Category Archives: Certification

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

Posted on by
2

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

Posted on by
Reply

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

Posted on by
3

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

Posted on by
3

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.

CCIE Data Center – Coming Soon-ish

Posted on by
3

Right before I left for Cisco Live, I had a big post about the rumored CCIE Data Center certification exam that I was going to publish.  I held off at the last second because I wanted to gather some more information at Cisco Live from the army of Cisco people that would be there.  I’m glad I waited.

Speculation has been rampant that Cisco is readying an update to the CCIE Storage Area Network (SAN) lab certification exam to better align their position with the new Unified Computing System (UCS) hardware and various other technologies like Wide-Area Application Services (WAAS) and the Application Control Engine (ACE).  These items are heavily utilized in modern datacenters to provide the best customer experience with large scale computing deployments.  Since the focus inside of Cisco for the past few months has involved UCS to a large degree, there is a lot of support in the partner community for top-tier certifications to recognize the investment that partners make in UCS training for their employees.  Also, having a program with the prestige of the CCIE attached to your data center learning gives the engineers working on the product an aura of intelligence when it comes to product.

During Cisco Live, there was even an overview of the CCIE SAN program in the breakout session BRKCCIE-1001.  Curiously, it was titled CCIE Data Center/Storage Certification.  I’m sure that people flooded into the class hoping to hear whether or not the data center CCIE would be coming out soon.  However, the majority of the class dealt with CCIE SAN and the methodologies and topologies of that exam. Only in the last few slides are any hints of the future of data center certification, and even then it is just a suggestion of updates to the existing blueprint.  What follows in this article are my ideas about what a proposed CCIE Data Center might involve.  They are based on conversations I had in the past week, but in no way represent the official position of the CCIE program or any person inside of Cisco, so don’t go quoting me as the gospel truth.

I think the CCIE Data Center program is still 12-15 months out.  Why?  Well, there is still a lot of life left in the SAN program.  The announcement of the removal of the Core Knowledge/Open Ended Questions slated for August 15th proved it.  Why bother mentioning SAN if it’s not going to be around for a while?  There are still a number of students in the CCIE SAN track today and announcing changes this soon would wreck all their hard work and study.  This is also a requirement that any major changes to a track or blueprint must be preceded by a 6-month notice.  As we haven’t heard any announcement yet, the data center CCIE couldn’t possibly arrive earlier than next January.

There is a lot of hardware that could go into a CCIE Data Center exam.  UCS, MDS, WAAS, ACE, load balancers, and even FC/FCoE storage arrays must be considered at a minimum.  What about focus?  There are lots of different areas that you could exam for track focus, from simple UCS deployments to more of a service provider, hosted cloud type integration.  How to cover all of those bases in one exam?  Especially if you have to shoehorn it all into 8 hours?  I’m pretty sure that we might end up seeing some form of tracks in the CCIE Data Center after it launches, similar to the way the CCIE Service Provider used to be subdivided.

What about all those SAN folks that busted their butts learning about MDS switches and figuring out crafty ways to configure fibre channel?  Are they going to be left out in the cold just like the old CCIE ISP Dial guys?  Relics of a bygone era?  I doubt it.  MDS switches are still on the proposed blueprints that I’ve seen being kicked around, and even the rumors say that the SAN program is being upgraded, not retired.  Don’t be shocked if the SAN guys get some kind of “bridge” program to take what they’ve learned about storage and apply it to a Data Center track.  My guess would be something like running the two tracks parallel for a few months after launch and then allowing SAN CCIEs and candidates a single free shot at the Data Center lab exam.

Tom’s Take

It’s time for Cisco to come out with a CCIE for the modern data center.  The other vendors that play in this space love to tout their expertise building multivendor networks and implementing large scale server/storage/switching deployments.  But let’s face it: they aren’t CCIEs.  Once someone gets the digits, they take on a different aura.  Having CCIEs focused on servers and storage would give Cisco a competitive advantage in the data center market, where it appears the battle for supremacy will be waged for the next couple of years.  I think Cisco is going to take their time and get this one perfect before releasing it to the public, both to be sure that it covers their goals for where they want the Cisco data center brand to go as well as to ensure they don’t alienate those CCIEs who have diligently studied SANs and taken the battle standard thus far.  Just remember to have a little patience, since the CCIE is a marathon that pays off in the end.

The OEQs Just Flatlined

Posted on by
2

Okay, 24 hours after my blog post about the imminent removal of the Open Ended Questions (OEQs) from the CCIE Security Lab, I find out that I was not only right, but it is happening sooner than expected.

According to this post:

Effective August 15, 2011, CCIE Security Lab Exam and CCIE Storage Networking Lab Exam, in all global locations, will no longer include the four open-ended Core Knowledge questions.  The removal of Core Knowledge questions allow candidates to utilize the total lab time for configuration and troubleshooting. The total lab time will remain eight hours.

That pretty much puts the final nail in the coffin.  After additional research, I’ve discovered the Service Provider Operations test doesn’t include a “Core Knowledge” section, which is Cisco shorthand for the OEQs.  Along with the revelation that the SP 3.0 lab no longer includes them, this is indeed the end for CCIE Trivial Pursuit edition.

The OEQs were never really meant to do anything more than stem the tide of people “braindumping” the lab.  Rather than go through the trouble of remaking the lab every few months, they evolved the candidate interview section into a mass-produced cheat buster.  I don’t think it was as successful as Cisco would have liked, but it was really just a stop-gap measure until the statistics from the troubleshooting sections could be compiled.  Plus, they needed lead time to get the labs changed before they hemmoraged numbers well north of 30,000.

If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to take the opportunity this weekend to enjoy the long overdue death of my least favorite section of the CCIE lab exams.  Stay tuned, though.  I’ve got some interesting CCIE news coming up after the holiday.

Death to OEQs!

Posted on by
Reply

Just when you think things can’t get any more interesting, a little nugget of news slips out and makes your day fun.  An announcement about changes to the CCIE Security exam leaked out this morning and was quickly retracted to be polished before being reissued tomorrow or the next day.  However, Natalie Timms, the CCIE Security Program Manager confirmed in this thread that the changes were the removal of the Open Ended Questions (OEQs) and more addition of hands-on configuration.  As soon as I saw this, my wheels starting spinning.

Note: What follows is mostly conjecture based on opinions and conversations I’ve had with people in the industry.  Many of these facts are not confirmed as solid, but will be cited where appropriate.  Please don’t go telling people that my words are the gospel truth.  I don’t know any more than anyone else.

I think this movement is the beginning of the end of the OEQs.  They’ve been gone from the R&S lab for over a year now. The Voice lab has done away with them as well.  In the case of the R&S lab, they kept the new troubleshooting section in place as it served the same purpose as the OEQs, a section that could be rapidly changed to provide a method of varying the difficulty of the lab quickly.  The Voice lab introduced troubleshooting into the lab itself, either by making you diagnose broken things in your equipment or by forcing you to debug errors and do things like copy them to text files like you would if you were going to forward the files to TAC.  Integration of troubleshooting allows Cisco to have a good gauge of the candidate’s abilities and more closely ties the exam to the real world skills of a network enginee…rock star.

The remaining CCIE tracks (Wireless, Service Provider/Operations, Storage, and Security) still have OEQs attached to them.  Makes for an interesting briefing in the morning when the proctor has to give 3 different sets of instructions based on what the initial setup of your lab might look like.  Candidates hate the OEQs.  They are a trivia section at best.  People say that they are easy, CCNA-to-CCNP level questions that any CCIE candidate should be able to answer.  I find the lack of specificity in the old OEQs I took to be maddening in some cases, and the lack of proctor assistance was irritating.  In fact, the continued inclusion of OEQs on the other CCIE tracks has made them a little less appealing to me, should I find myself crazy enough to even think about attempting it all over again.

With the announcement, retraction, and eventual re-announcement of the removal of the OEQs from the Security track, I’ve got high hopes now.  I think Cisco has enough data based on their year of R&S and Voice troubleshooting to see it as a viable alternative to Trivial Pursuit: CCIE Edition.  I’ll bet that there is going to be a section similar to the Voice lab where faults are injected (or user-created) in the lab and you’ll be required to diagnose and perhaps log them in files on the desktop.  This makes the most sense, as some of the hardware can be emulated like the IOU images that run in the troubleshooting section but emulation of the specific ASICs and software on something like an ASA would be problematic at best.  By adding troubleshooting, the Security lab will start feeling more like a real-world scenario.

The Wireless track is due for a revamp in November.  Don’t be shocked to see the OEQs get stripped from it as well.  Wireless is a hard track with all the specific hardware required and would also lend itself well to a Voice-style troubleshooting inside the lab exam.  The CCIE Storage exam is on its last legs and is most likely about to be replaced by a new CCIE track more focused around Cisco’s Unified Computing System (UCS), along with Nexus switching, Wide-Area Application Services (WAAS) as well as Fiber Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) storage that will require the MDS switches from the old Storage lab.  This CCIE Data Center track (if that’s what it ends up being called) is probably one of the worst-kept ‘secrets’ in the CCIE world, as I’ve had several people mention to me, and a couple of candidates even ask the proctors when the lab would be retooled to include it.  In the interest of complete fairness, the proctor’s comment was “No comment.”

That leaves Service Provider and Service Provider Operations left as the only OEQ-enabled labs here.  I doubt that Cisco will leave the OEQs here if it removes them from other tracks.  The SP lab recently received a refresh and the SPO lab is very new.  I think that there will be an announcement very similar to the Security lab that removes the OEQs, but I think rather than injecting faults in this lab, they may try for a troubleshooting section down the road similar to the R&S lab.  This could be accomplished with the IOU images that are in use now for the R&S TS section.  Addition of the IOS-XR content would require something different, perhaps the mythical “Titanium” emulator for XR that I keep hearing about yet have never seen (much like IOU only a few months ago).  The addition of a real TS section would change the content drastically though, so it would require 6 months notice before being implemented.  In that time, however, they could use an in-lab troubleshooting method just like the other tracks.

——————————————————————————————————————–

*EDIT*

Thanks to Youssef El Fathi for pointing out that the SP lab has not had OEQs since the 3.0 revision early in 2011.  The thread confirming this from June 8th is HERE.  If that truly is the case, then I don’t see any reason why there should continue to be OEQs in any other tracks.

——————————————————————————————————————–

Tom’s Take

There you have it.  A road map for eliminating the OEQs and banishing them to the same circle of hell as ARCNet and MicroChannel buses.  While I can’t confirm any of my suspicions outside the semi-firm announcement of the removal of OEQs from the Security exam, it makes the most sense that Cisco is ready to implement this change track-wide in the lab.  OEQs take a lot of time to grade and are slightly subjective.  Troubleshooting is pretty easy in comparison – it either works or it doesn’t.  By standardizing on troubleshooting instead of OEQs as the preferred rapid-change method of candidate testing, it makes things a little more fair all around.  I plan on finding the CCIE program managers when I go to Cisco Live this year and asking them about upcoming changes to the tracks so that I can nail down what might be happening.  If they tell me that the OEQs really are going away please don’t mistake my tears for sorrow.  They’ll be tears of unadulterated joy.

I’m going to say it again to avoid an international incident: This is all conjecture at this point.  If I turn out to be wrong, so be it.  However, I feel the time of the OEQs is over.  Don’t tell everyone on Groupstudy or or OSL that this is the absolute truth until you get a confirmed press release from someone whose name ends in “@cisco.com”.

My Thoughts on IOU-For-Learning

Posted on by
Reply

This week, Learning@Cisco announced a new program designed to help those people out there that want a virtualized router platform upon which to study for the CCNA and CCNP.  While the idea behind an emulated IOS platform is one that has been desired for a long time, what Cisco released today isn’t quite what we’ve been clamoring for.  The new programs use the now-famous IOS on Unix (IOU) setup that has been used internally at Cisco for a while now and was made famous by Jeremy Gaddis in this post.  This is also the same platform that is used in the troubleshooting section of the CCIE Routing & Switching Lab.

The new program is completely hosted by Cisco.  All of your access to the IOU environment is done via web and SSH.  You, as the end user, have no access to the files that comprise IOU.  Since the emulator is presented as a component of a learning package, there is no opportunity to modify the topologies presented.  They are canned and align with the courseware you purchase.  This is great for people that are just starting out in the networking world that have no access to the proper gear to learn how to enable telnet sessions and address an interface.  By limiting the access you have to a topology, you get rid of some of the confusion that surrounds tools such as GNS3, namely the dearth of options that tend to confuse the first-time users.

I have a couple of problems with what Cisco’s released so far:

1.  IOU isn’t a true layer 2 emulator.  The software that comprises IOU is great at simulating IOS running on a router.  That’s because it’s essentially an IOS image that has been modified to run on a different “hardware” platform.  So long as all you are worried about is working with routers, IOU is a great resource.  However, if you really want to dive into the second layer of the OSI model, you’re going to come up short rather quickly.  Basic layer 2 configuration is fine for a CCENT/CCNA type of student, but by the time you reach the CCNP level of switching, you’re going to find the interface of IOU wholly unsuitable.  Since IOU emulates a router, it has to emulate switching as it would be on a router with an ESM switch module.  That means that anything that relies on an ASIC to function, such as QoS, is right out the window.  Which means that some of the more esoteric and hard-to-learn parts of using IOS on a switch remain off-limits.  I’ve been able to use 16-port switching modules in GNS3 to emulate switches for some of my studies, but I quickly reached the limits of this configuration with things like advanced spanning tree configuration or specialized tasks like Storm Control.  I think that Cisco needs to put a little more effort into providing an emulated environment for switching.  Finding a way to emulate the ASICs of the QoS functions would make those learning VoIP QoS on 3560/3750 switches much happier.

2.  There’s still no proof-of-concept for engineers.  As luck would have it, I have a small lab at $employer to test some of the things customers ask me about.  It’s been cobbled together with bits and pieces of cast off equipment over the years.  Where I run into trouble are those cases where the customer has a setup that I can’t quite reconstruct with the equipment I have.  What would be nice is a kind of emulation environment that allows me to reconstruct this setup quickly.  This is the perfect scenario for something like IOU.  Being able to quickly reconstruct a customer’s environment or duplicate your own environment for things like change control and internal testing would be a dynamite idea.  By utilizing a Cisco UCS cluster with the right topology files, I could have my WAN configuration duplicated and run several sample configs for maintenance window changes quickly with the capability to roll them back if something horrible breaks.  That’s where the true power of having an emulator lies for the advanced engineer.

3.  Strict control of IOU cuts out the “gray market”.  It’s no big shock that Cisco has taken the stance with the 360 Program that you’re either with us or you’re the “gray market”.  Vendors like Internetwork Expert (INE) and IPExpert have their own courseware and rack space designed to aid their students.  These racks use real routers and switches to allow students the ability to do practical studying.  However, these kinds of study aids are prohibitively expensive for a training provider to get into.  Now, imagine if you could fire up and virtual rack of routers and switches for your students at the touch of a button.  The barrier to entry becomes much lower to those companies wishing to get involved in the training market.  The possibility then exists that you could have some bad apples in the bunch that might dilute the training offered to students and put a black mark against your name.  By holding all the cards in the IOU discussion, Cisco ensures that the technology never leaves their house, so any training partners wishing to leverage the power behind the emulated IOS platform must abide by Cisco’s rules if they want to keep playing.  Cisco can then force training partners to use 360 materials or the equivalent for CCNP/CCNA/CCENT training.  That forces the non-Cisco approved partners out of the space sooner rather than later.

Tom’s Take

Cisco’s getting to the educational platform party ahead of some of the other network vendors, like HP and Juniper, but they’re doing it with baby steps.  High level engineers have been hoping for a truly unlimited emulator for testing things for quite a while now.  I think they’re still going to be waiting for a while to come.  This new learning program is leveraging IOU to replace aging programs like the Boson Network Simulator or the NetSim products.  By tailoring it toward the entry-to-mid learner, it allows them to work out the kinks in the presentation while still keeping control over the platform for the time being.  I’ve heard that they will expand this idea to encompass security offerings and one day the CCIE as well.  I think that the IOU Learning Platform will be integrated into the 360 program and will only be offered as a part of the materials that you receive from your subscription to it.  I seriously doubt that even a CCIE-level student will have unfettered access to IOU in their own lab, since the possibility of a non-crippled version of IOU being readily available creates too many complications for Cisco support.  It’s already fairly easy to get a copy of IOU if you know where to look.  Imagine what would happen if a copy from a CCIE candidate got out into the wild without fixed configurations or limitations that you face in the hosted CCNA version?  I applaud Cisco for the steps they’ve taken in the right direction for allowing students access to emulated educational software.  Now it’s time to observe what happens and meet the needs of those of us on the other end of the scale.

If you think that Cisco needs to offer a full IOS platform for educational purposes, please head over to Greg Ferro’s site and put your digital signature on the educational IOS petition.  The more signatures that are gathered, the more pressure that can be brought to bear on Cisco to show them the will of the engineer.

The Recertification Treadmill

Posted on by
2

I like tests.  Probably a lot more than I should.  Oh, it wasn’t always like this.  I dreaded test days in college.  Cramming chapters worth of information into my brain so that it could just be regurgitated later and forgotten shortly after than.  In fact, I can distinctly remember studying the OSI model for one of my IT infrastructure classes and thinking, “I only need to remember this for the exam.  After that, I’ll never see it again.”  Of course, that same OSI model is now permanently tattooed on the insides of my eyelids.

Then I entered the Real World.  I found out about certification tests and all they entail.  You mean I can take one test proving my mastery of a subject and you guys send me a certificate and a little wallet card?  Sign me up!  It also helped that my employer is a partner with multiple vendors and needed me to take as many tests as I could to keep their partner status up-to-date.  So I set off on my odyssey of test taking.  I’ve got certifications from Novell, Microsoft, CompTIA, Cisco, HP, (ISC)2, and many more.  I’ve taken enough tests that the test administrator at my local testing center recognizes me in the street.  I know more about the ins and outs of testing procedure than most people should.  And, I’ve been handsomely rewarded for my test taking prowess.  And, for the most part, I’ve enjoyed every second of my learning.  Except for recert day.

Yes, every once in a while one of the vendors sends me a note that says I’m due for renewal.  My professional title is now in jeopardy if I don’t study some new information and go see my local Pearson/Prometric guru.  So I start pouring over material in an effort to not need new business cards.  I cram all that new information in my stuffed head and run out to take the test again.  And I pass.  And for a while, I’m a golden boy again.  Until recert day comes up again.

Some vendors tell  you that you can keep your certification for ever and ever.  Like my MCSE.  Of course, I’m not technically “current” with that one, especially now that the new title is MCITP (or something like that).  So, while I’m a whiz when it comes to Windows 2000, I’m not really authorized on the new hotness of Server 2008.  Oh well.  Other vendors, like Cisco, keep the same certification title, but they change the tests around from time to time.  Like my CCVP.  I originally certified on CUCM 4.1.  Back when there was a separate test for those gatekeeper thingies.  And then Cisco went and released a new CCVP track about CUCM 6.x.  I didn’t have to recertify because my CCVP was still good.  But now, they have eliminated the CCVP and changed the voice certification track to the CCNP: Voice.  You can still take the CCVP tests and get grandfathered in before the change to the new CUCM 8.x material if you want.  And that’s what I found myself doing about 2 months ago.  I figured since I worked with voice everyday it shouldn’t be too rough to just jump in and take the tests.  My reasoning was that the partner requirements for Advanced Unified Communications would change after the CCVP –> CCNP: Voice move, so I wanted to get out in front of this change before I was forced to.  I managed to stumble through the troubleshooting test and both CallManager tests in fairly short order.  As I brushed up on my CVOICE basics, I remembered that a previous visit to the Certification Tracker showed that I hadn’t taken the QoS exam, even though I distinctly remembered the pain and agony of that one.  I wrote in to Cisco Cert Support, hoping that I didn’t have to go through it all over again.  While I kept studying for my CVOICE test, I got the response.  It seems that those tests expire after 3 years, and I would need to retake it again for it to be valid.  However, according to Cisco, I was already a CCNP: Voice, so I wouldn’t need to retake it.  Huh?  When did that happen?

Cisco’s recertification policy for professional level exams says that taking any professional test with a ‘642’ prefix will recertify your CCxP.  Little did I know at the time that my first test, Troubleshooting Unified Communications, had recertified my CCVP and triggered the upgrade to a CCNP:Voice.  So, the CUCM tests were for naught.  The CVOICE test did give me a CCNA: Voice tag, so I’ve got that going for me now.  The Cisco recert cycle is nothing new to me.  I’ve been taking the CCIE written exam every year because it’s the only way to keep my specialist designations current.  In order to keep my employer in the good partner graces, I have to keep remembering OSPF and MPLS trivia and take the CCIE written at least every two years.  It’s the only way for me to keep my certifications current without devoting all my time to studying and taking tests instead of doing the job I was hired for.  I was confused in this particular instance with the CCNP: Voice because the certification website never said anything about there being an upgrade path from my 4.2 CCVP to the 8.x CCNP: Voice.  I’m happy nonetheless, but I started thinking about the whole recertification process and why it bothers me somewhat.

I can take any 642 level Cisco exam and recertify all my CCxA and CCxP titles.  I can take the CCIE written and do the same, including my specialist tags.  VMware makes me take a new test and sit through 5 days of training to get a VCP4.  Microsoft wants me to take a whole new set of tests to become a new MCSE/MCITP.  Novell just keeps certifying me on Linux stuff even though I haven’t taken Novell test in years.  And we won’t talk about HP.  Ethan has a great post about recerting his CCIE that hits on a lot of good points.  Normally, we have to either shut down our productivity for a few weeks to get into the recertification groove, or try and find time outside of work to study.  Either way, it seems like a colossal waste of time. It’s almost like being elected to the House of Representatives.  You need to start campaigning for re-election right after you’ve been elected.  It’s just annoying that I have to take time out of my schedule to relearn things I’m already doing.  Is there any way to fix this?

Find a lawyer.  Any lawyer.  If you’re having trouble, check behind the nearest ambulance.  Now, ask them how many times they’ve retaken the bar exam.  Odds are good they’ll stare at you and tell you that you’ve lost your mind.  Lawyers don’t have to resit the bar exam every time they need to renew their fancy degree.  They are allowed to use Continuing Professional Education credits.  All they have to do is take a class or attend a conference and they can count that learning toward recertifying their degree and certification requirements.  IT people are the same.  We spend a lot of our time watching webcasts and going to trade shows.  I go to Cisco Live Networkers almost every year.  When I’m there, I take the opportunity to learn about technologies I don’t encounter in my every day job, like TRiLL or FabricPath.  I’m doing an awful lot to keep current with trends and technology in the industry, and it feels like it’s all for my own edification.  It doesn’t really count toward anything.  Except in one case – my CISSP.  Because (ISC)2 uses a CPEs too.

The vendor-neutral certification bodies have it right, in my opinion.  (ISC)2, BICSI, and CWNP all have a CPE policy.  They say that you can go to conferences or read books and count that learning toward your certification.  They want you to prove that you’re staying current, and in return they’ll make sure you are current when it comes to certifications.  Sure, in the case of the CISSP, most of the learning needs to be focused on security, but that’s how it should be.  I can count some amount of general education credits toward my CISSP, but the bulk of the education needs to be focused on the subject matter of the certification.  I think something like this would be a great addition to Cisco’s arsenal.  Give your certified professionals a chance to apply the learning they do every day toward recertification.  You’d sell more Cisco Press books if I knew I could read one and count 5 points toward my CCSP.  There’d be even more attendees at Networkers if it counted for 40 CPEs every year.  But, there also need to be some restrictions.

Some vendors don’t like the idea that one test can recertify all your titles.  Juniper doesn’t.  So make sure that the education credits only count toward a specific area of knowledge.  The Migrating CUCM class from Brandon Ta that I go to every year could count toward my CCVP, but not my CCSP.  My TRiLL webcasts could count for points to recertify my CCIE R&S or SP, but not the CCIE Wireless.  If you marry the education to a specific certification, you’ll see much higher attendance for those kinds of things.  For people like us that spend time writing about things on the Interwebs, authoring articles for places like Network World or Information Week could count as well, since you are disseminating the knowledge you’ve obtained to the masses.  Even teaching could count toward recertifying.

This idea is not without issue, though.  The first argument is that allowing certified individuals to use CPEs might cause problems with the cottage industry that has sprung up around teaching these subjects to people.  Ask yourself, How many people would go to VMware classroom learning if it wasn’t required to obtain the VCP?  I’m sure the answer would be “A whole lot less.”  It’s no secret that Cisco and HP and Microsoft make a lot of money offering classes to people in order to get the certified on technology.  Companies can specialize in just teaching certification coursework and turn a tidy profit.  And these same companies might not be too keen on the idea of a revenue stream drying up because Cisco or Novell decided to be noble and not require everyone to take a new test every 2 years.

Another consequence, though one for the better, would be the contraction of the “braindump” market.  A lot of people talk about the braindump market catering to those who want a fast track to the CCNA or other entry-level cert.  I’m of the opinion that a larger portion of the dumping population consists of already-certified individuals that have neither the time nor the energy to study for a recertification exam.  These people are facing a deadline of needing to stay current with whatever alphabet soup comes after their name, except now that they have a steady job they don’t have the time to devote to studying all night to pass.  Faced with the option of letting their certification expire, or paying money to someone for the answers to the test, they swallow their pride and take the easy way out.  In their mind, no harm is done because they were already a CCxA in the first place.  They know the material, they just don’t have time to remember what the “vendor answer” is on the test.  Now, give these same people the opportunity to apply a webcast or vendor presentation that they’d sit through anyway to that CCxA.  I bet that more than half the dumping sites would go away within a year.  When the market starts drying up, it’s time to move on.

I really hope that the vendors out there take the time in 2011 to reassess their recertification strategies.  Giving certified professionals more options when it comes to proving they know their material can only build goodwill in the future.  Because the current method feels way too much like a treadmill right now.  I keep running in place as fast as I can just to stay where I’m at.  I think things need to change in order to make the education and learning that I do have a tangible impact on my certification progress.  Because sooner or later I’m not going to be able to keep up with the recertification treadmill.  And we all know what the result is when that happens…

Twelve Days of Christmas Networking

Posted on by
1

In the spirit of Christmas, and because my wife has made me listen to the song about 400 times so far this year, I present the Twelve Days of Christmas, Networking Nerd style.  To save you all the trouble of singing the whole song, we’ll just skip to day tweleve.  On the Twelfth Day of Christmas, the Networking Nerd gave to me:

– Twelve character passwords

– Eleven 802.11n Access Points

– Ten Gigabit Ethernet

– Nine 9971 phones

– Eight-port switch blades

– Seven CCIE Tracks

– Six Hours in the CCIE Lab

– Five Magic Digits! (I hope…)

– Four-port FXOs

– Three Packet Pushers

– Two L2MP options

– And One Goal: To get my CCIE!

Special Thanks to JT (@WannabeCCIE) for giving me the idea for this.

Merry Christmas to all the folks out there.  May your holidays be filled with joy and caring.  May your families not drive you insane, and may your Christmas stocking be filled with all the goodies you asked Santa for.