to the hotel.) So just to re-affirm one thing: If you don't know where the documentation is before you enter the LAB, you're probably not going to find it in the LAB. I have to mention, that I arrived at the LAB location (Brussels in my example) two days before the LAB. There were other candidates taking the LAB at the same time that had arrived just the day/evening before, and some of them said that they were not well rested. Also, my flight back was the day AFTER the LAB. Some of the other candidates had a flight just a few hours after the exam, so they went straight to the airport (or about so) to catch a flight home. Maybe this didn't affect them, but I wanted to have a clear mind and not having to focus on anything except the lab for this day. I wouldn't want my mind to go wandering about catching a flight after a few hours. Unfortunately I didn't keep track of my time during studying, so I don't know exactly how much time was put into this. (I may try to calculate this later). But it's quite a lot. With best regards, J'J From: Piotr Matusiak [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: 17. apríl 2012 18:18 To: Jónatan Þór Jónasson Cc: [email protected] Subject: Re: [OSL | CCIE_Security] CCIE Security LAB (16.04.2012) - Passed! Congrats mate! Please stay with us and help others... Regards, Piotr 2012/4/17 Jónatan Þór Jónasson <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> Hi, I know I haven't been a big contributer here, but I want to give credit where credit is due. This email list has been a great value for me, especially for the last 1-2 weeks after I started going through majority of the emails sent the last 12 months. So thanks everyone here! With regards, J'J - #35262 _______________________________________________ For more information regarding industry leading CCIE Lab training, please visit www.ipexpert.com<http://www.ipexpert.com> Are you a CCNP or CCIE and looking for a job? Check out www.PlatinumPlacement.com<http://www.PlatinumPlacement.com>
_______________________________________________ For more information regarding industry leading CCIE Lab training, please visit www.ipexpert.com Are you a CCNP or CCIE and looking for a job? Check out www.PlatinumPlacement.com
