Category Archives: Certification

So Long To The CCIP

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The Cisco Certified Internetwork Professional (CCIP) certification has always been the goal of those network professionals that wanted to march to the beat of a different drummer.  People like me that concentrate on the enterprise/campus side of things revel in our use of OSPF and EIGRP.  We live and die by IOS and get cold sweats at night when someone mentions IS-IS.  The ideal CCIP candidate, on the other hand, loves all of this service provider oriented talk.  They want to spend all their time talking about ingress QoS policies.  They cackle with glee when the subject of MPLS-TE comes up.  They think users are just a myth that exist on the other side of the mythical CPE Wall.

The problem, though, is that the CCIP hasn’t really been focused on the service provider arena for a while now.  While the other professional level exams have received overhauls in the recent past, no one touched the CCIP.  When the CCVP and CCSP became the CCNP: Voice and CCNP: Security, no one wanted to make the CCNP: Internetwork.  The coursework for the CCIP has always relied heavily on other tracks to exist.  QoS is a big part of the SP world, so the QoS exam was borrowed from the voice track.  Routing is another huge part, so the old Building Cisco Scalable Internetworks (BSCI) test was repurposed as well.  The only pure CCIP exams were over BGP and MPLS.  You could even take a composite exam if you were feeling up to the challenge of getting your teeth kicked in for twice as long.  However, the routing exam has caused some consternation.  When I originally studied for my CCNP three years ago, the BSCI book was a handbook of enterprise and service provider routing.  It contained a lot of information about every routing protocol.  While it focused on OSPF and EIGRP, there was a touch of BGP and IS-IS as well.  It served as the foundation for the CCNP, CCDP, and the CCIP.  This made sense with Cisco’s foundation being the router.  However, when Cisco changed the tests and courseware for the CCNP with their latest refresh, the new ROUTE test was a shell of its former self.  Based on the blueprint (login required), it still tests on OSPF, EIGRP, and BGP somewhat.  It even throws in IPv6 routing as well, which is a sorely needed topic.  However, there’s no IS-IS.  None. Nada. Zilch.  How’s that supposed to help the SP engineer that might use IS-IS all the time and never see EIGRP?  Something needed to be done.  And every passing day that the CCIP relied upon tests that didn’t fulfill the criteria of the people being certified was a day that it passed closer to irrelevance.

Thankfully, Cisco decided in May 2012 to overhaul the entire CCIP track.  Now known as the CCNP: Service Provider, it finally focuses on the things that service provider network professionals will be doing.  The four new tests are specific to the SP track.  There are no overlapping tests.  The prerequisite for the CCNP: SP is the CCNA: SP, which is two SP-specific tests of it’s own.  Cisco has finally figured out that most SP engineers exist in a world all their own with very little in common with enterprise/campus folks.  A quick glance at Mirek Burnejko’s excellent IT Certfication Master page for the CCNP:SP shows that the SPROUTE test will focus on IS-IS, OSPFv2 and v3, and BGP.  No EIGRP to be found.  It also tests these topics on IOS-XR and IOS-XE, the new flavors of IOS that run on the equipment that would be found in an SP environment.  If you’d like to see more about the ins and outs of IOS-XR, check out Jeff Fry’s (@fryguy_pa) IOS-XR posts.  The SPADVROUTE test focuses on BGP and multicast, the two odd ducks of routing.  This means that you can spend your time reading Jeff Doyle’s Routing TCP/IP Volume 2 and take a test basically over that whole book.  The SPCORE covers QoS and MPLS functionality such as MPLS-TE.  That’s where I’d expect to see the TE stuff, since it’s usually configured in the network core and not on the edges.  The SPEDGE test covers MPLS VPNs, as well as VPN technologies in general.  I like that Cisco chose to split the core and edge pieces of the CCNP: SP, as there are people that may spend their entire careers working on P routers and never see a piece of CPE equipment.  Conversely, there are those that want to stay as far away from the core as possible and would prefer to make the PE router their device of choice.

The CCNP: SP is available today at any Prometric/VUE testing center.  You can find out more about the certification from Cisco’s website or by visiting Mirek’s site above.

Tom’s Take

Cisco has done a great job of breaking the CCIP up into bite-sized chunks that have clearly defined topic boundaries.  I can choose to focus on interior routing without worrying about multicast.  I can focus on MPLS VPN without thinking too much about MPLS-TE.  I can focus on the important parts one at a time.  The new CCNP: SP also addresses the shortcomings I’ve seen with the old CCIP test.  By giving the SP track a dedicated testing platform all by itself, Cisco no longer has to worry that test changes in one area will carry over to a separate track and cause confusion and delay.  As well, with the new branding and focus on the service provider arena, Cisco has shown that it has not forsaken those that want to spend their time working behind the scenes at ISPs.

Cisco CoLaboratory – Any Questions? Any Answers?

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Cisco has recently announced the details of their CoLaboratory program for the CCNP certification.  This program is focused on those out there certified as CCNPs with a couple of years of job experience that want to help shape the future of the CCNP certification.  You get to spend eight weeks helping develop a subset of exam questions that may find their way into the question pool for the various CCNP or CCDx tests.  And you’re rewarded for all your hard work with a one-year extension to your current CCNP/CCDx certification.

I got a chance to participate in the CCNA CoLab program a couple of years ago.  I thought it would be pretty easy, right?  I mean, I’ve taken the test.  I know the content forwards and backwards.  How hard could it be to write questions for the test?  Really Hard.  Turns out that there are a lot of things that go into writing a good test question.  Things I never even thought of.  Like ensuring that the candidate doesn’t have a good chance of guessing the answer.  Or getting rid of “all of the above” as an answer choice.  Turns out that most of the time “all of the above” is the choice, it’s the most often picked answer.  Same for “none of the above”.  I spent my eight weeks not only writing good, challenging questions for aspiring network rock stars, but I got a crash course in why the Cisco tests look and read the way they do.  I found a new respect for those people that spend all their time trying to capture the essence of very dry reading material in just a few words and maybe a diagram.

I also found that I’ve become more critical of shoddy test writing.  Not just all/none of the above type stuff either.  How about questions that ask for 3 correct answers and there are only four choices?  There’s a good chance I’ll get that one right even just guessing.  Or one of my favorite questions to make fun of: “Each answer represents a part of the solution.  Choose all correct steps that apply.”  Those questions are not only easy to boil down to quick binary choices, but I hate that often there is one answer that sticks out so plainly that you know it must be the right answer.  Then there’s the old multiple choice standby: when all else fails, pick the longest answer.  I can’t tell you how much time I spent on my question submissions writing “good” bad answers.  There’s a whole methodology that I never knew anything about.  And making sure the longest answer isn’t the right one every time is a lot harder than you might think.

Tom’s Take

In the end, I loved my participation in the Cisco CoLaboratory program.  It gave me a chance to see tests from the other side of the curtain and learn how to better word questions and answers to extract the maximum amount of knowledge from candidates.  If you are at all interested in certifications, or if you’ve ever sat in a certification test and said to yourself, “This question is stupid!  I could write a better question than this.”, you should head over to the Cisco CoLaboratory page and sign up to participate.  That way you get to come up with good questions.  And hopefully better answers.

CCIE Data Center – The Waiting Is The Hardest Part

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By now, you’ve probably read the posts from Jeff Fry and Tony Bourke letting the cat out of the CCIE bag for the oft-rumored CCIE Data Center (DC) certification.  As was the case last year, a PDF posted to the Cisco Live Virtual website spoiled all the speculation.  Contained within the slide deck for BRKCRT-1612 Evolution of Data Centre Certification and Training is a wealth of confirmation starting around slide 18.  It spells out in bold letters the CCIE DC 1.0 program.  It seems to be focused around three major technology pillars: Unified Computing, Unified Fabric, and Unified Network Services.  As people who have read my blog since last year have probably surmised, this wasn’t really a surprise to me after Cisco Live 2011.

As I surmised eight months ago, it encompasses the Nexus product line top to bottom, with the 7009, 5548, 2232, and 1000v switches all being represented.  Also included just for you storage folks is a 9222i MDS SAN switch.  There’s even a Catalyst 3750 thrown in for good measure.  Maybe they’re using it to fill an air gap in the rack or something.  From the UCS server side of the house, you’ll likely get to see a UCS 6248 fabric interconnect and a 5148 blade chassis.  And because no CCIE lab would exist without a head scratcher on the blueprint there is also an ACE 4710 module.  I’m sure that this has to do with the requirement that almost every data center needs some kind of load balancer or application delivery controller.  As I mentioned before and Tony mentioned in his blog post, don’t be surprised to see an ACE GSS module in there as well.  Might be worth a two point question.

Is the CCIE SAN Dead?

If you’re currently studying for your SAN CCIE, don’t give up just yet.  While there hasn’t been any official announcement just yet, that also doesn’t mean the SAN program is being retired any time soon.  There will be more than enough time for you SAN jockeys to finish up this CCIE just in time to start studying for a new one.  If you figure that the announcement will be made by Cisco Live Melbourne near the end of March, it will likely be three months for the written beta.  That puts the wide release of the written exam at Cisco Live San Diego in June.  The lab will be in beta from that point forward, so it will be the tail end of the year before the first non-guinea pigs are sitting the CCIE DC lab.  Since you SAN folks are buried in your own track right now, keep heading down that path.  I’m sure that all the SAN-OS configs and FCoE experience will serve you well on the new exam, as UCS relies heavily on storage networking.  In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised to see some sort of bridge program run concurrently with the CCIE SAN / CCIE DC candidates for the first 6-8 months where SAN CCIEs can sit the DC lab as an opportunity and incentive to upgrade.  After all, the first DC CCIEs are likely to be SAN folks anyway.  Why not try to certify all you can?

Expect the formal announcement of the program to happen sometime between March 6th and March 20th.  It will likely come with a few new additions to the UCS line and be promoted as a way to prove to the world that Cisco is very serious about servers now.  Shortly after that, expect an announcement for signups for the beta written exam.  I’d bank on 150-200 questions of all kinds, from FCoE to UCS Manager.  It’ll take some time to get all those graded, so while you’re waiting to see if you’ve hit the cut score, head over to the Data Center Supplemental Learning page and start refreshing things.  Maybe you’ll have a chance to head to San Jose and sit in my favorite building on Tasman Drive to try and break a brand new lab.  Then, you’ll just be waiting for your score report.  That’s the hardest part.

CCIE Numbers Skyrocket – Red Alert?

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Congratulations to Chris Martin, CCIE# 34310, according to IPExpert’s Successful Candidates page.  Thanks to Windows Calculator and my non-binary math skills, that means we’ve had 5,000 new numbers since my pass back in June.  That’s not counting the repeat passes that keep the same number.  The new numbers have been skyrocketing in the last 3 months, shooting up over 2,000 since Blake Krone passed his lab at the end of October.

I’ve heard a lot of interesting theories in the past couple of weeks about why the numbers are shooting up so quickly.  Some attribute it to the official Cisco 360 training program churning out candidates left and right.  There are also those that believe there is something hinkey is going on with the numbering scheme.  Is Cisco pre-allocating numbers to each lab seat every day and then discarding them if the lab isn’t passed?  Are they counting by even numbers now?  Is the numbering now logarithmic?  Add in the recent troubles that Marc La Porte has had with Cisco and his unofficial CCIE Hall of Fame Webpage and the conspiracy theories started spreading like wildfire.  Why is Cisco trying to take down the page?  Are they trying to hide something?

After listening to all the theories and rumors and some of the more outlandish theories that I didn’t even bother to put down, I keep thinking back to a conversation that I had with Terry Slattery back at Cisco Live 2011.  Being the fanboy that I am, I had a chance to ask Terry what he thought about the CCIE numbers climbing ever so higher.  Some of the thoughts he shared with me were rather intriguing and got me to thinking about things in a light that I hadn’t really considered before.  With the acceleration of the new numbers being spit out, I think now more than ever that Terry might have been on to something.

Let’s say for the sake of argument that there isn’t anything funny going on with the numbers.  Let’s also assume that there isn’t rampant cheating going on, as some have suggested to me.  That means that we have a large number of people taking and passing the lab.  But we aren’t hearing about them.  They don’t have blogs or spend time on Groupstudy or post success stories on LinkedIn.  There isn’t any information about them out there.  Almost as if they didn’t really have a big presence on the Internet.  As if they weren’t really looking to market their skills to others and instead were either already at jobs that required the CCIE or had one lined up and ready to go.  Where would such a thing be possible?

China.

Stop and think about it for a minute.  According to Cisco, China is seeing explosive growth in networking, everything ranging from power systems to survellience.  They’re ramping up and infrastructure that’s going to need to support over a billion people all looking to get connected somehow.  China is leading the way in deploying IPv6 internally as a way to alleviate the exhaustion of IPv4 addresses.  Ask yourself then: Where are they getting all these engineers?  How many of your friends and colleagues are flying to China to work on these massive projects?  I’m guessing hardly any.  Why’s that?  Where is the supply coming from to meet this massive demand?

I believe that there are sponsored learning facilities inside China that are essentially functioning like advanced technology vocational technology centers in an effort to train a workforce to go out and assume the roles needed to build and maintain advanced networking and computing infrastructures.  That way, they don’t need to sort out all the details of arranging for a large number of visas to allow foreign engineers to come and work for months at a time.  They also don’t have to worry about bad press from said foreign engineers coming back home and discussing things like the Internet filtering policies.  Instead, they can focus on creating a highly-skilled group of workers to go out and tackle these huge projects.  Because these facilities are likely sponsored or run by the government, profit is of less concern than results.  And if you have a populace that is willing to clamor toward a job that doesn’t involve manual labor or other undesirable work, you would have a motivated pool of talent to pick from.  Taking into account the mind-bending numbers of people available for these jobs, passing even 1,000 extra CCIEs into the global pool is a blip on the radar for China.

One other thing that I’ve mentioned before lends credence to the Chinese CCIE theory in my mind.  Remember those dastardly Open Ended Questions that I hated so much?  Guess which testing facility instituted the in-person interview process that led to the OEQs before the new troubleshooting section?  That’s right, Beijing.  I’m not accusing anyone of wrongdoing.  But the fact that the OEQ program originated there means they must have had a very high pass rate they were suspect of in the first place.  What if the pass rate is still legitimately high even with the new safeguards against impropriety?  Since Cisco doesn’t release numbers on pass rate per lab, I guess we’ll never know.

Tom’s Take

At this rate, we’re looking at seeing CCIE 40,000 before the end of the year.  That’s really going to hit home for people if it took almost 3 years to go from 20,000 to 30,000 and then only takes a year to climb up to 40,000.  I don’t like to think about the idea that lab cheating is so rampant that Cisco has given up trying to protect the value of the CCIE.  Quite the contrary, I’ve heard rumors that the difficulty of the lab is as strong as ever and people are working as hard as they can to get their digits.  To me, that says there is a large contingent of people passing the lab and not talking about it, either by their own choice or the choice of someone above them.  And since we in the U.S. aren’t seeing the workforce flooded with new CCIEs daily, that must mean those passing are someone other than the U.S. (or Europe).  Add in the fact that there aren’t many network rock stars studying Mandarin or watching Ni How Kai-Lan and I am guessing that means that many of our new unknown CCIE brethren are from the Orient.  No crazy conspiracies or funny math.  Just a group of dedicated people doing their best to make it in the world.

2012, Year of the CCIE Data Center?

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About six months ago, I wrote out my predictions about the rumored CCIE Data Center certification.  I figured it would be a while before we saw anything about it.  In the interim, there are a lot of people out there that are talking about the desire to have a CCIE focused on things like Cisco UCS and Nexus.  People like Tony Bourke are excited and ready to dive head first into the mountain of material that is likely needed to learn all about being an internetworking expert for DC equipment.  Sadly though, I think Tony’s going to have to wait just a bit longer.

I don’t think we’ll see the CCIE Data Center before December of 2012.

DISCLAIMER: These suppositions are all based on my own research and information.  They do not reflect the opinion of any Cisco employee, or the employees of training partners.  This work is mine and mine alone.

Why do I think that?  Several reasons actually.  The first is that there are new tests due for the professional level specialization for Cisco Data Center learning.  The DC Networking Infrastructure Support and Design Specialist certifications are getting new tests in February.  This is probably a refresh of the existing learning core around Nexus switches, as the new tests reference Unified Fabric in the title.  With these new tests imminent, I think Cisco is going to want a little more stability in their mid-tier coursework before they introduce their expert level certification.  By having a stable platform to reference and teach from, it becomes infinitely easier to build a lab.  The CCIE Voice lab has done this for a while now, only supporting versions 4.2 and 7.x, skipping over 5.x and 6.x.  It makes sense that Cisco isn’t going to want to change the lab every time a new Nexus line card comes out, so having a stable reference platform is critical.  And that can only come if you have a stable learning path from beginning to end.  It will take at least 6 months to work out the kinks in the new material.

Speaking of 6 months, that’s a bit of the magic number when it comes to CCIE programs.  All current programs require a 6 month window for notification of major changes, such as blueprints or technology refreshes.  Since we haven’t heard any rumblings of an imminent blueprint change for the CCIE SAN, I doubt we’ll see the CCIE DC any sooner than the end of the year.  From what I’ve been able to gather, the CCIE DC will be an add-on augmentation to the existing CCIE SAN program rather than being a brand new track.  The amount of overlap between DC and SAN would be very large, and the DC core network would likely include SAN switching in the form of MDS, so keeping both tracks alive doesn’t make a lot of sense.  If you start seeing rumors about a blueprint change coming for the CCIE SAN, that’s when you can bet that you are 6-9 months out from the CCIE DC.

One other reason for the delay is that the CCIE Security lab changes still have not gone live yet (as of this writing).  There are a lot of people in limbo right now waiting to see what is changing in the security internetworking expert realm, many more than those currently taking the CCIE SAN track.  CCIE Security is easily the third most popular track behind R&S and SP.  Keeping all those candidates focused and on task is critical to the overall health of the CCIE program.  Cisco tends to focus on one major track at a time when it comes to CCIE revamps, so with all their efforts focused on the security track presently, I doubt they will begin to look at the DC track until the security lab changes are live and working as intended.  Once the final changes to the security lab are implemented, expect a 6-9 month window before the DC lab goes live.

The final reason that I think the DC will wait until the last part of the year is timing.  If you figure that Cisco is aiming for the latter part of the calendar year to implement something, it won’t happen until after August.  Cisco’s fiscal year begins on August 1, so they tend to freeze things for the month of August while they work out things like reassigning personnel and forecasting projections.  September is the first realistic timeframe to look at changes being implemented, but that’s still a bit of a rush given all the other factors that go into creating a new CCIE track.  Especially one with all the moving parts that would be involved in a full data center network implementation.

Tom’s Take

Creating a program that is as sought after as the CCIE Data Center involves a lot of planning.  Implementing this plan is an involved process that will require lots of trial and error to ensure that it lives up to the standards of the CCIE program.  This isn’t something that should be taken lightly.  I expect that we will hear about the changes to the program around the time frame of Cisco Live 2012.  I think that will be the announcement of the beta program and the recruitment of people to try the written test beta.  With a short window between the release of the cut scores and beta testing the lab, I think that it will be a stretch to get the CCIE DC finalized by the end of the year.  Also, given that the labs tend to shut down around Christmas and not open back up until the new year, I doubt that 2012 will be the year of the CCIE DC.  I’ve been known to be wrong before, though.  So long as we don’t suffer from the Mayan Y2K bug, we might be able to get out butts kicked by a DC lab sometime in 2013.  Here’s hoping.

Certification Merit Badges

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I had an interesting exchange with a couple of Twitter folks the other day.  Jason Biniewski (@Jason_Biniewski) started it off with this interesting tweet:

Jason, Fernando Montenegro (@fsmontenegro) and I engaged in a little back-and-forth about the relative value of certification.  This is something that I do hear from many people, though.  Many employers don’t see the value of certification.  Some supervisors (like Jason’s) don’t think certifications are worth the paper they are printed on.  I have a totally different stance, and not just because of the giant Wall of Shame behind my desk.

Next time you run into someone that doesn’t think certifications hold much value, ask them to show your their diploma.  If this person is a supervisor or management type, they are sure to happily point out their degree from a prestigious organization.  In some cases, more than one.  Guess what?  In my mind, those college degrees are the same as certifications.  I have a bachelor’s degree.  I have a CCIE.  To me, those are very similar.  They both involve a large amount of studying.  Both study programs are fairly regimented to ensure the student gains the proper amount of knowledge to successfully execute upon that knowledge base.  Both are expensive to chase after.  Both are far from easy.  It just so happens that one of those taught me how to be a business leader and database admin and the other taught me how to work on routers and switches.  In the end, for both of them I ended up with a piece of paper that had my name printed on it that I could hang on my wall as a banner to tell everyone what I had accomplished.

One of the smartest men I ever worked with had no college degree and very few certifications.  No A+, no CCIE.  However, he had an instinctive understanding of the way computers worked and was quick to fix most every problem he encountered.  People constantly underestimated him because they didn’t see his diploma hanging on his wall or noticed his Novell/Microsoft/Cisco certifications.  I only made that mistake once.  That was the moment when I started realizing that certifications aren’t a measure of knowledge in and of themselves.  They’re more like merit badges.

I was a Boy Scout back in the day.  I loved pouring over the scouting handbook and picking out all the merit badges I wanted to earn.  You might even say it was an early precursor to what I’m like today.  I found it interesting that I merely needed to demonstrate my knowledge about a subject and the scouting organization would give me a little badge or pin that told everyone I knew how to make a campfire or pitch a tent.  Whenever I encountered another person with that same merit badge, I knew instinctively that person knew as much about the subject as I did.  I didn’t have to wonder if they knew the ins and outs of something they had a badge for.  That’s what certifications do for you.  They give you a little badge you can put on your resume so you can announce to people that you know a certain amount of basic information.  If you are an MCSE, I know you are familiar with Active Directory.  If you are a CCNA, I know you know what a router is.

If these certifications are so great, why would an employer be hesitant to want you to get one?  I did some thinking and asked a few people and I could really only come up with a couple of reasons.  The first involves companies that aren’t focused on things like value-added reselling.  These companies might be manufacturers or law firms or schools.  They don’t resell their IT services to others but instead consume them in-house.  To these organizations, what you know is more important that telling someone what you know.  So long as you are familiar with setting up Exchange or configuring a floating static route, who cares if you took a test to prove it?  These types of companies typically gain little for paying to have someone certified.  They also don’t see the value in the learning process toward certification.  So long as you can do your job effectively, learning more than is needed isn’t necessary.  I would recommend finding ways to prove that certification can reduce costs or provide extra value for the company as an incentive to get funding or time off for study.  Also, don’t underestimate the potential increase in prestige for employing a higher-caliber technical person.  Some companies treat prestige like a currency.

The other major issue with employers when it comes to certification is fear.  This is usually manifested by the idea that the employer doesn’t want you to pass any tests because they are afraid that you’ll jump ship once you’ve become a CCNA/CCNP/CCIE and leave them holding the bill.  Especially in the VAR space, employers become squeamish if they spend a lot time training someone only to have a competitor swoop in and offer a premium to hire that person away.  The competitor gains a highly trained resource for a pittance compared to the time and effort of training them.  If these types of employers do decide to fund your studies, they will typically do things like have you sign a contract for a length of time or agreement to pay back a portion of the training and certification costs if you decide to leave.  These types of things can be hard to combat.  If you aren’t willing to go the route of certification totally on your own, you may have to sign the agreement or otherwise convince your employer of the benefits of certification.  Just ensure that if you do have to sign an agreement that the clock doesn’t reset for every certification passed.  I’ve heard of people that kept re-upping for a new term with every test passed.  The bill to get out of that contract wasn’t pretty.

Tom’s Take

When I first started working for my present employer, the owner interviewed me and said, “Boy, I’m going to put a quarter of a million dollars into training you to be the best.” Almost eight years later when I passed my CCIE, I asked him if he’d hit his quarter of a million yet. He laughed and replied, “Long ago, son.  And it has been worth every penny.”  I’m fortunate that I get to work with people that understand the value of certifications.  It also helps that I work for a VAR that wants to show them off and use them for competitive advantage in the market.

The next time someone tells you that certifications are a waste of time, ask them where they graduated from, especially if it’s a college.  Explain to them that a certification isn’t any different than a college degree and confers a similar level of knowledge, albeit a little more focused on one area than a general education degree.  Then remind them that the diploma hanging on their wall is worth the same amount at the paper your certification is printed on.  Just don’t ask them how much they payed for their paper.  I’m sure you got a better deal on yours.

VMware vSphere: What’s New [5.0] – Review

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As I spend a lot of my time in training and learning about new technologies, I thought it might be a good idea to start reviewing the classes that I attend to help my readers figure out how to get the best out of their training dollars.  Recently, I had the opportunity to attend the 2-day VMware vSphere: What’s New [5.0] class.

If you are thinking about becoming a VMware Certified Professional (VCP), you’re going to need to go to class.  It’s a requirement for certification.  I don’t necessarily agree with this though.  No other certification I hold requires me to go to class.  The CISSP requires a certain level of experience, and when I looked at the Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH) requirements, they said that their required class could be waived with demonstrable experience.  So the fact that VMware is making me go to class is kind of irritating.  That’s even taking into account that my employer sees the usefulness of staying certified and lets me attend a large number of classes.  I really feel for the independent contractors that need to be VCPs to get into the field but can’t afford to either pay for the class or take the time off for 2-4 days to attend one.  There should be some kind of waiver for people that can demonstrate experience with VMware.  Yes, I know that if you are a 1-step removed VCP (VCP4 in this case) you don’t have to go to class.  Yes, I know that there are very good reasons to make people attend class, such as keeping current with new technology and ensuring your certified user base is up on all the new features.  Yes, I know that the costs of the class are necessary for things like facilities rental and materials.  Just because I understand why it’s required and why it’s so expensive doesn’t mean I have to like it.  But, I digress…

I chose to take the 2-day What’s New class because it was a quicker way to go through the requirements as well as being valid for upgrading my VCP3 to a VCP5 until February.  The 2-day What’s New class is a condensed version of the 4-day Install, Configure, and Manage (ICM) class that introduces VMware to those that are new to virtualization.  Being condensed, the prerequisites for the course state you must be familiar with VMware.  While you don’t need to be intimately familiar with every aspect of the hypervisor and it’s settings, you had better at least be comfortable logging into vCenter and doing some basic tasks.  There won’t be much time for hand-holding in the What’s New class.

The materials for the 2-day class are a 270-page student manual with the slide deck from the class printed in note-taking format and an 80-page lab guide.  The student guide has ample annotations of the slide deck as well as space for taking notes in class.  The lab guide has places to record the information for your student lab pods so you aren’t constantly flipping back and forth to remember what your vCenter or ESXi servers are named.  The lab guide went into good detail about each task, making sure that you knew where to go to enable features or perform tasks.  The lab guide is great for those that want to do a little more practice after leaving the class in a personal lab environment.

The material covered in the class focused on the new features in vSphere 5 and how it’s different from vSphere 4.  Special attention is paid to the new storage features and the new deployment options for ESXi servers, like stateless Auto Deploy.  Thanks to the ample amount of lab time, you have a great opportunity to reinforce the topics with actual examples rather than just staring at static screens on slides.  If you get a really good instructor (like we had), you can even see live configurations of these topics on their lab machines.  Rick, our instructor, made sure to show us live examples every chance he had rather than just relying on stuffy slides.  He also did a great job going into depth on topics that deserved it, like VMware HA changes and elections.  By the way, for anyone that has ever complained about HSRP elections or STP root bridge selection, you should really check out http://www.yellow-bricks.com and get Ducan Epping’s vSphere Clustering Deep Dive book.  Therein, you will learn in vSphere 5, 99 is greater than 100 when performing HA elections.  I’ll give you hint: lexical numbers don’t follow normal rules…

Tom’s Take

Overall, I found the condensed version of class to be a much better value than the 4-day ICM course.  On the other hand, I’ve also been working with VMware for the last 3 years, so I had a good grasp on the basics.  For someone that isn’t familiar with the way virtualization works, the 4-day ICM class will give you a much more measured understanding and more time to play with the basics.  For those that have already gotten their feet wet with VMware and are just looking for a tune up or need to go take the VCP5 exam, you can’t go wrong with the 2-day short, short version of the class.  It’s going to save you a good deal of time and money that you can use to buy more licenses for vRAM.

If you’d like to see more details on the VMware education offerings or sign up for a VMware class, head over to the VMware Education Website at http://mylearn.vmware.com/portals/www/

Trust But Verify

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By the time you are ready to sit in the torture chambers that house the CCIE lab, you are practiced with live configuration to the point of it being subconscious.  Configuring VLANs and routing processes happen without a second thought.  The candidate can do simple tasks quickly and spend more time focusing on difficult areas and weak points.  After walking out of the lab and waiting for the score report, tough areas are replayed over and over again trying to dissect any bright spots.  Whether or not you are confident about your results, when the unsuccessful score report arrives there is usually a shock.  Areas that the candidate believed they passed with authority show missed points and lost opportunity.  The most often heard phrase after this situation is, “I know I did better than that!”

I uttered these very words more than once.  I thought to myself, “How could I get that wrong?  I typed everything in right.  It looked like it was working.”  The fault here wasn’t only in my configuration skill.  Instead, the additional fault was in my failure to verify what I had configured.  Typing commands into a terminal for a lab configuration task is easy, relatively speaking.  It is equally important to prove that you’ve done what you think you’ve done.  Without verification, there is no way to make sure that your configuration tasks are behaving like they should.

Every time I have sat down in the lab, I take one of the two pieces of paper that you are given and I write down a number for every task in the troubleshooting and configuration sections of the lab.  When I configure something, I make a check mark next to that task.  If I can’t get it working right away, I leave it blank.  Once I have a list full of single check marks, I know it’s time to verify.  I sit down with the configuration tasks and I forget everything I’ve done up to that point.  I do this because in the past I’ve been known to say to myself, “I did that right.  No need to check it.”  That attitude couldn’t be more wrong.  If you assume that you’ve done something correctly and don’t bother to check it, you might as well have gotten the question wrong.

When I begin verifying, I read the question again and make sure there were no omitted words or phrases that could affect the configuration.  I then use a variety of “show” commands to prove that I typed everything in the right way the first time.  Nothing is taken for granted.  Neighbor statements are checked.  VLAN descriptions are checked.  Routing tables are poured over.  On lab attempts 6 & 7 (where I passed the configuration section), I found simple mistakes both times that would have cost me a large number of points.  The kind of simple mistakes that a lot of people assume that they couldn’t possibly screw up because they were so easy.  The grading script doesn’t assume you meant “neighbor 1.1.1.1 remote-as 254” instead of what you typed “neighbor 1.1.1.1 remote-as 245“.  Don’t give the script the chance to punch you out for lapses in typing skill.

Once I’ve verified a task the second time, I put a second check mark next to that task.  Once I have a page full of double checks I can relax just a little knowing that I’ve looked at every question twice.  If there’s enough time remaining before I head out, I look over the particularly hairy tasks and add perhaps a third check mark if necessary to really be sure I got them working correctly.  These are usually single tasks that stand alone in the configuration and shouldn’t have an impact on core reachability.  Screwing up your core with less than an hour to go is a great way to get high blood pressure quickly.

Tom’s Take

There’s a reason why they call it “double checking”.  I feel that having a running total of the tasks in your lab keep you focused on the macro task instead of getting bogged down in the micro sections.  It helped in my passing attempt by forcing my to keep moving in the troubleshooting section.  It always helped me in the configuration section so that I didn’t miss the forest for the trees.  Hopefully those of you out there going after your lab will find this useful.  After all, since you can’t use the paper to dispose of your gum you might as well put it to good use.

The Sky’s The Limit for CCIEs

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First of all, congratulations to Jonathan Topping, CCIE #30002.  He passed back on August 25th, which means that CCIE #30000 passed on the 24th or 25th.  That person is still unknown at this time, but the milestone that it represents is pretty impressive.

I chased my CCIE all the way through the 20000′s.  From reading Ethan Banks’ first blog at CCIE Candidate as he got his number (20655) all the way up until I got mine just shy of the 30k mark, I’ve been entrenched in the lore of things.  30,000 is a big mark.  Sure, CCIE #31025 will be the actual 30,000th person certified, but you can’t ignore the significance of how many people out there have chased their goal and achieved it.  Ethan passed his lab in April 2008, and with a little fudging on the math with the pass rates, it took about 3.5 years to get from 20,000 to 30,000.  Pretty impressive for what some have considered to be the hardest exam in the industry for a number of years.  The rate of passing seems to be accelerating.  It fluxuates from about 50 per week up to 150 per week depending on when the test is being taken and whether changes are rumored to be coming down the pipe soon.

There was a time I can remember people saying that anyone with a 5-digit CCIE number was just too green to be of any use in the industry.  Those same things were said just after Larry Edie passed to become #20000.  I’m sure someone will say that now that we’ve broken through 30,000 as well.  It doesn’t matter in the end though.  CCIE numbers are like grade point averages.  I was worried when I graduated college because my GPA wasn’t as outstanding as those kids that spent every waking minute studying for tests and turning in homework two weeks early.  However, on my first interview I wasn’t asked about my GPA.  They asked about my experience and what I was capable of.  The same is now true of my CCIE.  People are impressed with the certification itself, not the number.  The number only exists to prove you are who you say you are.  It doesn’t matter if you’re #1027 or #31027.  The fact is that you’ve all passed the same rigorous test to achieve your goals.  Sure, Greg Ferro may have had to study Token Ring and Ethan Banks may have had to study ATM, but we all passed a lab exam with requirements and tasks.  I’m sure that the IP tasks on my lab exam will look foreign in 3 years when we’re all running IPv6 and configuring OSPFv3.

Other vendors are starting to see the light, too.  Juniper has lab exams for its Juniper Networks Certified Internet Expert (JNCIE).  Microsoft added practical-type questions to the Server 2008 certification track a while back.  Novell took a shot at a practical exam with the first iteration of the Novell Certified Linux Engineer 1.0 exam.  I still have nightmares about that jewel.  I can see more people starting to look at practical exams at the expert level.  I know they are pain to administer and grade.  They are difficult to study for and the material has to be refreshed frequently.  However, they provide something no written multiple choice test can – experience.  I know that someone who has passed the CCIE or the JNCIE can actually sit down and do the things on the test.  There’s no multiple guessing or subject board to award a certification.  It’s down to merit, plain and simple.

Tom’s Take

CCIE #40000 will probably be certified in March 2013 if the current passing trends stay stable.  Sounds closer than one might think.  Milestones come and go, but the aptitude is always there for those that pass.  Don’t worry about getting vanity numbers like 31,024 or 31,337.  Whatever number you get will be the one 5-digit number you will never forget in your entire life.  Don’t fret over getting a number in the 30,000s.  You’re still a name after all.  The number just comes after it.

If you’d like to lookup some milestone CCIE numbers, I highly recommend Marc La Porte’s CCIE Hall of Fame.  He verifies every CCIE number, so the information there is better than anywhere else on the net.

CCIE…For A Few Dollars More

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The price of becoming an Expert just went up a little.  Effective August 1, 2011, the price of the CCIE lab is being increased by $100US across the board to be $1500.  The email that candidates received this morning:

As of August 1, 2011, the price of the CCIE Lab will change from $1400
to $1500 USD*.  Your lab fee will be processed 90 days before your
scheduled lab date. Since payment for your lab will be processed after
this date, you will incur the new price.  While you can cancel your
lab date without cost, we hope you will continue on with your
certification exam to certify that you are one of the most expert
networking professionals in the world.

As an administrative change, the timing on this is just about right.  The Cisco fiscal year begins on August 1 every year, so we are now officially in FY12.  Revenue increases usually get recognized in a new accounting period for reasons that I’ve managed to forget since my last accounting class in college.  Suffice to say that tying the lab price increase to the beginning of the fiscal year isn’t all that unheard of.

Why increase the price at all?  What am I getting for an extra 7%?  All valid questions.  Allow me to speculate:

1.  A Weak Dollar.  It’s no secret that the US dollar isn’t doing so well against other foreign currencies, like the Euro.  I’m not a Harvard Economist, so I’m not going to delve into areas that I know nothing about.  However, the price difference between the two currencies could lead Cisco to believe that the customers paying for the lab in denominations other than the US Dollar aren’t getting a fair shake.  Or, it could mean that other candidates are looking at the US labs as a bargain compared to Brussels and Dubai.  That would mean they could start booking labs here as opposed to there and start overloading the seating available here for US students.  It’s happened before, so I wouldn’t be that surprised to see it again if the candidates believed the price difference was that great.  By raising the lab to $1500, Cisco is essentially resetting the level so that everyone is fair again.

2.  Layoffs.  Yes, I know that within the next two weeks, Cisco is looking at about 6,500 layoffs from all over the company.  This includes 2,100 people who opted for an “early retirement” package in lieu of a furlough.  Why would this have an impact on the CCIE lab?  Because I have it on good authority that once of those 2,100 retirees was a CCIE proctor.  Typically, most labs run two proctors.  One shows up early to get the lab up and running for the day and run the candidates through the morning instructions.  The other proctor ends the lab and collects materials.  Depending on the time differences, the first proctor may not even be around when the lab ends.  Only having one proctor available for a site means a lot of overtime for that poor soul.  More likely is the idea that a new proctor will need to be brought on board, so increasing the price of the lab makes sense from the perspective of training a new guy in how to be mean and paying a chunk of his/her salary in an environment where pennies are going to be pinched pretty soon.

3.  Technology Refreshes.  Before any candidates out there have a heart attack, notice I said “technology” and not “blueprint”.  There is a lot of interesting technology coming in the future for the CCIE lab.  Mark Snow hinted at some of it in his Cisco Live 2011 recap post.  The plan going forward is to port all the lab workbooks to the CCIE Lab Delivery System that the R&S lab uses now.  This costs money.  Also, Cisco wants to start introducing more troubleshooting tasks in the actual configuration section now that the Open-Ended Questions have been removed.  This isn’t cheap.  In addition, Cisco is working on varying the lab tasks slightly among different versions of the exam, for instance asking a task to be configured one way on a version and the same task to have a slightly different configuration in another version.  This kind of development takes time and (you guessed it) money.  So, by adding another $100 to the lab price, they can effectively pay for the development of these new technologies without having to increase revenue from another source.  By making sure the CCIE lab can generate enough revenue to fund its own development, you never have to worry about another business unit getting involved and deciding how things are going to be run.

Tom’s Take

The CCIE lab isn’t cheap.  Not by a long shot.  Between the lab costs and the flights and the hotels and the rental cars, even one trip is a fairly costly adventure.  Adding another $100 onto that may not seem like a lot up front.  But the psychological effect can’t be understated.  The lab is now a nice round $1500 amount.  For those footing the bill themselves, this is another wallet-sized portrait of Benjamin Franklin that they have to part with.  In the end, all the pain and suffering is worth it, even that of your poor bank account.  I think the price increase will fund some great new advances in the lab and hopefully do away with the 3-ring binders for the workbooks and usher in a new age that uses technology to full advantage.  If this increase is due to currency parity, then the additional revenue that is brought in after the currency markets stabilize will be useful as well.  Just don’t expect the price of the lab to go down anytime soon, if ever.  Because if there’s one thing you can count on, it’s the cost of the CCIE lab always being a fistful of dollars.