Passed the CCIE DC lab exam

Hello All

I passed the CCIE DC lab exam last Monday in Brussels   yoohoo !!

I would like to share my experience , hoping that it might help others. My journey started about 7 months ago when I decided to pursue the DC track. I first started by reading the following books in order to prepare for the written exam

Data Center Fundamentals (Cisco Press), by Mauricio Arregoces

I/O Consolidation in the Data Center : A Complete Guide to Data Center Ethernet and Fibre Channel over Ethernet (Cisco Press), by Silvano Gai; Claudio DeSanti

Storage Networks Explained: Basics and Application of Fibre Channel SAN, NAS,iSCSI, InfiniBand and FCoE, Second Edition (John Wiley and Sons), by Ulf Troppens, Wolfgang Muller-Friedt, Rainer Wolafka; Rainer Erkens, Nils Haustein

Introduction to Storage Area Networks (IBM Redbooks), by John  Tate; Fabiano Lucchese; Richard Moore

Storage Networking Fundamentals : An Introduction to Storage Devices, Subsystems, Applications, Management, and Filing Systems (Cisco Press), by Marc Farley

NX-OS and Cisco Nexus Switching: Next-Generation Data Center Architectures, Second Edition (Cisco Press), by Ron Fuller;David Jansen; Matthew McPherson

Data Center Virtualization Fundamentals: Understanding Techniques and Designs for Highly Efficient Data Centers with Cisco Nexus,UCS,MDS, and Beyond (Cisco Press) by Gustavo A. A. Santana

Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS) (Data Center): A Complete Reference Guide to the Cisco Data Center Virtualization Server Architecture (Cisco Press), by Silvano Gai; Tommi Salli; Roger Andersson

Personally, I had experience with NX-OS, most specifically the Nexus 7K, but as far as Storage and UCS were concerned, I ranked between little to none. So the books above really helped me ramp up in those areas.

 After reading these books I watched the INE CCIE DC Written Bootcamp videos.  Absolutely awesome videos.. They are so great that when I was writing the exam, I had the feeling that Brian and Mark tailored their videos based on the questions in the exam lol !!!  I passed the written exam right after I was done viewing the videos.

 Then it was time to concentrate on the lab exam. Being so in love with INE products, ( in fact I have used them for each and every one of my CCIEs), I watched the entire CCIE DC Bootcamp video series. They really bring you from a fundamental level, to a close-to-expert level.  I recommend those videos hands down to anyone.

 But as you all well know, watching videos alone will not help in passing the lab exam…  Practice, Practice, and then Practice again is absolutely crucial. So I first started using the INE CCIE DC racks with the workbooks, but this track is so popular that it was a challenge to find rack time that would fit my schedule. Luckily within my company I had access to some DC rack equipment. But even within my company, the certification is so coveted that it was also difficult for me to find rack time. It turns out that I have many colleagues who are CCIE DC aspirantsJ. However, getting access to my company’s internal rack was way easier than with the INE DC racks so that is what I used primarily. Plus with my company’s DC racks, I had full access to all devices: full admin access to N7Ks, full access to a UCS box, ability to install N1Kv as I wanted, full access to 5596 switches, so it helped me a lot. I could not really practice INE labs with them because the physical topology was so different, so I created lab scenarios on the fly. Still, those scenarios were inspired by the INE labs

I actually passed the DC exam on my 2^nd attempt. My first attempt was a little bit before Christmas. Dec 19^th . I was confident that I had it on the first attempt, but you know, the CCIE lab exam has a way of doing a reality check on you ! I saw the FAIL result, and then I realized why : well over 80% in all sections but a meager 30% in the UCS section. Yes folks, the UCS is a good portion of this exam, you cannot pass this exam if you do not pass the UCS section, even if you have 100% in all other sections, trust me !!!

So after my first failed attempt I regrouped and then went back to study. I now knew where my weakness was… I went back to doing the same thing I was doing : watched the INE UCS videos again, practice on my internal lab but this time focusing on UCS. Really nothing different. While I was studying again for my second attempt I believe I had kind of an epiphany.. I suddenly figured why I failed the UCS section… A piece of advice, read the exam carefully, it is not about just solving the questions, but it is about solving them the way the CCIE team wants  !  In fact, my ESXi server booted fine and my VSM and VEMs came up fine, but still I scored 30%... Try not to OVERCONFIGURE things. If they ask for something, do it and nothing more. The exam is not best practice, so do not worry about doing things the way it is not normally done in the field.

Looking at my record : R&S track passed on 2^nd attempt, Security track passed on 2^nd attempt, SP track passed on 1^st attempt… I was not too worried, and turned my failure into positive energy towards my second attempt at the DC track. I also have a rule : try to bend the sword when it is still red hot… (kind of a welder analogy, meaning it is easier to handle a sword while it is red hot and easy to bend. If you wait too long, it becomes cold and very hard  ) In other words, I always try to rebook right after the 30 days mandatory period, while things are still fresh in my mind.  It has served me well for my other CCIEs so I applied the same thing and looked for a date right after Jan 19^th . But there was no luck in the US. RTP and SJC were all solidly booked. I then had no choice but to look at Brussels where surprisingly, there were so many dates available in Jan and Feb 2014. I then picked Jan 20^th for my 2^nd attempt.

My strategy was still the same as in my first attempt.. just follow the order. I think the order of the exam was logical and it was safe for me to just follow it sequentially. Like in the first attempt, I finished about 45 min before the end and had some time to review my work. What is frightening is that after the exam, I had the same feeling as the first time.. I was confident. This time though, I made sure I did not overconfigure anything, and I took care of what I believed made me fail the UCS section. I think it was the little things, like naming objects the way it was asked in the questions, making sure to check the result of my configuration using the UCS cli (which I omitted to do the first time ). Sure enough checking the CLI allowed me to discover some gotchas regarding setting up disjoint L2 networks in UCS. Always verify with the UCS CLI folks J !!!!! And like I said before, name everything the way they want, VLAN names, UCS object names, use the port-channel numbering that is requested in the exam questions, do not just make up your own. 

It was such a relief when I saw the “PASS” score. It has been quite a journey. This was definitely the CCIE track on which I learned the most. Because Storage and UCS are such a big part of the exam and I had to ramp up.. I really enjoyed this track to be honest

I will stop on this note, I think I have been writing for a long time already loll….  

Good luck to all of you pursuing this DC certification.