Friends,
i just took the lab exam yesterday and i failed the 1st attempt. I am of course, furious. But with Cisco Systems.
A bit of order.
When i went to the bootcamp back in August in London i had just 200 hours labbing under my belt and i was quite confident i could do well to the Bootcamp as to the exam. Thankfully the great Brian McGahan opened my eyes up. I was not ready at all and i had not even the far idea of what a lab exam could be. I remember that while int the first day of the bootcamp i felt really ok, the second day of that bootcamp i went to Brian asking him
" Brian, i realised my missing experience in MPLS/MP-BGP could really play a bad role if i keep the exam date in December 2013.. what do you think? Do you reckon i can prepare that exam in a so short time?"
Brian, as usual, though a second about the answer and he answered sure enough "yes, you can do it". And he was right.
It is true, i have failed the exam yesterday but it was not because of my skills. When i read the exam and prepared my L2/L3 topology it was evident that i did not even need to check the DocCD. It was incredible. A truly unexpected and fantastic moment. Yesterday morning , i knew i could succeed without too many problems...
Unfortunately on my way i met IOU Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
. It was crazy. I had not the privileges to debug, not to rollback and the bgp logging was not working either on the IOS instances even if enabled (just to mention the ones i remember). Having said this, the lab was longer than the Full Scale Lab 4 and very configuration intensive.
When the proctors (both very nice is to be said) told us "hands up" (i will always remember that moment), i had 78 points with me (all the tasks i did were verified for control and data plane) and i was about to complete my CSC for extra points. SO do not get me wrong, i am not claiming my CCIE since i had 2 points less than the required amount. I am only saying that for the crazy study i did and the way i was getting everything working during the exam, failing because the troubleshooting with IOU was very time-consuming is a bit of a shock. Since i have failed this Lab let me express all my disappointment.
I do know at least a guy who did not care to "improperly" use IOU for the lab exam prep and if i did not the same it was to avoid cheating all the people who , like you all, study seriously and access IOU only if they are allowed. So what is the message that Cisco is giving to me? Essentially , that i failed because i did respect the copyright on IOU.
Since i now know (by a very expensive experience) that IOU is anyway a very bad imitation of GNS3 i do not even care to use it but it does not feel good to know that today i could have been certified and sharing happiness with you rather than frustration if I only would have known IOU.
You know what? Who is really testing whether you are an expert or not, is not Cisco from my perspective. Not anymore. Who is testing whether you are an expert is INE itself. Only in the last two months i did 400+ configurations hours and a massive amount of theory. All of this let me get to the exam with some confidence AND let me go out from Cisco Systems building knowing i could not blame my preparation process or my topics' knowledge.
My first reaction when i realised all of this was to just leave this idea of getting certified CCIE because my main goal was knowledge, not even money. The second, was to book the new lab date... Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
You still there? Going to stop this post Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
...
I want to close this post thanking all of you for the fantastic posts you keep writing on IEOC everyday and thanking Brian McG for his continuos excellent guidance. I will never understand how he could predict how prepared i could get in a so short time.
A special thanks must be also given to iamjeffvader (super super thanks) and Plucena24 (Keith and Pablo) for their incredibly precious suggestions and support.
Thanks INE. Nobody's like you.
Alessio
PS: any question about the exam which does not violate the NDA will be answered.