• Home

  • Documents

  • Blog ine com_2013_07_10_how_i_passed_the_ccie_data_center_la
1
pdfcrowd.com Jul 10 106 Comments How I Passed the CCIE Data Center Lab Exam Posted by Brian McGahan, CCIE #8593, CCDE #2013::13 in CCIE Data Center About Brian McGahan, CCIE #8593, CCDE #2013::13: Brian McGahan w as one of the youngest engineers in the w orld to obtain the CCIE, having achieved his first CCIE in Routing & Sw itching at the age of 20 in 2002. Brian has been teaching and developing CCIE training courses for over 10 years, and has assisted thousands of engineers in obtaining their CCIE certification. When not teaching or developing new products Brian consults w ith large ISPs and enterprise customers in the midw est region of the United States. Find all posts by Brian McGahan, CCIE #8593, CCDE #2013::13 | Visit Website Eric P July 10, 2013 at 7:20 pm Brian McGahan, CCIE #8593, CCDE #2013::13 July 11, 2013 at 12:46 am ravi September 1, 2013 at 5:36 am Akash July 10, 2013 at 7:27 pm Wayne Downing July 10, 2013 at 7:34 pm Dan V. CCIE 34827 July 10, 2013 at 7:49 pm EDO July 10, 2013 at 8:37 pm Brian McGahan, CCIE #8593, CCDE #2013::13 July 11, 2013 at 12:41 am R Profit July 10, 2013 at 9:06 pm Manish Salaria July 10, 2013 at 9:13 pm Ahmad AlNajjar July 10, 2013 at 9:24 pm Marc Edwards July 10, 2013 at 9:32 pm Nicolas Michel July 10, 2013 at 10:00 pm Brian McGahan, CCIE #8593, CCDE #2013::13 July 11, 2013 at 12:31 am Nicolas Michel July 11, 2013 at 1:42 am Nicolas July 11, 2013 at 1:42 am Amit July 10, 2013 at 10:13 pm Brian McGahan, CCIE #8593, CCDE #2013::13 July 11, 2013 at 12:29 am Nicolas July 11, 2013 at 1:55 am MJ July 10, 2013 at 10:34 pm TariqSheikh July 10, 2013 at 11:16 pm Tahir July 10, 2013 at 11:57 pm Nadeem Rafi July 11, 2013 at 12:03 am Adrian July 11, 2013 at 12:55 am Brian McGahan, CCIE #8593, CCDE #2013::13 July 11, 2013 at 3:08 am Indra PN July 11, 2013 at 1:03 am Dang July 11, 2013 at 1:28 am Brian McGahan, CCIE #8593, CCDE #2013::13 July 11, 2013 at 3:08 am vaibhav July 11, 2013 at 1:53 am phin July 11, 2013 at 1:54 am Brian McGahan, CCIE #8593, CCDE #2013::13 July 11, 2013 at 3:07 am Ibrahim July 11, 2013 at 2:31 am Aral July 11, 2013 at 4:29 am Brian McGahan, CCIE #8593, CCDE #2013::13 July 11, 2013 at 4:47 am Antonio Soares July 11, 2013 at 5:13 am Brian McGahan, CCIE #8593, CCDE #2013::13 July 11, 2013 at 7:07 am David July 11, 2013 at 7:56 am Brian McGahan, CCIE #8593, CCDE #2013::13 July 11, 2013 at 9:17 am Siddharth bhatia July 11, 2013 at 8:32 am Jay Humphrey July 11, 2013 at 8:50 am Brian McGahan, CCIE #8593, CCDE #2013::13 July 11, 2013 at 9:17 am Luis Ocampo July 11, 2013 at 10:25 am racerevlon May 15, 2014 at 10:54 am Brian McGahan, CCIE #8593, CCDE #2013::13 May 15, 2014 at 11:06 am Steve Miller, #23977 July 11, 2013 at 10:51 am Brian McGahan, CCIE #8593, CCDE #2013::13 July 11, 2013 at 11:31 am Edwin Martinez July 11, 2013 at 4:22 pm Brian McGahan, CCIE #8593, CCDE #2013::13 July 12, 2013 at 8:52 am etonde July 11, 2013 at 8:03 pm Brian McGahan, CCIE #8593, CCDE #2013::13 July 12, 2013 at 8:51 am Hudson July 12, 2013 at 1:03 am Deepak Arora July 12, 2013 at 1:33 am Brian McGahan, CCIE #8593, CCDE #2013::13 July 12, 2013 at 9:11 am Marcial July 12, 2013 at 5:57 am Brian McGahan, CCIE #8593, CCDE #2013::13 July 12, 2013 at 8:41 am Luis Mazariegos July 12, 2013 at 6:41 am Brian McGahan, CCIE #8593, CCDE #2013::13 July 12, 2013 at 8:41 am Steve Jordan July 12, 2013 at 11:28 am Deepak Arora July 12, 2013 at 10:10 pm Brian McGahan, CCIE #8593, CCDE #2013::13 July 13, 2013 at 11:06 am Kamal Saini July 14, 2013 at 12:15 pm kennyg July 14, 2013 at 1:34 pm Brian McGahan, CCIE #8593, CCDE #2013::13 July 15, 2013 at 8:40 pm Asoka Perera July 15, 2013 at 5:09 am Brian McGahan, CCIE #8593, CCDE #2013::13 July 15, 2013 at 8:42 pm Brian McGaham e como ele passou o CCIE Data Center | Switching News Network Angola (SNN Angola) July 15, 2013 at 6:03 pm Vallard Benincosa July 15, 2013 at 11:14 pm Kenny July 16, 2013 at 12:15 am Brian McGahan, CCIE #8593, CCDE #2013::13 July 18, 2013 at 10:10 am Hemanth Raj July 16, 2013 at 3:47 am Brian McGahan, CCIE #8593, CCDE #2013::13 July 18, 2013 at 10:10 am YS July 16, 2013 at 9:22 am Brian McGahan, CCIE #8593, CCDE #2013::13 July 18, 2013 at 10:10 am Benedict Agyemang July 16, 2013 at 12:46 pm Brian McGahan, CCIE #8593, CCDE #2013::13 July 18, 2013 at 10:07 am alan July 16, 2013 at 3:33 pm Brian McGahan, CCIE #8593, CCDE #2013::13 July 18, 2013 at 10:00 am Starting up | SB16 -> CCIE July 17, 2013 at 5:54 am dan July 17, 2013 at 3:50 pm Alessio July 19, 2013 at 5:59 am Eddy July 19, 2013 at 3:26 pm Brian McGahan, CCIE #8593, CCDE #2013::13 July 23, 2013 at 2:12 pm Imran July 21, 2013 at 11:20 am Dominic July 24, 2013 at 3:14 pm Enrique July 25, 2013 at 9:12 am Reddy July 25, 2013 at 3:18 pm Andy Feinberg July 26, 2013 at 11:02 am Ranga July 29, 2013 at 4:46 am Combining a Few Study Methods | CCIE Data Center Journey July 29, 2013 at 8:50 am YS July 30, 2013 at 8:17 am Mark Snow, CCIE #14073 July 30, 2013 at 12:48 pm Yannick Epassa, CCIE# 20413 August 21, 2013 at 3:10 pm Yannick Epassa, CCIE# 20413 August 21, 2013 at 3:18 pm Finn , CCIE # 19892 August 22, 2013 at 9:33 am Will August 26, 2013 at 10:22 am AlanL September 5, 2013 at 7:36 am carloslnx September 6, 2013 at 4:52 pm Imran Shahid September 7, 2013 at 1:25 pm Mauricio September 11, 2013 at 12:21 pm Danny Pritchard September 20, 2013 at 6:27 am sebastian raj November 25, 2013 at 7:58 pm Brian McGahan, CCIE #8593, CCDE #2013::13 November 26, 2013 at 7:14 pm Ravi Kant Gumber, CCIE# 23428 February 20, 2014 at 7:17 am Mark Snow, CCIE #14073 February 28, 2014 at 9:31 am Yors Shure November 27, 2014 at 11:20 am Brian McGahan, CCIE #8593, CCDE #2013::13 December 4, 2014 at 11:55 am This past Monday I passed the CCIE Data Center Lab Exam in San Jose CA, making me four time Cisco Certified Internetwork Expert (CCIE) #8593 in Routing & Switching, Service Provider, Security, and Data Center, as well as Cisco Certified Design Expert (CCDE) #20130013. This was my first – and thankfully last – attempt at the DC lab exam, and also my first experience in the San Jose CCIE Lab location. In this post I’m going to outline my preparation process for CCIE Data Center, as well as to talk about my experience with the actual day of the lab. The Initial Commitment When the new CCIE Data Center track was first announced last year, it was a no-brainer that I was going to pursue it. As I already had 15+ years of experience in Enterprise networking, with a large focus on campus LAN switching, IGP and BGP routing, plus some minor exposure to the Nexus platforms, I thought it would be a cinch. After all, Nexus is just a fancy Catalyst 6500, right? The major hurdle for the track however was not the technologies, but procuring the equipment. After debating back and forth for quite a while, Brian Dennis and I decided that INE would hold off on the company Ferraris, and instead invest in the equipment for CCIE Data Center. One of our deciding factors to invest in the track was the sheer volume of customers at our CCIE Candidate Party at Cisco Live 2012 that kept asking us all night long, “when are you guys going to do Nexus training!” As they say, ask and you shall receive… or was it if you build it, they will come? Coincidentally, our initial build plans for DC started in early July 2012, which makes it almost one year to the day from when we committed to the track until when I finally had a chance to take the lab exam. Originally I had planned to try to get the very first available slot for the DC lab exam, but as always life happened and a few things got in the way, such as the birth of my daughter, as well as a short pit stop along the way to pick up the Cisco Certified Design Expert (CCDE). Anyways, onto my preparation… Once our equipment build was finalized, which by the way was the most grueling and complicated build of my 15+ year career, Mark Snow and I decided to implement a divide and conquer approach to the blueprint, where we would split the Nexus topics, I would take Storage, he would take Unified Computing System (UCS), and then we’d come back and meet in the middle. Nexus I assumed would be simple, since I had some experience using it as a basic 10GigE aggregation switch, but none of the advanced DC specific topics (e.g. vPC, FabricPath, OTV, FCoE, etc.) In hindsight, yes Nexus is just a glorified Cat6k, however there are caveats, caveats, and more caveats galore. Did I mention Nexus has a lot of caveats? Recommended Reading or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Documentation Since a lot of the DC specific technologies are so new, there’s not many traditional books that are out there that can help you, unlike something like OSPF that is over 20 years old. With Nexus the topics are so cutting edge, the NX-OS software team is literally pushing out hotfixes and new features as we speak. Therefore the only main resource that is available for reading about a lot of these technologies is the Cisco Documentation. I can already hear the collective groan from the audience about reading the documentation, but I can’t stress this enough, you must read the Nexus documentation if you are serious about these technologies and about passing the CCIE DC Lab Exam. To give you an idea, this is what my Chrome bookmarks toolbar still looks like today. Personally the way I did this was to download every single configuration guide for Nexus 7K, 5K, and 2K in PDF format, and then load them on my iPad. Starting with Nexus 7K I worked from basic system administration up to interfaces, layer 2 switching, layer 3 routing, SAN switching, etc. Don’t count on having access to the PDF versions of the documentation in the actual lab exam, but for preparation purposes these are much more convenient than clicking through every section of the documentation in HTML format. Each configuration guide can be downloaded as a single complete PDF. Note that for MDS you don’t need to read through as much, since the SAN switching syntax is essentially the same between the Nexus 7K, 5K, and MDS, as they all run NX-OS. The sections of MDS documentation that I did read end-to-end however are the Cisco MDS 9000 Family NX-OS Interfaces Configuration Guide and the Cisco MDS 9000 Family NX-OS IP Services Configuration Guide. Both of these sections are key, as some topics such as FC Trunking and Port Channeling work differently in MDS than they do in Nexus, and then the IP Storage features such as FCIP and iSCSI are unique to MDS and are not supported in Nexus. Another key point about the documentation for Data Center, just like for other CCIE tracks and other technologies in general, is that once you know how to use the documentation and where things are located you don’t need to worry about the default values for features, or other inane details about syntax. For example there was a discussion recently on the CCIE DC Facebook group about how to create a mnemonic device (e.g. All People Seem To Need Data Processing / Please Do Not Throw Sausage Pizza Away) in order to remember in which features higher values are better and in which features lower values are better, e.g. LACP system-priority, vPC role priority, FabricPath root tree priority, etc. I responded, who cares? Why waste time remembering default values that likely will change between versions anyways? Instead, your time would be better spent making sure that you know the manual navigation path for all features that you will be tested on in the exam. Lower is higher and higher is lower… makes perfect sense, right? Another point to consider is that in the actual Lab Exam, access to the documentation web pages is not very fast. I’m assuming this is due to the strict content filtering that all the pages have to go through before they show up on your desktop. Regardless as to the reason, if you need to use the documentation in the exam and you don’t already know exactly where the page you want is located, you’re gonna have a bad time. Additionally, don’t limit your reading of the documentation to just the configuration guides. There are a number of other very useful portions of the documentation that you should read – again, end-to-end, there are no shortcuts here – such as the white papers, design guides, and troubleshooting guides. The Nexus 7000 White Papers are an essential read. This is especially true since some of the verification and troubleshooting syntax for Nexus is just out of this world. I swear whoever works on the actual syntax parser for the NX-OS software team must get paid based on the number of characters that the commands contain. Did you say that your Fibre Channel over Ethernet isn’t working to your Nexus 2232PP Fabric Extenders that have multiple parent Nexus 5548UP switches paired in Enhanced Virtual Port Channel? I hope you remember how to troubleshoot them with the command show system internal dcbx info interface ethernet 101/1/1! Err… how about we just know where to find it in the FCoE troubleshooting guide instead then. The troubleshooting guides are an often overlooked section of the documentation. The real point of using the documentation is as follows: you must understand, in detail, the design caveats and hardware caveats that the Nexus, MDS, and UCS platforms have as they relate to the DC technologies. Pictured above, some light reading on the Design Considerations for Classical Ethernet Integration of the Cisco Nexus 7000 M1 and F1 Modules Recommended Books Beyond the documentation, there are a select few regular books that I used during my studies. The vast majority of them are either available on the Safari Online site, or in the case of the IBM Redbooks, free in PDF form direct from IBM’s website. These books, in no particular order are: NX-OS and Cisco Nexus Switching: Next-Generation Data Center Architectures Cisco Storage Networking Cookbook Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS) (Data Center): A Complete Reference Guide to the Cisco Data Center Virtualization Server Architecture Storage Networks Explained: Basics and Application of Fibre Channel SAN, NAS, iSCSI, InfiniBand and FCoE IBM Redbooks – Introduction to Storage Area Networks and System Networking Cisco Live 365 For those of you that have never heard of Cisco Live 365 before, you’re welcome. This is where all the video recordings and PDFs of slide decks are from the different Cisco Live (i.e. Cisco Networkers) conventions that have occurred in the past few years, from multiple locations. A lot of these sessions are used to talk about the introduction of new products, e.g. the new Nexus 7700 that was just announced at Cisco Live 2013 Orlando, while others are technical deep-dives into topics. In the case of CCIE Data Center there are a lot of really good presentations that I would recommend looking at during your preparation. You don’t need to have physically attended Cisco Live in the past to get access, just sign up for an account for free and you can search all the content. The Data Center sessions generally start with “BRKDCT” (Breakout Data Center Technologies), so that’s a good place to start your search. Notable ones that I personally thought are worth looking at are in no particular order as follows: BRKDCT-2204 – Nexus 7000/5000/2000/1000v Deployment Case Studies BRKDCT-2237 – Versatile architecture of using Nexus 7000 with F1 and M-series I/O modules to deliver FEX, FabricPath edge and Multihop FCoE all at the same time BRKCRS-3145 – Troubleshooting Cisco Nexus 5000 / 2000 Series Switches BRKDCT-2048 – Deploying Virtual Port Channel in NXOS BRKCRS-3146 – Advanced VPC operation and troubleshooting BRKDCT-2081 – Cisco FabricPath Technology and Design BRKDCT-2202 – FabricPath Migration Use Case BRKDCT-1044 – FCoE for the IP Network Engineer BRKSAN-2047 – FCoE – Design, Operations and Management Best Practices BRKCOM-2002 – UCS Supported Storage Architectures and Best Practices with Storage BRKVIR-3013 – Deploying and Troubleshooting the Nexus 1000v virtual switch BRKRST-2930 – Implementing QoS with Nexus and NX-OS BRKCOM-2005 – UCS and Nexus Fabric and VM’s – Extending FEX direct to VM’s in UCS and Nexus 5500 INE’s Videos, Workbooks, & Classes Now in my personal case, when I am learning a new technology, I know that I have truly absorbed and understood the topics when I can explain it to someone else in a clear and concise manner, hence my day job, author and instructor at INE. From the culmination of reading these books, reading the documentation, and testing essentially every feature that the platforms have to offer, Mark Snow and I developed INE’s Nexus, Storage, and UCS classes, as well as the associated workbook labs and the live Bootcamp classes for these technologies. As I’ve done many write-ups before on these offerings, and without getting too much into a sales pitch, you can find more information here about INE’s CCIE Data Center Video Series, here about INE’s CCIE Data Center Workbook, here about our CCIE Data Center 10-Day Bootcamp, and here about our CCIE Data Center Rack Rentals. Note that we are currently adding more capacity to rack rentals and adding more Bootcamp classes to the schedule, both of which I’ll be posting separate announcements about shortly. Read, Test, Rinse, and Repeat While learning and developing the content for Data Center I followed the same methodology that Brian Dennis and I have been personally using and have been teaching for the past 10 years (yes, I can’t believe it’s been that long). This methodology is essentially a four step process of learning and testing incrementally. This is also the same methodology that has helped Brian Dennis obtain five CCIEs, and for me to obtain four CCIEs and the CCDE, so trust me when I say that it works. The methodology is a basic four step process as follows: Gain a basic understanding of the technologies Gain basic hands-on experience to reinforce and expand your understanding Gain an expert level of understanding Gain an expert level of hands-on experience It might seem self-explanatory that you need to start at the bottom and work your way up, i.e. A then B then C then D, however over the years we’ve seen so many CCIE candidates try to shortcut this process and try to go from A directly to D. Traditionally these are the candidates that end up taking the lab exam 5, 6, 7 times before passing, essentially trying to brute force their way through the lab. Believe it or not, we have had customers in the past that have attempted the CCIE Lab Exam in the same track 10 or more times before passing. Coincidentally, these are also usually the customers that don’t want to hear that they don’t know something or that their methodology is wrong. Go figure. Pictured above, how to make a hobby out of visiting building C at Cisco’s San Jose campus. At least for me personally, obtaining a CCIE is more about the journey than it is the destination. I feel that I would have cheated myself coming out of the process without truly being an expert at the technologies covered, so I made sure to really take the time and be meticulous about going through everything. Pictured above, how to astound the engineers at the technical interview for your new job after getting your CCIE. The CCIE Data Center Written Exam Before scheduling the Lab Exam, I of course had to tackle the necessary evil that is the CCIE Data Center Written Exam. In my opinion this exam should be renamed the “how many stupid facts can I memorize about the Nexus and UCS platforms exam.” I didn’t pass the DC written exam on my first attempt, or on my second attempt. I’m not going to say exactly how many times I took the the DC written exam, but let’s just say that it’s somewhere more than two and somewhere less than infinity, and that I likely have seen every question in the test pool multiple times. For those of you have passed this exam on your first try, more power to you. With me on the other hand I try not to memorize any facts that I can quickly look up instead. While whoever wrote the CCIE DC Written Exam may think it’s important that the UCS B420 M3 Blade Server has a Matrox G200e video controller with integrated 2D graphics core with hardware acceleration and supports all display resolutions up to 1920 x 1200 x 16 bpp resolution at 60 Hz with a 24-bit color depth for all resolutions less than 1600×1200 and up to 256 MB video memory, I do not, but I digress. Scheduling the CCIE Data Center Lab Exam One of the biggest hurdles in obtaining the CCIE DC that I had not initially planned for was the availability, or lack thereof, of lab dates open for scheduling. I’m not normally one to complain about this, because when I took the CCIE R&S Lab Exam back in January 2002 I believe that I scheduled the date somewhere around July of 2001. Back then it was the norm to have a 6 month wait for dates, so when you went to the lab you had better be really prepared for it, otherwise you had a long 6 months ahead of you afterwards trying to think of what you did wrong. With Data Center though, this was a completely different ballgame. By the time I got around to being ready to schedule a date, there was literally not a single date open on the schedule for any location. Mark Snow had even scheduled a lab date in Brussels Belgium, and was going to fly from Los Angeles in order to take the lab because that was literally his only option. Luckily right around that time the CCIE Program added new dates on the schedule, and he was able to move his lab attempt to San Jose, where he ended up passing. Anyways once these new dates were added to the schedule I knew that I had to act fast, or risk having to wait until 2015 (not really, but that’s what it felt like). Unfortunately the date that I took was only a week after Cisco Live 2013 Orlando, so I couldn’t help but feel while we were partying it up at the conference I should have been at home studying instead. Also I would have much preferred to go to RTP over San Jose, since RTP is much closer to Chicago and I’m much more familiar with the area. In hindsight SJC was probably a better choice anyways, since I have lots of friends in RTP which means there would have been more distractions. Traveling To San Jose I scheduled my exam purposely on a Monday, which meant that I could get to San Jose either Friday or Saturday and then leisurely spend the rest of the weekend doing some last minute review and relaxing in the hotel without any distractions. This is the first time I’ve done it this way, and if you have the option to this is the approach that I would recommend. Having had all my attempts in RTP in the past I was never worried about travel time, since it’s only about two hours from Chicago. Normally I would fly in the day before the lab in the afternoon, and then immediately go to the airport after the exam to fly home. Worst case scenario I could drive from to Chicago to RTP, which I actually have done in the past. I remember one time when teaching a class at Cisco’s RTP office I left the campus at about 5:30 on a Friday, drove to RDU and parked my car, bought a ticket at the desk , and still had time to make a 6:15 Southwest flight back to Chicago. I could only dream that Chicago O’Hare or Midway was as delay-free as RDU. SJC on the other hand doesn’t have as many flights to Chicago, so I wanted to play it safe and arrive more than one day early. Luckily I did plan it this way, otherwise with the Asiana Flight 214 incident at SFO this past weekend I might not be writing this post at all right now; the moral or the story being that if you have the option to travel an extra day early before the exam, take that option. For the hotel I stayed at the Hyatt Regency Santa Clara, which was nice. They have a nice outdoor pool area that I spent some time relaxing with my laptop at. It’s fairly close to the Cisco campus, being about a 5 – 10 minute cab ride to the office in the morning, and then after the lab I walked back to the hotel which took about a half an hour or so. If you’re familiar with the area it’s directly next to the Techmart and the Santa Clara Convention Center. The Day of the Lab San Jose’s lab starts at 8:15am, so I scheduled a cab from the hotel at 7:20am. I figured this way even if the cab didn’t show up I’d still have time to walk over to the office. Admittedly I did arrive much too early to the office, but it’s always better to be early than late. If you’ve ever had a class with Brian Dennis you’ve probably heard the same joke he’s been telling for the last 10 years: “I’ve been both early for the CCIE Lab Exam and I’ve been late for the CCIE Lab Exam. The preferred method is to be early.” Since it was only about 7:30am when I got there I walked around the campus for a while just to try to calm my nerves. Ultimately I checked in with the receptionist, and made some small talk with some of the other candidates. I was hoping to go incognito for the day, but immediately the first guy I said hi to said “aren’t you Brian McGahan from INE?” Oh well… that’s the price of being nerd famous. The proctor Tong Ma came out to the lobby around 8:15am or so to collect us all and check IDs, and then did his spiel about the logistics of the lab location (e.g. where the bathroom was, the breakroom, lunch time, etc.). 8:30am was our official start time, so I sharpened my colored pencils, sat down at my terminal, logged in, and prepared for the fun. Immediately all around me I heard the other candidates furiously pounding away on their keyboards. This is what I like to call the “panic approach”. I on the other hand started with a different approach that had already worked for me three times in the past. I took my first sheet of scratch paper, and started a quick drawing of the diagram I was presented with. This was my first lab attempt using the new lab delivery system where everything is electronic, but regardless in past attempts you couldn’t draw on their diagrams anyways. One point of drawing out the diagram for myself was to help me learn the topology, but more importantly so that I could take quick notes as to which technologies would need to be configured in which portions of the network, e.g. which devices were running vPC, FabricPath, OTV, FCoE, etc. The next step was to read through the exam, to see what technologies were actually being tested on, and to plan my order of attack on how I was going to build the network. One thing that I have found with my past CCIE tracks is that the order that they give you the questions in isn’t necessarily always the best order that you actually want to configure things. After all they’re only grading the result at the end of the day, not the actual steps that you used to get there. Once I had a basic understanding of what was covered, and had taken some notes on my diagram as to which features went where, I took my two other pieces of scratch paper (there were 3 total but you can always ask for more if you need), and drew out my two tables that I use to track my work. For those of you that have attended a live class with me in the past or watched any videos I’ve done on lab strategy you may be familiar with this, but for those of you that haven’t seen this there’s basically two tables that I use to track my work during the day. The first of which I use to track which sections that I have configured, how comfortable I am with the answer I gave, and which sections I skipped. Throughout the day this helps me to know what sections I need to go back to at a later time. Also at the end of the day this is the sheet I use to go back and check everything with a fine tooth comb. The end result looks something similar to the picture below, but this one is just something I made up now it’s not from any real lab. The way I read this at the end of the day is that all the tasks with a Check mark I’m 100% confident that the solution is correct. Tasks with a ? mean that I configured something, but I’m not 100% if it’s correct or that I answered the question the way that they wanted. Anything that is blank, like section 2.3 that means that I completely skipped that task, and that I’ll come back to it at a later time. Once I’m done with all the tasks, I then circle back around to the tasks that I completely skipped to see if I can answer them, then revisit the ones with a ? that I wasn’t 100% sure about. Finally the “2 nd ” column is for my double checking, where I start all the way at the beginning of the lab and re-read each question, re-interpret it, verify my answer, and if satisfied check it off again and continue. In the case of the DC Lab Exam I ended up with two tasks with a question mark and one task with a blank at the end of the day. In other words by my count there was one task I definitely was getting wrong, two tasks I had completed but wasn’t sure if I interpreted properly exactly what they wanted, and all other tasks I was 100% confident were correct. The second of these scratch paper tables was to track my timing. After all if they gave you a week to configure the lab, most candidates would probably pass. With the 8 hour time limit ticking down though, not so much. This is why it’s not only important to track your progress throughout the day to see which sections you’re confident about your answer, but also how long it’s taking you to configure them. The end result of this table looks something like this: The “Time” column represents the hour of the day. The lab starts around 8 and ends around 5. Between 8am and 9am, I got zero points. The rest of the values in the table are made up, I don’t remember what the point values of the sections in my attempt were, but the first row is actually true. From 8:30am to 9am I did not configure a single section, and I did not gain a single point. Why? Because I spent that half hour drawing the topology, reading through the tasks, and planning my attack. While most people take the “panic approach” and immediately begin configuring the lab blind, I knew that even though it would cost me time up front to draw and read, it would save me time in the long run. This did actually save time in the long run, because I finished about 95% of the exam by 2:30pm, which gave me a very relaxed two and half hours at the end of the day to double, triple, and quadruple check my work. Getting back to the table above, between 9am and 10am, I completed – and was confident with the answers of – sections that were worth 2, 2, 3, 2, 4, 2, and 2 points. Basically each time I completed a task and it had a check mark in the other table, I wrote the point value down here. Each time I completed a section I also checked the clock on the wall to make sure I was writing the point value in the correct row. The logic of using this table is simple: the exam is broken down into sections totaling 100 points. Excluding your lunch break, you get 8 hours to configure the lab. This means at an absolute minimum you need to be averaging 10 points per hour in order to hit your goal of 80 points. Now ultimately the totals on the right should be consistently be reading above 10 points for the early portion of the day, because you don’t want to configure exactly 80 points worth of sections with zero time left over at the end of the day to check your work. In this situation it’s very likely that you’re failing the exam. Instead you want to be consistently be hitting 14 points, 16 points, etc. especially early in the day, because then it makes you more relaxed that you’re not as rushed for time. Remember that in the CCIE Lab Exam your biggest enemy is stress – well other than simply not knowing the technologies, that’s kind of an issue too – so whatever you can do to help calm yourself down during the day, do it. For me personally constantly tracking my timing is one of those methods that helps to relax me. When I hit about 1pm/2pm that day, I looked at my sheets that were tracking my work, sat back and said to myself “there’s no possible way you’re not passing this exam.” Now of course I didn’t really know for a fact that I was passing, ultimately only the score report can tell you that, but based on my point counts and how much time I had left to go back and double check I knew that I was golden. This brings us to my next point, which is that “golden moment”. The Golden Moment Every CCIE Track and its associated CCIE Lab Exam has what has been commonly referred to as the “golden moment”. This is basically the point in the exam that if you can reach, and you have everything working, your chances of passing are very high, i.e. you’re “golden”. In the case of CCIE R&S it’s having full IP reachability everywhere. In Security it’s when all your LAN to LAN and Remote Access VPNs work; in Service Provider it’s when you can ping between all your L2VPN and L3VPN sites; in Voice it’s when you can make all your phones ring, etc. In the case of CCIE Data Center, the golden moment is undoubtedly marked by one point: can you get your UCS blades to boot from the SAN. Pictured above, the Zen of Buddha passing over me when I knew that I had reached the golden moment. The CCIE Data Center Lab Exam is very unique in my opinion based on the fact that essentially all tasks are cumulative and somehow interrelated in the exam. For example in the case of CCIE R&S, you could theoretically skip complete sections, such as IPv6, Multicast, QoS, etc. and still pass the exam, as long as you can gain enough points from all the other sections. For Data Center though, this is not the case. All tasks in the exam essentially are getting you to work towards the golden moment, which is to actually get your servers to boot their OS. All the technologies are so highly interrelated that the DC lab exam is a delicate house of cards. If one minor task is wrong, you’ve essentially bought yourself a $100 rack rental and a $1400 lunch for the day. For example let’s take a theoretical CCIE DC lab scenario, and look at how the most minor of mistakes can snowball, and cause you to have a very bad day. Suppose we have two Data Center sites, “DC-A” and “DC-B”. In DC-A we have our UCS B series blade servers, while in DC-B we have our Fibre Channel SAN. Our ultimate goal is to get the blades in DC-A to boot from the SAN in DC-B. DC-A and DC-B have a Data Center Interconnect (DCI) provider between them that runs both IPv4 Unicast and IPv4 Multicast routing, and it’s up to us to configure everything so that it functions properly. On one our our edge Nexus 7Ks though we forgot to enable jumbo MTU on the link to the DCI. Minor problem, right? Wrong, we just failed the exam! But why? The UCS blade server was trying to boot to the Fibre Channel SAN. Fibre Channel doesn’t natively run over the DCI though because it’s a routed IP network. To fix this we first sent the FC traffic to our MDS 9200 switches. The MDS switches in DC-A and DC-B then encapsulated the Fibre Channel into a Fibre Channel over IP (FCIP) tunnel between each other. Additionally the MDSes were in the same IP subnet and VLAN in both DC-A and DC-B, so their FCIP traffic had to go over an Overlay Transport Virtualization (OTV) tunnel across the DCI. The OTV tunnel was up and working. The FCIP tunnel was up and working. Both the UCS blade and the FC SAN successfully FLOGI’d into the Fibre Channel Fabric. All of our Fibre Channel Zoning was configured properly. The UCS blade server’s Service Profile associated properly. We clicked the “Boot Server” button, connected to the KVM console of the blade, crossed our fingers, and got this: Pictured above, someone having a very bad day in the CCIE Data Center Lab Exam. No! It didn’t boot the VMware ESXi instance! This means that our Nexus 1000v didn’t come up either! I just lost 22 points and failed the exam! Why did the CCIE Lab Exam Gods hate me! Pictured above, 2274 bytes > 1500 bytes Our OTV tunnel is actually Ethernet over MPLS over GRE over IP, or what is sometimes referred to as a Fancy GRE Tunnel. Our SAN traffic is SCSI over Fibre Channel over TCP over IP. FCIP frames can go up to about 2300 bytes in size, but our default Ethernet MTU was 1500 bytes. OTV doesn’t support fragmentation, and sets the DF bit in its header. This means that since we forgot to type the single command mtu 9216 on the edge switch connected to the DCI, our SCSI over Fibre Channel over TCP over IP over Ethernet over MPLS over GRE over IP was dropped, and we had to do the walk of shame out of building C in San Jose as we knew the CCIE Lab Exam had defeated us that day. This of course is just one of a thousand different possible examples of how the house of cards that is the Data Center Lab Exam fits together, but you get the idea. Luckily for me however, when I clicked the “Boot Server” button in UCSM this week, the results were closer to the output below. Pictured above, someone doing the happy dance in the CCIE DC Lab Exam. In Conclusion For those of you still reading I hope that you found this post both helpful and informative. If you’re still on the fence about pursuing the CCIE Data Center Track I would definitely say that it’s worth it. If you told me 12 years ago when I got out of server support that I’d be back in the server support market today I’d never have believed it, but without throwing around too many buzzwords like public/private cloud etc. this Data Center space is clearly here to stay, and will only continue to grow. Especially with how rapidly the market has been changing within the past few years with virtualization and an entire plethora of new technologies and design philosophies, it’s more important than ever to try to differentiate your skill set in the market. Thanks for all the well wishes, and good luck in your studies! Tags: ccie, cloud, computing, dc, lan, nexus, nx-os, SAN , Storage, strategy, UCS Download this page as a PDF You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. 106 Responses to “How I Passed the CCIE Data Center Lab Exam” Congrats, and a great write up! Knowing what you know, are you expecting any changes to what has already been posted in the INE DC curriculum? Changes to workbooks, etc? Reply Hi Eric, We will of course continue to add to the material for the workbooks, and add new videos on new topics, but without being too specific essentially every technology that I faced in the exam is covered in our material. Reply hi can u provide the detail knowledge what to do in last 15 days before going to the lab Reply Thanks a lot Brian for sharing your experience. Indeed it was informative as well as helpful. Reply excellent write up Brian – I am working speed for my R&S exam, and some of the reminders in this write-up will help. Congrats again! Reply Excellent read!! Great motivation to keep pushing.. Reply Inspirational story, Brian! This will motivate me to take the lab exam next month. Thanks for your thought and sharing guide for preparing the CCIE DC lab exam. I always afraid for the tricky questions in the Cisco exam and when something not running as expected (like OTV adjacency, FCoE, etc), panic mode ON. Congratulation anyway for your new CCIE DC certification! Reply Thanks Edo! I completely understand the “panic mode ON”, however this is the real case in many production environments. If you work in financial, health care, aviation, or a number of other ultra high availability and potentially high stress environments then you simply have to learn to deal with the stress. When panic mode sets in, take a deep breath, or even get up and walk away and get a coffee, etc. and try to come back and apply clear logic to the situation. I know from experience that it’s easier said than done, but when you go into that lab you need to mentally be at the point where you know for certain how all the technologies work, and if you run into a problem that you have a logical troubleshooting plan that you can follow to resolve the issue. Good luck on the lab, and as always feel free to send me an email if there’s anything I can help with! Reply Whew! Wow, what a great read and inspiration to others! Congratulations and thank you for taking the time to write this experience to share! Reply Hey Brian Thanks for the nice write up.I was waiting for it. Thanks Manish Reply Congratulations again and thank you for sharing your journey. This will definitely make a difference. Reply Well done and great write up! I hope to join the DC ranks one day. Regards, Marc Reply Aweome post Brian I have a few comments : I disagree when you say that CCIE Voice golden moment is when all the phones are up and able to dial each others… CCIE Voice lab is a nightmare and you can still fail the lab when the phones are up and running You should re consider your sentence : I as not able to earn a single point from 8:30 am to 9pm should be 9am yeah I know minor typo but people are going to tell you anyway Thanks again for this great post , I was waiting for something like this …. Reply Hi Nicolas, I was told that the golden moment for CCIE Voice is when the phones are working so you can call TAC for help I don’t know much about voice so please correct me if I’m wrong Reply Well …. The golden moment of voice is when you get rid of it Can’t wait to finish my CCIE Voice and try to follow your path Congrats again Brian ! Reply Well …. The golden moment of voice is when you get rid of it Can’t wait to finish my CCIE Voice and try to follow your path Congrats again Brian ! Reply You didn’t mention your strategy about repetitions of the topics?? Regards, AB Reply In general I don’t follow a specific repetition pattern. As I said once I get to the point where I can explain the topic to someone in detail in a simple manner that they can understand, then I know I have mastered the topic. Reply The strategy is to focus about it Reply Congrats Brian .. Reply Amazing Writeup & heartiest congrats on passing Lab ! You always inspire me to reach out for heavens through hard work ! I wish my day will come too someday !!! Reply informative and helpful post ..thanks man ..:) Reply Simply Amazing…….. Reply Congrats for the pass and thanks for the information provided! When will be another CCIE DC bootcamp scheduled? Reply Thanks Adrian! We’ll be posting the updated bootcamp schedule before the end of the week. Reply one word that can describe your post “Incredible” you are mastering both the Detailed Technological part and also Lab Exam Strategy part, with this two pairs together, no wonder you could pass the exam in the first attempt. I also use the same lab exam strategy from Brian Dennis back in the old R/S ATC, with the some changes on it, based on my own style. Thank you for sharing the most incredible journey in the DC track Brian \(^0^)/ Reply Very nice blog post !! And very important: Congrats on the birth of your daughter! Reply Thanks Dang! Reply one word “INSPIRING” Reply Hi Brian, From your note, that you began the lab by drawing the topology first on half hour, it means that no troubleshooting session in the lab exam ? Thanks, Gofi Reply Correct. The only CCIE Lab Exam that has a separate troubleshooting section currently is Routing & Switching. All others are just an 8 hour configuration exam, however troubleshooting is typically built into the config section based on the initial state of the network. Reply Congrats Brian!!!!….super write up. Reply Thank you Brian for the detailed write-up of your experience! I am going to try and incorporate some of this into my lab preparation BTW congrats on the baby! Reply Thanks Aral! Reply I love this part: “we are currently adding more capacity to rack rentals” This is what is missing, the rest is excellent, the videos and the workbooks. Reply Alas, I’m going to have to hold of on the INE Ferarri yet again Reply Enjoy your blog and watching your videos. I like to see INE put togther some sort of structured learning road map to go from CCNAx to CCIEx. While I have obtained my CCNA and CCSP(retired) it seems that I am always doing the two steps forward three steps back approach resulting in letting certs expire and starting over again. Reply Hi David, Thanks for the feedback, we’ll take this under advisement! Reply congrats Brian .. this is pure awesomeness .. and you a nerd famous ( yes absolutely ) , educating so many people across the globe is a talent in itself hope to get a DC cert as well myself, sooner or later Reply I wouldn’t say the golden moment in the DC CCIE is booting your UCS servers. I was able to boot the server and get the OS to load but did not pass the test due to some misconfigurations in the other sections. Based on my experience with the lab I’m not sure you can have a single golden moment but would rather have to break each section down and have a golden moment for that section then those individual moments would add up to the overall lab golden moment. I’m retaking the lab next week and plan to apply some of your techniques mentioned here because I know for me the stress of the test is the main thing that caused me to fail so anything I can do to reduce the stress will help. Reply Hi Jay, I hope those points work out for you. Good luck on your lab next week! Reply You have awaken the CCIE spirit inside me that went to sleep after passing the CCIE R&S last December. As with any long study track, you end up tired, but when you look back, you really say, it was worthy. I am starting the journey again, no matter how long it takes! Congrats to you and Mark! Reply I’m betting that once you have a CCIE R/S the delta to getting a CCIE-DC isn’t actually all that wide. Brian–thoughts? Reply Basic layer 2 switching and layer 3 routing carry over, that’s pretty much it. SAN and UCS are a completely different world from R&S. Reply Glad to hear you passed! What did you think of not being alongside the racks anymore (no white noise) and in a relatively small room? I thought that was going to be a lot more annoying than it actually was with the phones ringing and stuff. Reply I barely heard any phones ringing, so I think the guys taking voice were having a bad day Reply Congrats! really it is great to know the comitment of you. I hope someday I have my magic number of CCIE. And begin the road like you… Reply Thanks Edwin! Good luck on your journey, and remember that it’s not a race, it’s a marathon Reply One quick Question to you Sir Brian, When do you find time to pick a rest, and to share some moments with your family ? Reply It’s a very delicate balancing act Reply Congratulations Brian and, yes, I read through the write-up Reply Congrats Brian… & Mark Too I remember when you guys announced DC material last year, you mentioned troubleshooting labs for DC. DC Troubleshooting labs are going to be part of existing workbook or a separate one ? As it looks essential part of preparation and passing as you explained through your Jumbo MTU DCI problem causing SAN Boot failure. Also DCNM is not covered in too much detail in storage vods. From real lab prospective how much DCNM LAN & SAN Manager we need to know. I know most people most likely would prefer CLI over DCNM but some of feedback I had was that many storage tasks would take far less time if we use DCNM SAN Manager. Also what is good strategy to pass DC Written as I had same feedback from many friends that took DC Written that they might ask something like you mentioned in your post And in last but not least. Can you kindly review latest Cisco Press arrival “Data Center Virtualization Fundamentals ” and post your feedback Reply Thanks Deepak! We will be adding troubleshooting to the DC workbooks, and it won’t be a separate product. In fact many of the full scale labs we’ve already finished and the new one’s that we’re working on have troubleshooting built into them. Without getting too much into the specifics of my particular lab exam due to NDA, each lab delivery is potentially different. Just because my individual lab was heavy on topic X but light on topic Y doesn’t mean that you’ll see the same thing. For the DC written exam just study the technologies as much as you can. The best reading resource like I mentioned in the post is the documentation. For the Cisco Press book I haven’t read it so I can’t comment on it. Reply Congratulation Brian, Thanks for sharing your experience. Your post is really well written and trasmit lot of motivation to the readers. best regards Reply Thanks Marcial! Reply Great reading. Congrats for you and Mark.! You rock guys.! Reply Thanks Luis! Reply Thanks for sharing and providing inspiration Brian! I really like the idea of keeping track of progress during the exam with check marks/questions/point values. I have also updated my Chrome with docs links! Reply Any plans to come up with Juniper or F5 LTM training this year ? Also is JNCIE on your chart ? Reply Nothing else is on my chart for 2013, but who knows what 2014 will bring Reply Congratulation and thanks for sharing your experience , It gave the direction for Lab preparation. Any update on addition of any Lab location or releasing of new dates ? Reply Congrats ! thanks for that insightful writeup , am greatly inspired.by the way, I want to start my DC journey, are there plans for a CCNA DC material ? Pls let me know. Reply Thanks Kenny! Yes we are planning both CCNA DC and CCNP DC materials. Reply congrtulations, to both of you. thank you for being honest with your written!..:) &, for the inspiration. what would be the proud dad’s advice to new born little girlie..? Reply Thanks Asoka! My advice is to sleep when the baby sleeps Reply [...] MacGaham é instrutor no renomado, as vezes contestado INE. Neste post, ele pretende dar umas dicas de como conseguiu ser bem sucedido em obter a certificação CCIE Data [...] Reply Great post. Thanks for the insight. Definitely gave me a good method to try to tackle this lab exam. Reply You expect us to believe Brian used INE products to pass this exam? not a matrix type plug they have developed to connect to your brain and upload information? Reply No comment Reply Great work Brian. U have always inspired me to go to the next level . Once again congratulations for being a daddy Reply Thanks Hemanth! Reply From my experience, your chances of passing CCIE lab increases to the amount of spare time left to verify the configurations. When did you catch your golden moment? Like 7hra or 6hrs into the lab? How much time did you have left for verifying your configs? Or did you take it down to the wire? Reply It took me about 6 hours to complete the exam, which left me about 2 hours for double checking. Normally if you are configuring until the very last minute in the exam you won’t pass, because there are typically minor mistakes that you find when you go back through to double and triple check your work. Reply Hi Brian I will like to congratulate you for a good job done. My questions is since ine haven’t produce any video for the ccnp datacenter can you read the ccie datacenter materials to pass or go straight for the ccie datacenter please advise thank you. Reply Really it depends on your current experience level. If you’re already at CCIE R&S level then I wouldn’t recommend going to CCNA and CCNP Data Center, but instead go straight for CCIE DC. We will be coming out with separate products for CCNA DC and CCNP DC in the near future though. Reply So Brian, now you have 2 excellent milestones out of the way, will you look to go that bit further and maybe provide Wireless training? Reply Thanks Alan. For Wireless we’ll see. It might be on my roadmap for 2014 Reply [...] blog post (by Brian McGahan) is very good reading. http://blog.ine.com/2013/07/10/how-i-passed-the-ccie-data-center-lab-exam/ I’m using the information here to plan my [...] Reply hi Brian, congratssssssss i personally liked this one “If one minor task is wrong, you’ve essentially bought yourself a $100 rack rental and a $1400 lunch for the day.” lol Reply Brian McGahan. Self-defining. Reply Hi Brian, Congratulations and many thanks for the sharing. I’m trying to book a lab for next year, but just like you said here, the trouble is the lab availability. how often does Cisco renew their schedule dates? Did Mark get it a month before in San Jose? and how about you? Enjoy the success. Reply I think I booked about 5 weeks in advance, and Mark was about the same. Just keep periodically checking the schedule to see when new dates appear. They don’t officially announce them when they’re posted. Reply Hello Brian, Congratulations on your success! Awesome blog. Just wanted to ask if ace is still a part of ccie dc? Regards, Imran Reply Hearty congratulations Brian, you guys at INE put in so much work so that others lke me have at least a chance of passing. Keep up the good work, and looking forward to meeting you in Seattle in November. BTW – Do you have plans to increase the number of full-scale labs available for DC track, currently only two? Kind Regards Dominic Reply Hi, Brian. Awesome exposition, as usual. Although I’m on the R&S track, it is really interesting for me to know about more experienced CCIE attackers’ approaches and points of view regarding preparation and the exam itself. I’ll take note of your auto-controlled approach, which I find absoultely brilliant. It gives you control about your progress and your completed/pending tasks and it lets you cross it over time, so you know at every moment how far or near you are of your goal. Really nice, I’ll work it out. Hopefully I’ll apply it in my Lab assault on next Easter in Brussels. I’m sure that it will help me so much. Congratulations for your success, and best of luck for your next challenges!!! Reply Congratulations Brian. Any idea on when are you going to add additional racks to DC ? at the moment, its bit difficult to book rack rentals. Reply Hey Brian, As always, your blog posts are insightful and inspirational. Congratulations on the pass, sir! Reply Congrats Brian! Reply [...] McGahan of INE who also passed his CCIE Data Center lab exam making him a quintuple CCIE. In his blog post he talks about how he immersed himself in reading, reading all the documentation on the Cisco [...] Reply Hi Brian, how long did it take for DC results to come through after your test? few hrs? couple of days? Reply All results can be normally expected within 1 business day, although I have seen them only take an hour or two in the case of passing. Reply Oh well.. last year when I passed my CCIE SP lab, I promised myself that it would be the last.. just like I told myself 2 years ago when I passed the Security lab, you can see the trend I decided a couple of days ago that I will be pursuing the DC track and came across your post. VERY INSPIRING !!! Congrats I had a quick look at the DC rack rentals and boy aren’t they popular… pretty much booked all the way.. Are you guys thinking of adding more DC racks at all ? Regards Reply Brian M Forget about my previous question about DC rack rentals, I just read Brian Dennis’ post about doubling the current DC racks capacity Congrats again on your 4th star.. or I should say 5th star, counting the CCDE Cheers Reply Hi Brian First respect to you on pasning the DC. Nice dok and How to. Reply Great read. I’d hate to study on the ACE though. Reply Great read Brian, many congratulations! Reply Thanks for sharing your experience. Congratulation Brian, From El Salvador Centro America Reply Congrats Brian….Well done! Reply Hi Brian, Mark, First of all congratulations on this achievement!!!…..on the other hand, do you have an estimated launch date for the CCNA DC and CCNP DC courses? Thanks in advance! Mauricio Reply Congratulations…. Is there a page I can visit that outlines a little bit about how you study, how many hours a day, how many labs per week… etc? This is one of the most difficult issues for me is learning how to schedule my time. Do you have family, children, etc? Reply Congrats Brian… I have been moved from routing and switching to cloud computing in my job. So please suggest me which ccie track is relevant and suitable for my job? Regards Reply Umm… Data Center? Reply Hi Brian, Congratulations and a bunch of thanks for the sharing your Incredible experience for CCIE Data Center Lab. You have been my inspiration from the day one when I thought about my first CCIERS. I checked your website, though I could see the CCIE Data Center stuff, however I couldn’t see anything about CCNA DC and CCNP DC. I want to know about the procedure to start for CCIE DC. As I know, we should start from CCNA then develop the concepts to CCNP and then proceed for CCIE. I am not able to see any book or documentation available. I want to use the material you are providing and I am sure that they require some homework should be done before I start using your material. So I am getting confused that I should buy the workbooks from day one or I should study few thing first and then buy. I hope you are able to understand what I am trying to say. I’ll wait for your response on this. Regards Ravi Reply Our DC material starts with no expectations of the learner, and is therefore appropriate for even those starting out at a CCNA DC level. Reply Hi Brian About how many TS errors should we expect in lab ??? For example, In R&S v4 there was 10 tickets + 2 or 3 faults in initial configs. About your comments i guess that errors in DC lab are within the initial configs but i don´t know the possible number of them. Any help will be appreciated Reply They don’t explicitly tell you. Reply Leave a Reply Name (required) Mail (will not be published) (required) Submit Comment Search Search Submit Categories Select Category CCIE Bloggers Brian Dennis, CCIEx5 #2210 Routing & Sw itching Voice Security Service Provider ISP Dial Brian McGahan, CCIEx4 #8593, CCDE #2013::13 Design Data Center Routing & Sw itching Security Service Provider Mark Snow , CCIEx4 #14073 Data Center Collaboration Security Voice Petr Lapukhov, CCIEx4 #16379, CCDE #2010::7 Design Routing & Sw itching Security Service Provider Voice Popular Posts No posts to display twitter.com/ine Blog Home | INE Home | Members | Contact Us | Subscribe © 2011 INE, Inc., All Rights Reserved Free Resources View Archives All Access Pass CCIE Bloggers

Blog ine com_2013_07_10_how_i_passed_the_ccie_data_center_la

  • Upload
    mmahlwy

  • View
    38

  • Download
    0

Tags:

Embed Size (px)

Citation preview

Page 1: Blog ine com_2013_07_10_how_i_passed_the_ccie_data_center_la

pdfcrowd.com

Jul

10 106 CommentsHow I Passed the CCIE Data Center Lab ExamPosted by Brian McGahan, CCIE #8593, CCDE #2013::13 in CCIE Data Center

About Brian McGahan, CCIE #8593, CCDE #2013::13:Brian McGahan w as one of the youngest engineers in the w orld to obtain the CCIE, having achieved his f irst CCIE inRouting & Sw itching at the age of 20 in 2002. Brian has been teaching and developing CCIE training courses for over 10years, and has assisted thousands of engineers in obtaining their CCIE certif ication. When not teaching or developingnew products Brian consults w ith large ISPs and enterprise customers in the midw est region of the United States.

Find all posts by Brian McGahan, CCIE #8593, CCDE #2013::13 | Visit Website

Eric PJuly 10, 2013 at 7:20 pm

Brian McGahan, CCIE #8593, CCDE #2013::13July 11, 2013 at 12:46 am

raviSeptember 1, 2013 at 5:36 am

AkashJuly 10, 2013 at 7:27 pm

Wayne DowningJuly 10, 2013 at 7:34 pm

Dan V. CCIE 34827July 10, 2013 at 7:49 pm

EDOJuly 10, 2013 at 8:37 pm

Brian McGahan, CCIE #8593, CCDE #2013::13July 11, 2013 at 12:41 am

R ProfitJuly 10, 2013 at 9:06 pm

Manish SalariaJuly 10, 2013 at 9:13 pm

Ahmad AlNajjarJuly 10, 2013 at 9:24 pm

Marc EdwardsJuly 10, 2013 at 9:32 pm

Nicolas MichelJuly 10, 2013 at 10:00 pm

Brian McGahan, CCIE #8593, CCDE #2013::13July 11, 2013 at 12:31 am

Nicolas MichelJuly 11, 2013 at 1:42 am

NicolasJuly 11, 2013 at 1:42 am

AmitJuly 10, 2013 at 10:13 pm

Brian McGahan, CCIE #8593, CCDE #2013::13July 11, 2013 at 12:29 am

NicolasJuly 11, 2013 at 1:55 am

MJJuly 10, 2013 at 10:34 pm

TariqSheikhJuly 10, 2013 at 11:16 pm

TahirJuly 10, 2013 at 11:57 pm

Nadeem RafiJuly 11, 2013 at 12:03 am

AdrianJuly 11, 2013 at 12:55 am

Brian McGahan, CCIE #8593, CCDE #2013::13July 11, 2013 at 3:08 am

Indra PNJuly 11, 2013 at 1:03 am

DangJuly 11, 2013 at 1:28 am

Brian McGahan, CCIE #8593, CCDE #2013::13July 11, 2013 at 3:08 am

vaibhavJuly 11, 2013 at 1:53 am

phinJuly 11, 2013 at 1:54 am

Brian McGahan, CCIE #8593, CCDE #2013::13July 11, 2013 at 3:07 am

IbrahimJuly 11, 2013 at 2:31 am

AralJuly 11, 2013 at 4:29 am

Brian McGahan, CCIE #8593, CCDE #2013::13July 11, 2013 at 4:47 am

Antonio SoaresJuly 11, 2013 at 5:13 am

Brian McGahan, CCIE #8593, CCDE #2013::13July 11, 2013 at 7:07 am

DavidJuly 11, 2013 at 7:56 am

Brian McGahan, CCIE #8593, CCDE #2013::13July 11, 2013 at 9:17 am

Siddharth bhatiaJuly 11, 2013 at 8:32 am

Jay HumphreyJuly 11, 2013 at 8:50 am

Brian McGahan, CCIE #8593, CCDE #2013::13July 11, 2013 at 9:17 am

Luis OcampoJuly 11, 2013 at 10:25 am

racerevlonMay 15, 2014 at 10:54 am

Brian McGahan, CCIE #8593, CCDE #2013::13May 15, 2014 at 11:06 am

Steve Miller, #23977July 11, 2013 at 10:51 am

Brian McGahan, CCIE #8593, CCDE #2013::13July 11, 2013 at 11:31 am

Edwin MartinezJuly 11, 2013 at 4:22 pm

Brian McGahan, CCIE #8593, CCDE #2013::13July 12, 2013 at 8:52 am

etondeJuly 11, 2013 at 8:03 pm

Brian McGahan, CCIE #8593, CCDE #2013::13July 12, 2013 at 8:51 am

HudsonJuly 12, 2013 at 1:03 am

Deepak AroraJuly 12, 2013 at 1:33 am

Brian McGahan, CCIE #8593, CCDE #2013::13July 12, 2013 at 9:11 am

MarcialJuly 12, 2013 at 5:57 am

Brian McGahan, CCIE #8593, CCDE #2013::13July 12, 2013 at 8:41 am

Luis MazariegosJuly 12, 2013 at 6:41 am

Brian McGahan, CCIE #8593, CCDE #2013::13July 12, 2013 at 8:41 am

Steve JordanJuly 12, 2013 at 11:28 am

Deepak AroraJuly 12, 2013 at 10:10 pm

Brian McGahan, CCIE #8593, CCDE #2013::13July 13, 2013 at 11:06 am

Kamal SainiJuly 14, 2013 at 12:15 pm

kennygJuly 14, 2013 at 1:34 pm

Brian McGahan, CCIE #8593, CCDE #2013::13July 15, 2013 at 8:40 pm

Asoka PereraJuly 15, 2013 at 5:09 am

Brian McGahan, CCIE #8593, CCDE #2013::13July 15, 2013 at 8:42 pm

Brian McGaham e como ele passou o CCIE Data Center | Switching News Network Angola (SNN Angola)July 15, 2013 at 6:03 pm

Vallard BenincosaJuly 15, 2013 at 11:14 pm

KennyJuly 16, 2013 at 12:15 am

Brian McGahan, CCIE #8593, CCDE #2013::13July 18, 2013 at 10:10 am

Hemanth RajJuly 16, 2013 at 3:47 am

Brian McGahan, CCIE #8593, CCDE #2013::13July 18, 2013 at 10:10 am

YSJuly 16, 2013 at 9:22 am

Brian McGahan, CCIE #8593, CCDE #2013::13July 18, 2013 at 10:10 am

Benedict AgyemangJuly 16, 2013 at 12:46 pm

Brian McGahan, CCIE #8593, CCDE #2013::13July 18, 2013 at 10:07 am

alanJuly 16, 2013 at 3:33 pm

Brian McGahan, CCIE #8593, CCDE #2013::13July 18, 2013 at 10:00 am

Starting up | SB16 -> CCIEJuly 17, 2013 at 5:54 am

danJuly 17, 2013 at 3:50 pm

AlessioJuly 19, 2013 at 5:59 am

EddyJuly 19, 2013 at 3:26 pm

Brian McGahan, CCIE #8593, CCDE #2013::13July 23, 2013 at 2:12 pm

ImranJuly 21, 2013 at 11:20 am

DominicJuly 24, 2013 at 3:14 pm

EnriqueJuly 25, 2013 at 9:12 am

ReddyJuly 25, 2013 at 3:18 pm

Andy FeinbergJuly 26, 2013 at 11:02 am

RangaJuly 29, 2013 at 4:46 am

Combining a Few Study Methods | CCIE Data Center JourneyJuly 29, 2013 at 8:50 am

YSJuly 30, 2013 at 8:17 am

Mark Snow, CCIE #14073July 30, 2013 at 12:48 pm

Yannick Epassa, CCIE# 20413August 21, 2013 at 3:10 pm

Yannick Epassa, CCIE# 20413August 21, 2013 at 3:18 pm

Finn , CCIE # 19892August 22, 2013 at 9:33 am

WillAugust 26, 2013 at 10:22 am

AlanLSeptember 5, 2013 at 7:36 am

carloslnxSeptember 6, 2013 at 4:52 pm

Imran ShahidSeptember 7, 2013 at 1:25 pm

MauricioSeptember 11, 2013 at 12:21 pm

Danny PritchardSeptember 20, 2013 at 6:27 am

sebastian rajNovember 25, 2013 at 7:58 pm

Brian McGahan, CCIE #8593, CCDE #2013::13November 26, 2013 at 7:14 pm

Ravi Kant Gumber, CCIE# 23428February 20, 2014 at 7:17 am

Mark Snow, CCIE #14073February 28, 2014 at 9:31 am

Yors ShureNovember 27, 2014 at 11:20 am

Brian McGahan, CCIE #8593, CCDE #2013::13December 4, 2014 at 11:55 am

This past Monday I passed the CCIE Data Center Lab Exam in San Jose CA, making me four time CiscoCertified Internetwork Expert (CCIE) #8593 in Routing & Switching, Service Provider, Security, and DataCenter, as well as Cisco Certified Design Expert (CCDE) #20130013. This was my first – and thankfully last –attempt at the DC lab exam, and also my first experience in the San Jose CCIE Lab location. In this post I’m goingto outline my preparation process for CCIE Data Center, as well as to talk about my experience with the actual dayof the lab.

The Initial Commitment

When the new CCIE Data Center track was first announced last year, it was a no-brainer that I was going topursue it. As I already had 15+ years of experience in Enterprise networking, with a large focus on campus LANswitching, IGP and BGP routing, plus some minor exposure to the Nexus platforms, I thought it would be a cinch. After all, Nexus is just a fancy Catalyst 6500, right? The major hurdle for the track however was not thetechnologies, but procuring the equipment. After debating back and forth for quite a while, Brian Dennis and Idecided that INE would hold off on the company Ferraris, and instead invest in the equipment for CCIE DataCenter. One of our deciding factors to invest in the track was the sheer volume of customers at our CCIECandidate Party at Cisco Live 2012 that kept asking us all night long, “when are you guys going to do Nexustraining!” As they say, ask and you shall receive… or was it if you build it, they will come?

Coincidentally, our initial build plans for DC started in early July 2012, which makes it almost one year to the dayfrom when we committed to the track until when I finally had a chance to take the lab exam.

Originally I had planned to try to get the very first available slot for the DC lab exam, but as always life happenedand a few things got in the way, such as the birth of my daughter, as well as a short pit stop along the way to pickup the Cisco Certified Design Expert (CCDE). Anyways, onto my preparation…

Once our equipment build was finalized, which by the way was the most grueling and complicated build of my 15+year career, Mark Snow and I decided to implement a divide and conquer approach to the blueprint, where wewould split the Nexus topics, I would take Storage, he would take Unified Computing System (UCS), and then we’dcome back and meet in the middle. Nexus I assumed would be simple, since I had some experience using it as abasic 10GigE aggregation switch, but none of the advanced DC specific topics (e.g. vPC, FabricPath, OTV, FCoE,etc.) In hindsight, yes Nexus is just a glorified Cat6k, however there are caveats, caveats, and more caveatsgalore. Did I mention Nexus has a lot of caveats?

Recommended Reading or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Documentation

Since a lot of the DC specific technologies are so new, there’s not many traditional books that are out there thatcan help you, unlike something like OSPF that is over 20 years old. With Nexus the topics are so cutting edge, theNX-OS software team is literally pushing out hotfixes and new features as we speak. Therefore the only mainresource that is available for reading about a lot of these technologies is the Cisco Documentation. I can alreadyhear the collective groan from the audience about reading the documentation, but I can’t stress this enough, youmust read the Nexus documentation if you are serious about these technologies and about passing the CCIE DCLab Exam.

To give you an idea, this is what my Chrome bookmarks toolbar still looks like today.

Personally the way I did this was to download every single configuration guide for Nexus 7K, 5K, and 2K in PDFformat, and then load them on my iPad. Starting with Nexus 7K I worked from basic system administration up tointerfaces, layer 2 switching, layer 3 routing, SAN switching, etc. Don’t count on having access to the PDFversions of the documentation in the actual lab exam, but for preparation purposes these are much moreconvenient than clicking through every section of the documentation in HTML format.

Each configuration guide can be downloaded as a single complete PDF.

Note that for MDS you don’t need to read through as much, since the SAN switching syntax is essentially the samebetween the Nexus 7K, 5K, and MDS, as they all run NX-OS. The sections of MDS documentation that I did readend-to-end however are the Cisco MDS 9000 Family NX-OS Interfaces Configuration Guide and the Cisco MDS9000 Family NX-OS IP Services Configuration Guide. Both of these sections are key, as some topics such as FCTrunking and Port Channeling work differently in MDS than they do in Nexus, and then the IP Storage featuressuch as FCIP and iSCSI are unique to MDS and are not supported in Nexus.

Another key point about the documentation for Data Center, just like for other CCIE tracks and other technologiesin general, is that once you know how to use the documentation and where things are located you don’t need toworry about the default values for features, or other inane details about syntax. For example there was adiscussion recently on the CCIE DC Facebook group about how to create a mnemonic device (e.g. All PeopleSeem To Need Data Processing / Please Do Not Throw Sausage Pizza Away) in order to remember in whichfeatures higher values are better and in which features lower values are better, e.g. LACP system-priority, vPCrole priority, FabricPath root tree priority, etc. I responded, who cares? Why waste time remembering defaultvalues that likely will change between versions anyways? Instead, your time would be better spent making surethat you know the manual navigation path for all features that you will be tested on in the exam.

Lower is higher and higher is lower… makes perfect sense, right?

Another point to consider is that in the actual Lab Exam, access to the documentation web pages is not very fast. I’m assuming this is due to the strict content filtering that all the pages have to go through before they show up onyour desktop. Regardless as to the reason, if you need to use the documentation in the exam and you don’talready know exactly where the page you want is located, you’re gonna have a bad time.

Additionally, don’t limit your reading of the documentation to just the configuration guides. There are a number ofother very useful portions of the documentation that you should read – again, end-to-end, there are no shortcutshere – such as the white papers, design guides, and troubleshooting guides.

The Nexus 7000 White Papers are an essential read.

This is especially true since some of the verification and troubleshooting syntax for Nexus is just out of this world. Iswear whoever works on the actual syntax parser for the NX-OS software team must get paid based on the numberof characters that the commands contain. Did you say that your Fibre Channel over Ethernet isn’t working to yourNexus 2232PP Fabric Extenders that have multiple parent Nexus 5548UP switches paired in Enhanced Virtual PortChannel? I hope you remember how to troubleshoot them with the command show system internal dcbx infointerface ethernet 101/1/1! Err… how about we just know where to find it in the FCoE troubleshooting guideinstead then.

The troubleshooting guides are an often overlooked section of the documentation.

The real point of using the documentation is as follows: you must understand, in detail, the design caveats andhardware caveats that the Nexus, MDS, and UCS platforms have as they relate to the DC technologies.

Pictured above, some light reading on the Design Considerations for Classical Ethernet Integration of the CiscoNexus 7000 M1 and F1 Modules

Recommended Books

Beyond the documentation, there are a select few regular books that I used during my studies. The vast majorityof them are either available on the Safari Online site, or in the case of the IBM Redbooks, free in PDF form directfrom IBM’s website. These books, in no particular order are:

NX-OS and Cisco Nexus Switching: Next-Generation Data Center ArchitecturesCisco Storage Networking CookbookCisco Unified Computing System (UCS) (Data Center): A Complete Reference Guide to the Cisco DataCenter Virtualization Server ArchitectureStorage Networks Explained: Basics and Application of Fibre Channel SAN, NAS, iSCSI, InfiniBand andFCoEIBM Redbooks – Introduction to Storage Area Networks and System Networking

Cisco Live 365

For those of you that have never heard of Cisco Live 365 before, you’re welcome. This is where all the videorecordings and PDFs of slide decks are from the different Cisco Live (i.e. Cisco Networkers) conventions that haveoccurred in the past few years, from multiple locations. A lot of these sessions are used to talk about theintroduction of new products, e.g. the new Nexus 7700 that was just announced at Cisco Live 2013 Orlando, whileothers are technical deep-dives into topics. In the case of CCIE Data Center there are a lot of really goodpresentations that I would recommend looking at during your preparation. You don’t need to have physicallyattended Cisco Live in the past to get access, just sign up for an account for free and you can search all thecontent. The Data Center sessions generally start with “BRKDCT” (Breakout Data Center Technologies), so that’sa good place to start your search. Notable ones that I personally thought are worth looking at are in no particularorder as follows:

BRKDCT-2204 – Nexus 7000/5000/2000/1000v Deployment Case StudiesBRKDCT-2237 – Versatile architecture of using Nexus 7000 with F1 and M-series I/O modules to deliverFEX, FabricPath edge and Multihop FCoE all at the same timeBRKCRS-3145 – Troubleshooting Cisco Nexus 5000 / 2000 Series SwitchesBRKDCT-2048 – Deploying Virtual Port Channel in NXOSBRKCRS-3146 – Advanced VPC operation and troubleshootingBRKDCT-2081 – Cisco FabricPath Technology and DesignBRKDCT-2202 – FabricPath Migration Use CaseBRKDCT-1044 – FCoE for the IP Network EngineerBRKSAN-2047 – FCoE – Design, Operations and Management Best PracticesBRKCOM-2002 – UCS Supported Storage Architectures and Best Practices with StorageBRKVIR-3013 – Deploying and Troubleshooting the Nexus 1000v virtual switchBRKRST-2930 – Implementing QoS with Nexus and NX-OSBRKCOM-2005 – UCS and Nexus Fabric and VM’s – Extending FEX direct to VM’s in UCS and Nexus 5500

INE’s Videos, Workbooks, & Classes

Now in my personal case, when I am learning a new technology, I know that I have truly absorbed and understoodthe topics when I can explain it to someone else in a clear and concise manner, hence my day job, author andinstructor at INE. From the culmination of reading these books, reading the documentation, and testing essentiallyevery feature that the platforms have to offer, Mark Snow and I developed INE’s Nexus, Storage, and UCS classes,as well as the associated workbook labs and the live Bootcamp classes for these technologies.

As I’ve done many write-ups before on these offerings, and without getting too much into a sales pitch, you canfind more information here about INE’s CCIE Data Center Video Series, here about INE’s CCIE Data CenterWorkbook, here about our CCIE Data Center 10-Day Bootcamp, and here about our CCIE Data Center RackRentals. Note that we are currently adding more capacity to rack rentals and adding more Bootcamp classes tothe schedule, both of which I’ll be posting separate announcements about shortly.

Read, Test, Rinse, and Repeat

While learning and developing the content for Data Center I followed the same methodology that Brian Dennis andI have been personally using and have been teaching for the past 10 years (yes, I can’t believe it’s been thatlong). This methodology is essentially a four step process of learning and testing incrementally. This is also thesame methodology that has helped Brian Dennis obtain five CCIEs, and for me to obtain four CCIEs and theCCDE, so trust me when I say that it works.

The methodology is a basic four step process as follows:

Gain a basic understanding of the technologiesGain basic hands-on experience to reinforce and expand your understandingGain an expert level of understandingGain an expert level of hands-on experience

It might seem self-explanatory that you need to start at the bottom and work your way up, i.e. A then B then C thenD, however over the years we’ve seen so many CCIE candidates try to shortcut this process and try to go from Adirectly to D. Traditionally these are the candidates that end up taking the lab exam 5, 6, 7 times before passing,essentially trying to brute force their way through the lab. Believe it or not, we have had customers in the past thathave attempted the CCIE Lab Exam in the same track 10 or more times before passing. Coincidentally, these arealso usually the customers that don’t want to hear that they don’t know something or that their methodology iswrong. Go figure.

Pictured above, how to make a hobby out of visiting building C at Cisco’s San Jose campus.

At least for me personally, obtaining a CCIE is more about the journey than it is the destination. I feel that I wouldhave cheated myself coming out of the process without truly being an expert at the technologies covered, so Imade sure to really take the time and be meticulous about going through everything.

Pictured above, how to astound the engineers at the technical interview for your new job after getting your CCIE.

The CCIE Data Center Written Exam

Before scheduling the Lab Exam, I of course had to tackle the necessary evil that is the CCIE Data Center WrittenExam. In my opinion this exam should be renamed the “how many stupid facts can I memorize about the Nexus andUCS platforms exam.” I didn’t pass the DC written exam on my first attempt, or on my second attempt. I’m notgoing to say exactly how many times I took the the DC written exam, but let’s just say that it’s somewhere morethan two and somewhere less than infinity, and that I likely have seen every question in the test pool multipletimes.

For those of you have passed this exam on your first try, more power to you. With me on the other hand I try notto memorize any facts that I can quickly look up instead. While whoever wrote the CCIE DC Written Exam may thinkit’s important that the UCS B420 M3 Blade Server has a Matrox G200e video controller with integrated 2D graphicscore with hardware acceleration and supports all display resolutions up to 1920 x 1200 x 16 bpp resolution at 60Hz with a 24-bit color depth for all resolutions less than 1600×1200 and up to 256 MB video memory, I do not, but Idigress.

Scheduling the CCIE Data Center Lab Exam

One of the biggest hurdles in obtaining the CCIE DC that I had not initially planned for was the availability, or lackthereof, of lab dates open for scheduling. I’m not normally one to complain about this, because when I took theCCIE R&S Lab Exam back in January 2002 I believe that I scheduled the date somewhere around July of 2001.Back then it was the norm to have a 6 month wait for dates, so when you went to the lab you had better be reallyprepared for it, otherwise you had a long 6 months ahead of you afterwards trying to think of what you did wrong. With Data Center though, this was a completely different ballgame.

By the time I got around to being ready to schedule a date, there was literally not a single date open on theschedule for any location. Mark Snow had even scheduled a lab date in Brussels Belgium, and was going to flyfrom Los Angeles in order to take the lab because that was literally his only option. Luckily right around that timethe CCIE Program added new dates on the schedule, and he was able to move his lab attempt to San Jose, wherehe ended up passing.

Anyways once these new dates were added to the schedule I knew that I had to act fast, or risk having to wait until2015 (not really, but that’s what it felt like). Unfortunately the date that I took was only a week after Cisco Live2013 Orlando, so I couldn’t help but feel while we were partying it up at the conference I should have been athome studying instead. Also I would have much preferred to go to RTP over San Jose, since RTP is much closerto Chicago and I’m much more familiar with the area. In hindsight SJC was probably a better choice anyways,since I have lots of friends in RTP which means there would have been more distractions.

Traveling To San Jose

I scheduled my exam purposely on a Monday, which meant that I could get to San Jose either Friday or Saturdayand then leisurely spend the rest of the weekend doing some last minute review and relaxing in the hotel withoutany distractions. This is the first time I’ve done it this way, and if you have the option to this is the approach that Iwould recommend.

Having had all my attempts in RTP in the past I was never worried about travel time, since it’s only about two hoursfrom Chicago. Normally I would fly in the day before the lab in the afternoon, and then immediately go to theairport after the exam to fly home. Worst case scenario I could drive from to Chicago to RTP, which I actually havedone in the past. I remember one time when teaching a class at Cisco’s RTP office I left the campus at about 5:30on a Friday, drove to RDU and parked my car, bought a ticket at the desk, and still had time to make a 6:15Southwest flight back to Chicago. I could only dream that Chicago O’Hare or Midway was as delay-free as RDU.

SJC on the other hand doesn’t have as many flights to Chicago, so I wanted to play it safe and arrive more thanone day early. Luckily I did plan it this way, otherwise with the Asiana Flight 214 incident at SFO this past weekendI might not be writing this post at all right now; the moral or the story being that if you have the option to travel anextra day early before the exam, take that option.

For the hotel I stayed at the Hyatt Regency Santa Clara, which was nice. They have a nice outdoor pool area thatI spent some time relaxing with my laptop at. It’s fairly close to the Cisco campus, being about a 5 – 10 minute cabride to the office in the morning, and then after the lab I walked back to the hotel which took about a half an houror so. If you’re familiar with the area it’s directly next to the Techmart and the Santa Clara Convention Center.

The Day of the Lab

San Jose’s lab starts at 8:15am, so I scheduled a cab from the hotel at 7:20am. I figured this way even if the cabdidn’t show up I’d still have time to walk over to the office. Admittedly I did arrive much too early to the office, butit’s always better to be early than late. If you’ve ever had a class with Brian Dennis you’ve probably heard thesame joke he’s been telling for the last 10 years: “I’ve been both early for the CCIE Lab Exam and I’ve been latefor the CCIE Lab Exam. The preferred method is to be early.”

Since it was only about 7:30am when I got there I walked around the campus for a while just to try to calm mynerves. Ultimately I checked in with the receptionist, and made some small talk with some of the other candidates. I was hoping to go incognito for the day, but immediately the first guy I said hi to said “aren’t you Brian McGahanfrom INE?” Oh well… that’s the price of being nerd famous.

The proctor Tong Ma came out to the lobby around 8:15am or so to collect us all and check IDs, and then did hisspiel about the logistics of the lab location (e.g. where the bathroom was, the breakroom, lunch time, etc.). 8:30am was our official start time, so I sharpened my colored pencils, sat down at my terminal, logged in, andprepared for the fun.

Immediately all around me I heard the other candidates furiously pounding away on their keyboards. This is what Ilike to call the “panic approach”. I on the other hand started with a different approach that had already worked forme three times in the past. I took my first sheet of scratch paper, and started a quick drawing of the diagram I waspresented with. This was my first lab attempt using the new lab delivery system where everything is electronic, butregardless in past attempts you couldn’t draw on their diagrams anyways.

One point of drawing out the diagram for myself was to help me learn the topology, but more importantly so that Icould take quick notes as to which technologies would need to be configured in which portions of the network, e.g.which devices were running vPC, FabricPath, OTV, FCoE, etc.

The next step was to read through the exam, to see what technologies were actually being tested on, and to planmy order of attack on how I was going to build the network. One thing that I have found with my past CCIE tracksis that the order that they give you the questions in isn’t necessarily always the best order that you actually want toconfigure things. After all they’re only grading the result at the end of the day, not the actual steps that you usedto get there.

Once I had a basic understanding of what was covered, and had taken some notes on my diagram as to whichfeatures went where, I took my two other pieces of scratch paper (there were 3 total but you can always ask formore if you need), and drew out my two tables that I use to track my work. For those of you that have attended alive class with me in the past or watched any videos I’ve done on lab strategy you may be familiar with this, but forthose of you that haven’t seen this there’s basically two tables that I use to track my work during the day. The firstof which I use to track which sections that I have configured, how comfortable I am with the answer I gave, andwhich sections I skipped. Throughout the day this helps me to know what sections I need to go back to at a latertime. Also at the end of the day this is the sheet I use to go back and check everything with a fine tooth comb. The end result looks something similar to the picture below, but this one is just something I made up now it’s notfrom any real lab.

The way I read this at the end of the day is that all the tasks with a Check mark I’m 100% confident that thesolution is correct. Tasks with a ? mean that I configured something, but I’m not 100% if it’s correct or that Ianswered the question the way that they wanted. Anything that is blank, like section 2.3 that means that Icompletely skipped that task, and that I’ll come back to it at a later time. Once I’m done with all the tasks, I thencircle back around to the tasks that I completely skipped to see if I can answer them, then revisit the ones with a ?

that I wasn’t 100% sure about. Finally the “2nd” column is for my double checking, where I start all the way at thebeginning of the lab and re-read each question, re-interpret it, verify my answer, and if satisfied check it off againand continue. In the case of the DC Lab Exam I ended up with two tasks with a question mark and one task with ablank at the end of the day. In other words by my count there was one task I definitely was getting wrong, twotasks I had completed but wasn’t sure if I interpreted properly exactly what they wanted, and all other tasks I was100% confident were correct.

The second of these scratch paper tables was to track my timing. After all if they gave you a week to configure thelab, most candidates would probably pass. With the 8 hour time limit ticking down though, not so much. This iswhy it’s not only important to track your progress throughout the day to see which sections you’re confident aboutyour answer, but also how long it’s taking you to configure them. The end result of this table looks something likethis:

The “Time” column represents the hour of the day. The lab starts around 8 and ends around 5. Between 8amand 9am, I got zero points. The rest of the values in the table are made up, I don’t remember what the pointvalues of the sections in my attempt were, but the first row is actually true. From 8:30am to 9am I did not configurea single section, and I did not gain a single point. Why? Because I spent that half hour drawing the topology,reading through the tasks, and planning my attack. While most people take the “panic approach” and immediatelybegin configuring the lab blind, I knew that even though it would cost me time up front to draw and read, it wouldsave me time in the long run. This did actually save time in the long run, because I finished about 95% of theexam by 2:30pm, which gave me a very relaxed two and half hours at the end of the day to double, triple, andquadruple check my work.

Getting back to the table above, between 9am and 10am, I completed – and was confident with the answers of –sections that were worth 2, 2, 3, 2, 4, 2, and 2 points. Basically each time I completed a task and it had a checkmark in the other table, I wrote the point value down here. Each time I completed a section I also checked theclock on the wall to make sure I was writing the point value in the correct row. The logic of using this table issimple: the exam is broken down into sections totaling 100 points. Excluding your lunch break, you get 8 hours toconfigure the lab. This means at an absolute minimum you need to be averaging 10 points per hour in order tohit your goal of 80 points. Now ultimately the totals on the right should be consistently be reading above 10 pointsfor the early portion of the day, because you don’t want to configure exactly 80 points worth of sections with zerotime left over at the end of the day to check your work. In this situation it’s very likely that you’re failing the exam. Instead you want to be consistently be hitting 14 points, 16 points, etc. especially early in the day, because then itmakes you more relaxed that you’re not as rushed for time. Remember that in the CCIE Lab Exam your biggestenemy is stress – well other than simply not knowing the technologies, that’s kind of an issue too – so whateveryou can do to help calm yourself down during the day, do it.

For me personally constantly tracking my timing is one of those methods that helps to relax me. When I hit about1pm/2pm that day, I looked at my sheets that were tracking my work, sat back and said to myself “there’s nopossible way you’re not passing this exam.” Now of course I didn’t really know for a fact that I was passing,ultimately only the score report can tell you that, but based on my point counts and how much time I had left to goback and double check I knew that I was golden. This brings us to my next point, which is that “golden moment”.

The Golden Moment

Every CCIE Track and its associated CCIE Lab Exam has what has been commonly referred to as the “goldenmoment”. This is basically the point in the exam that if you can reach, and you have everything working, yourchances of passing are very high, i.e. you’re “golden”. In the case of CCIE R&S it’s having full IP reachabilityeverywhere. In Security it’s when all your LAN to LAN and Remote Access VPNs work; in Service Provider it’swhen you can ping between all your L2VPN and L3VPN sites; in Voice it’s when you can make all your phonesring, etc. In the case of CCIE Data Center, the golden moment is undoubtedly marked by one point: can you getyour UCS blades to boot from the SAN.

Pictured above, the Zen of Buddha passing over me when I knew that I had reached the golden moment.

The CCIE Data Center Lab Exam is very unique in my opinion based on the fact that essentially all tasks arecumulative and somehow interrelated in the exam. For example in the case of CCIE R&S, you could theoreticallyskip complete sections, such as IPv6, Multicast, QoS, etc. and still pass the exam, as long as you can gain enoughpoints from all the other sections. For Data Center though, this is not the case. All tasks in the exam essentiallyare getting you to work towards the golden moment, which is to actually get your servers to boot their OS. All thetechnologies are so highly interrelated that the DC lab exam is a delicate house of cards. If one minor task iswrong, you’ve essentially bought yourself a $100 rack rental and a $1400 lunch for the day.

For example let’s take a theoretical CCIE DC lab scenario, and look at how the most minor of mistakes cansnowball, and cause you to have a very bad day. Suppose we have two Data Center sites, “DC-A” and “DC-B”. InDC-A we have our UCS B series blade servers, while in DC-B we have our Fibre Channel SAN. Our ultimate goalis to get the blades in DC-A to boot from the SAN in DC-B. DC-A and DC-B have a Data Center Interconnect (DCI)provider between them that runs both IPv4 Unicast and IPv4 Multicast routing, and it’s up to us to configureeverything so that it functions properly. On one our our edge Nexus 7Ks though we forgot to enable jumbo MTUon the link to the DCI. Minor problem, right? Wrong, we just failed the exam! But why?

The UCS blade server was trying to boot to the Fibre Channel SAN. Fibre Channel doesn’t natively run over theDCI though because it’s a routed IP network. To fix this we first sent the FC traffic to our MDS 9200 switches. TheMDS switches in DC-A and DC-B then encapsulated the Fibre Channel into a Fibre Channel over IP (FCIP) tunnelbetween each other. Additionally the MDSes were in the same IP subnet and VLAN in both DC-A and DC-B, sotheir FCIP traffic had to go over an Overlay Transport Virtualization (OTV) tunnel across the DCI. The OTV tunnelwas up and working. The FCIP tunnel was up and working. Both the UCS blade and the FC SAN successfullyFLOGI’d into the Fibre Channel Fabric. All of our Fibre Channel Zoning was configured properly. The UCS bladeserver’s Service Profile associated properly. We clicked the “Boot Server” button, connected to the KVM consoleof the blade, crossed our fingers, and got this:

Pictured above, someone having a very bad day in the CCIE Data Center Lab Exam.

No! It didn’t boot the VMware ESXi instance! This means that our Nexus 1000v didn’t come up either! I just lost 22points and failed the exam! Why did the CCIE Lab Exam Gods hate me!

Pictured above, 2274 bytes > 1500 bytes

Our OTV tunnel is actually Ethernet over MPLS over GRE over IP, or what is sometimes referred to as a FancyGRE Tunnel. Our SAN traffic is SCSI over Fibre Channel over TCP over IP. FCIP frames can go up to about 2300bytes in size, but our default Ethernet MTU was 1500 bytes. OTV doesn’t support fragmentation, and sets the DFbit in its header. This means that since we forgot to type the single command mtu 9216 on the edge switchconnected to the DCI, our SCSI over Fibre Channel over TCP over IP over Ethernet over MPLS over GRE over IPwas dropped, and we had to do the walk of shame out of building C in San Jose as we knew the CCIE Lab Examhad defeated us that day.

This of course is just one of a thousand different possible examples of how the house of cards that is the DataCenter Lab Exam fits together, but you get the idea. Luckily for me however, when I clicked the “Boot Server”button in UCSM this week, the results were closer to the output below.

Pictured above, someone doing the happy dance in the CCIE DC Lab Exam.

In Conclusion

For those of you still reading I hope that you found this post both helpful and informative. If you’re still on thefence about pursuing the CCIE Data Center Track I would definitely say that it’s worth it. If you told me 12 yearsago when I got out of server support that I’d be back in the server support market today I’d never have believed it,but without throwing around too many buzzwords like public/private cloud etc. this Data Center space is clearlyhere to stay, and will only continue to grow. Especially with how rapidly the market has been changing within thepast few years with virtualization and an entire plethora of new technologies and design philosophies, it’s moreimportant than ever to try to differentiate your skill set in the market.

Thanks for all the well wishes, and good luck in your studies!

Tags: ccie, cloud, computing, dc, lan, nexus, nx-os, SAN, Storage, strategy, UCS

Download this page as a PDF

You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

106 Responses to “How I Passed the CCIE Data Center Lab Exam”

Congrats, and a great write up! Knowing what you know, are you expecting any changes to what has already been posted in the INEDC curriculum? Changes to workbooks, etc?

Reply

Hi Eric,

We will of course continue to add to the material for the workbooks, and add new videos on new topics, but without being toospecific essentially every technology that I faced in the exam is covered in our material.

Reply

hi can u provide the detail knowledge what to do in last 15 days before going to the lab

Reply

Thanks a lot Brian for sharing your experience. Indeed it was informative as well as helpful.

Reply

excellent write up Brian – I am working speed for my R&S exam, and some of the reminders in this write-up will help. Congratsagain!

Reply

Excellent read!! Great motivation to keep pushing..

Reply

Inspirational story, Brian! This will motivate me to take the lab exam next month. Thanks for your thought and sharing guide forpreparing the CCIE DC lab exam. I always afraid for the tricky questions in the Cisco exam and when something not running asexpected (like OTV adjacency, FCoE, etc), panic mode ON. Congratulation anyway for your new CCIE DC certification!

Reply

Thanks Edo! I completely understand the “panic mode ON”, however this is the real case in many production environments. Ifyou work in financial, health care, aviation, or a number of other ultra high availability and potentially high stress environmentsthen you simply have to learn to deal with the stress. When panic mode sets in, take a deep breath, or even get up and walkaway and get a coffee, etc. and try to come back and apply clear logic to the situation. I know from experience that it’s easiersaid than done, but when you go into that lab you need to mentally be at the point where you know for certain how all thetechnologies work, and if you run into a problem that you have a logical troubleshooting plan that you can follow to resolve theissue. Good luck on the lab, and as always feel free to send me an email if there’s anything I can help with!

Reply

Whew! Wow, what a great read and inspiration to others! Congratulations and thank you for taking the time to write this experience toshare!

Reply

Hey Brian

Thanks for the nice write up.I was waiting for it.

ThanksManish

Reply

Congratulations again and thank you for sharing your journey. This will definitely make a difference.

Reply

Well done and great write up! I hope to join the DC ranks one day.

Regards,

Marc

Reply

Aweome post Brian

I have a few comments :

I disagree when you say that CCIE Voice golden moment is when all the phones are up and able to dial each others… CCIE Voicelab is a nightmare and you can still fail the lab when the phones are up and running

You should re consider your sentence : I as not able to earn a single point from 8:30 am to 9pm should be 9am yeah I knowminor typo but people are going to tell you anyway

Thanks again for this great post , I was waiting for something like this ….

Reply

Hi Nicolas,

I was told that the golden moment for CCIE Voice is when the phones are working so you can call TAC for help I don’tknow much about voice so please correct me if I’m wrong

Reply

Well …. The golden moment of voice is when you get rid of it

Can’t wait to finish my CCIE Voice and try to follow your path

Congrats again Brian !

Reply

Well …. The golden moment of voice is when you get rid of it

Can’t wait to finish my CCIE Voice and try to follow your path

Congrats again Brian !

Reply

You didn’t mention your strategy about repetitions of the topics??

Regards,AB

Reply

In general I don’t follow a specific repetition pattern. As I said once I get to the point where I can explain the topic to someonein detail in a simple manner that they can understand, then I know I have mastered the topic.

Reply

The strategy is to focus about it

Reply

Congrats Brian ..

Reply

Amazing Writeup & heartiest congrats on passing Lab ! You always inspire me to reach out for heavens through hard work ! I wishmy day will come too someday !!!

Reply

informative and helpful post ..thanks man ..:)

Reply

Simply Amazing……..

Reply

Congrats for the pass and thanks for the information provided!When will be another CCIE DC bootcamp scheduled?

Reply

Thanks Adrian! We’ll be posting the updated bootcamp schedule before the end of the week.

Reply

one word that can describe your post “Incredible”

you are mastering both the Detailed Technological part and also Lab Exam Strategy part, with this two pairs together, no wonder youcould pass the exam in the first attempt.

I also use the same lab exam strategy from Brian Dennis back in the old R/S ATC, with the some changes on it, based on my ownstyle.

Thank you for sharing the most incredible journey in the DC track Brian \(^0 )̂/

Reply

Very nice blog post !!

And very important: Congrats on the birth of your daughter!

Reply

Thanks Dang!

Reply

one word “INSPIRING”

Reply

Hi Brian,

From your note, that you began the lab by drawing the topology first on half hour, it means that no troubleshooting session in the labexam ?

Thanks,

Gofi

Reply

Correct. The only CCIE Lab Exam that has a separate troubleshooting section currently is Routing & Switching. All others arejust an 8 hour configuration exam, however troubleshooting is typically built into the config section based on the initial state ofthe network.

Reply

Congrats Brian!!!!….super write up.

Reply

Thank you Brian for the detailed write-up of your experience! I am going to try and incorporate some of this into my lab preparation BTW congrats on the baby!

Reply

Thanks Aral!

Reply

I love this part: “we are currently adding more capacity to rack rentals” This is what is missing, the rest is excellent, the videos and the workbooks.

Reply

Alas, I’m going to have to hold of on the INE Ferarri yet again

Reply

Enjoy your blog and watching your videos. I like to see INE put togther some sort of structured learning road map to go from CCNAxto CCIEx. While I have obtained my CCNA and CCSP(retired) it seems that I am always doing the two steps forward three steps backapproach resulting in letting certs expire and starting over again.

Reply

Hi David,

Thanks for the feedback, we’ll take this under advisement!

Reply

congrats Brian .. this is pure awesomeness ..and you a nerd famous ( yes absolutely ) , educating so many people across the globe is a talent in itself

hope to get a DC cert as well myself, sooner or later

Reply

I wouldn’t say the golden moment in the DC CCIE is booting your UCS servers. I was able to boot the server and get the OS to loadbut did not pass the test due to some misconfigurations in the other sections.

Based on my experience with the lab I’m not sure you can have a single golden moment but would rather have to break each sectiondown and have a golden moment for that section then those individual moments would add up to the overall lab golden moment.

I’m retaking the lab next week and plan to apply some of your techniques mentioned here because I know for me the stress of thetest is the main thing that caused me to fail so anything I can do to reduce the stress will help.

Reply

Hi Jay,

I hope those points work out for you. Good luck on your lab next week!

Reply

You have awaken the CCIE spirit inside me that went to sleep after passing the CCIE R&S last December. As with any long studytrack, you end up tired, but when you look back, you really say, it was worthy. I am starting the journey again, no matter how long ittakes!

Congrats to you and Mark!

Reply

I’m betting that once you have a CCIE R/S the delta to getting a CCIE-DC isn’t actually all that wide.

Brian–thoughts?

Reply

Basic layer 2 switching and layer 3 routing carry over, that’s pretty much it. SAN and UCS are a completely differentworld from R&S.

Reply

Glad to hear you passed!

What did you think of not being alongside the racks anymore (no white noise) and in a relatively small room? I thought that wasgoing to be a lot more annoying than it actually was with the phones ringing and stuff.

Reply

I barely heard any phones ringing, so I think the guys taking voice were having a bad day

Reply

Congrats! really it is great to know the comitment of you. I hope someday I have my magic number of CCIE. And begin the road likeyou…

Reply

Thanks Edwin! Good luck on your journey, and remember that it’s not a race, it’s a marathon

Reply

One quick Question to you Sir Brian,When do you find time to pick a rest, and to share some moments with your family ?

Reply

It’s a very delicate balancing act

Reply

Congratulations Brian and, yes, I read through the write-up

Reply

Congrats Brian… & Mark Too

I remember when you guys announced DC material last year, you mentioned troubleshooting labs for DC.

DC Troubleshooting labs are going to be part of existing workbook or a separate one ? As it looks essential part of preparation andpassing as you explained through your Jumbo MTU DCI problem causing SAN Boot failure.

Also DCNM is not covered in too much detail in storage vods. From real lab prospective how much DCNM LAN & SAN Manager weneed to know. I know most people most likely would prefer CLI over DCNM but some of feedback I had was that many storage taskswould take far less time if we use DCNM SAN Manager.

Also what is good strategy to pass DC Written as I had same feedback from many friends that took DC Written that they might asksomething like you mentioned in your post

And in last but not least. Can you kindly review latest Cisco Press arrival “Data Center Virtualization Fundamentals ” and post yourfeedback

Reply

Thanks Deepak! We will be adding troubleshooting to the DC workbooks, and it won’t be a separate product. In fact many ofthe full scale labs we’ve already finished and the new one’s that we’re working on have troubleshooting built into them.

Without getting too much into the specifics of my particular lab exam due to NDA, each lab delivery is potentially different. Justbecause my individual lab was heavy on topic X but light on topic Y doesn’t mean that you’ll see the same thing.

For the DC written exam just study the technologies as much as you can. The best reading resource like I mentioned in thepost is the documentation.

For the Cisco Press book I haven’t read it so I can’t comment on it.

Reply

Congratulation Brian,

Thanks for sharing your experience. Your post is really well written and trasmit lot of motivation to the readers.

best regards

Reply

Thanks Marcial!

Reply

Great reading. Congrats for you and Mark.! You rock guys.!

Reply

Thanks Luis!

Reply

Thanks for sharing and providing inspiration Brian! I really like the idea of keeping track of progress during the exam with checkmarks/questions/point values. I have also updated my Chrome with docs links!

Reply

Any plans to come up with Juniper or F5 LTM training this year ?

Also is JNCIE on your chart ?

Reply

Nothing else is on my chart for 2013, but who knows what 2014 will bring

Reply

Congratulation and thanks for sharing your experience , It gave the direction for Lab preparation.Any update on addition of any Lab location or releasing of new dates ?

Reply

Congrats ! thanks for that insightful writeup , am greatly inspired.by the way, I want to start my DC journey, are there plans for a CCNADC material ? Pls let me know.

Reply

Thanks Kenny! Yes we are planning both CCNA DC and CCNP DC materials.

Reply

congrtulations, to both of you. thank you for being honest with your written!..:) &, for the inspiration. what would be the proud dad’sadvice to new born little girlie..?

Reply

Thanks Asoka! My advice is to sleep when the baby sleeps

Reply

[...] MacGaham é instrutor no renomado, as vezes contestado INE. Neste post, ele pretende dar umas dicas de como conseguiu serbem sucedido em obter a certificação CCIE Data [...]

Reply

Great post. Thanks for the insight. Definitely gave me a good method to try to tackle this lab exam.

Reply

You expect us to believe Brian used INE products to pass this exam? not a matrix type plug they have developed to connect to yourbrain and upload information?

Reply

No comment

Reply

Great work Brian. U have always inspired me to go to the next level .Once again congratulations for being a daddy

Reply

Thanks Hemanth!

Reply

From my experience, your chances of passing CCIE lab increases to the amount of spare time left to verify the configurations. Whendid you catch your golden moment? Like 7hra or 6hrs into the lab? How much time did you have left for verifying your configs? Or didyou take it down to the wire?

Reply

It took me about 6 hours to complete the exam, which left me about 2 hours for double checking. Normally if you areconfiguring until the very last minute in the exam you won’t pass, because there are typically minor mistakes that you findwhen you go back through to double and triple check your work.

Reply

Hi Brian I will like to congratulate you for a good job done. My questions is since ine haven’t produce any video for the ccnpdatacenter can you read the ccie datacenter materials to pass or go straight for the ccie datacenter please advise thank you.

Reply

Really it depends on your current experience level. If you’re already at CCIE R&S level then I wouldn’t recommend going toCCNA and CCNP Data Center, but instead go straight for CCIE DC. We will be coming out with separate products for CCNADC and CCNP DC in the near future though.

Reply

So Brian, now you have 2 excellent milestones out of the way, will you look to go that bit further and maybe provide Wireless training?

Reply

Thanks Alan. For Wireless we’ll see. It might be on my roadmap for 2014

Reply

[...] blog post (by Brian McGahan) is very good reading. http://blog.ine.com/2013/07/10/how-i-passed-the-ccie-data-center-lab-exam/I’m using the information here to plan my [...]

Reply

hi Brian,

congratssssssss

i personally liked this one “If one minor task is wrong, you’ve essentially bought yourself a $100 rack rental and a $1400 lunch for theday.”

lol

Reply

Brian McGahan. Self-defining.

Reply

Hi Brian,Congratulations and many thanks for the sharing.I’m trying to book a lab for next year, but just like you said here, the trouble is the lab availability. how often does Cisco renew theirschedule dates?Did Mark get it a month before in San Jose? and how about you?

Enjoy the success.

Reply

I think I booked about 5 weeks in advance, and Mark was about the same. Just keep periodically checking the schedule tosee when new dates appear. They don’t officially announce them when they’re posted.

Reply

Hello Brian,

Congratulations on your success! Awesome blog. Just wanted to ask if ace is still a part of ccie dc?

Regards,Imran

Reply

Hearty congratulations Brian, you guys at INE put in so much work so that others lke me have at least a chance of passing. Keep upthe good work, and looking forward to meeting you in Seattle in November.

BTW – Do you have plans to increase the number of full-scale labs available for DC track, currently only two?

Kind Regards

Dominic

Reply

Hi, Brian.

Awesome exposition, as usual. Although I’m on the R&S track, it is really interesting for me to know about more experienced CCIEattackers’ approaches and points of view regarding preparation and the exam itself. I’ll take note of your auto-controlled approach,which I find absoultely brilliant. It gives you control about your progress and your completed/pending tasks and it lets you cross itover time, so you know at every moment how far or near you are of your goal. Really nice, I’ll work it out.

Hopefully I’ll apply it in my Lab assault on next Easter in Brussels. I’m sure that it will help me so much.

Congratulations for your success, and best of luck for your next challenges!!!

Reply

Congratulations Brian. Any idea on when are you going to add additional racks to DC ? at the moment, its bit difficult to book rackrentals.

Reply

Hey Brian,

As always, your blog posts are insightful and inspirational. Congratulations on the pass, sir!

Reply

Congrats Brian!

Reply

[...] McGahan of INE who also passed his CCIE Data Center lab exam making him a quintuple CCIE. In his blog post he talks abouthow he immersed himself in reading, reading all the documentation on the Cisco [...]

Reply

Hi Brian, how long did it take for DC results to come through after your test? few hrs? couple of days?

Reply

All results can be normally expected within 1 business day, although I have seen them only take an hour or two in the case ofpassing.

Reply

Oh well.. last year when I passed my CCIE SP lab, I promised myself that it would be the last.. just like I told myself 2 years agowhen I passed the Security lab, you can see the trend

I decided a couple of days ago that I will be pursuing the DC track and came across your post. VERY INSPIRING !!! Congrats

I had a quick look at the DC rack rentals and boy aren’t they popular… pretty much booked all the way.. Are you guys thinking ofadding more DC racks at all ?

Regards

Reply

Brian M

Forget about my previous question about DC rack rentals, I just read Brian Dennis’ post about doubling the current DC rackscapacity

Congrats again on your 4th star.. or I should say 5th star, counting the CCDE

Cheers

Reply

Hi Brian

First respect to you on pasning the DC.Nice dok and How to.

Reply

Great read. I’d hate to study on the ACE though.

Reply

Great read Brian, many congratulations!

Reply

Thanks for sharing your experience.Congratulation Brian,

From El Salvador Centro America

Reply

Congrats Brian….Well done!

Reply

Hi Brian, Mark,

First of all congratulations on this achievement!!!…..on the other hand, do you have an estimated launch date for the CCNA DC andCCNP DC courses?

Thanks in advance!

Mauricio

Reply

Congratulations…. Is there a page I can visit that outlines a little bit about how you study, how many hours a day, how many labs perweek… etc? This is one of the most difficult issues for me is learning how to schedule my time. Do you have family, children, etc?

Reply

Congrats Brian… I have been moved from routing and switching to cloud computing in my job. So please suggest me which ccietrack is relevant and suitable for my job?

Regards

Reply

Umm… Data Center?

Reply

Hi Brian,

Congratulations and a bunch of thanks for the sharing your Incredible experience for CCIE Data Center Lab. You have been myinspiration from the day one when I thought about my first CCIERS.

I checked your website, though I could see the CCIE Data Center stuff, however I couldn’t see anything about CCNA DC and CCNPDC. I want to know about the procedure to start for CCIE DC.

As I know, we should start from CCNA then develop the concepts to CCNP and then proceed for CCIE. I am not able to see any bookor documentation available. I want to use the material you are providing and I am sure that they require some homework should bedone before I start using your material.So I am getting confused that I should buy the workbooks from day one or I should study few thing first and then buy.

I hope you are able to understand what I am trying to say. I’ll wait for your response on this.

RegardsRavi

Reply

Our DC material starts with no expectations of the learner, and is therefore appropriate for even those starting out at a CCNADC level.

Reply

Hi BrianAbout how many TS errors should we expect in lab ??? For example, In R&S v4 there was 10 tickets + 2 or 3 faults in initial configs.About your comments i guess that errors in DC lab are within the initial configs but i don´t know the possible number of them.Any help will be appreciated

Reply

They don’t explicitly tell you.

Reply

Leave a Reply

Name (required)

Mail (will not be published) (required)

Submit Comment

SearchSearch

Submit

CategoriesSelect Category

CCIE BloggersBrian Dennis, CCIEx5 #2210

Routing & Sw itchingVoiceSecurityService ProviderISP Dial

Brian McGahan, CCIEx4 #8593,CCDE #2013::13

DesignData CenterRouting & Sw itchingSecurityService Provider

Mark Snow , CCIEx4 #14073

Data CenterCollaborationSecurityVoice

Petr Lapukhov, CCIEx4 #16379,CCDE #2010::7

DesignRouting & Sw itchingSecurityService ProviderVoice

Popular PostsNo posts to display

twitter.com/ine

Blog Home | INE Home | Members | Contact Us | Subscribe

© 2011 INE, Inc., All Rights Reserved

Free Resources View Archives All Access Pass CCIE Bloggers

http://www.ine.com/about-us.htm
http://www.ine.com/all-access-pass-subscription.htm
http://blog.ine.com/archives
http://www.ine.com/resources/
http://feeds.feedburner.com/ine/
http://feeds.feedburner.com/ine/
http://www.ine.com/contact.htm
http://members.ine.com/
http://www.ine.com/
http://blog.ine.com/
http://www.linkedin.com/companies/144650
http://feeds.feedburner.com/ine/
http://www.youtube.com/INEtraining
http://www.facebook.com/inetraining
http://twitter.com/ine
http://twitter.com/ine
http://twitter.com/ine
http://twitter.com/ine
http://www.ine.com/about-us.htm#ms
http://www.ine.com/about-us.htm#ms
http://www.ine.com/about-us.htm#bm
http://www.ine.com/about-us.htm#bd
http://blog.ine.com/2013/07/10/how-i-passed-the-ccie-data-center-lab-exam/?replytocom=509180#respond
http://blog.ine.com/2013/07/10/how-i-passed-the-ccie-data-center-lab-exam/?replytocom=509169#respond
http://blog.ine.com/2013/07/10/how-i-passed-the-ccie-data-center-lab-exam/?replytocom=502642#respond
http://blog.ine.com/2013/07/10/how-i-passed-the-ccie-data-center-lab-exam/?replytocom=502596#respond
http://blog.ine.com/2013/07/10/how-i-passed-the-ccie-data-center-lab-exam/?replytocom=500883#respond
http://blog.ine.com/2013/07/10/how-i-passed-the-ccie-data-center-lab-exam/?replytocom=500869#respond
http://blog.ine.com/2013/07/10/how-i-passed-the-ccie-data-center-lab-exam/?replytocom=498484#respond
http://blog.ine.com/2013/07/10/how-i-passed-the-ccie-data-center-lab-exam/?replytocom=498353#respond
http://blog.ine.com/2013/07/10/how-i-passed-the-ccie-data-center-lab-exam/?replytocom=498322#respond
http://blog.ine.com/2013/07/10/how-i-passed-the-ccie-data-center-lab-exam/?replytocom=498313#respond
http://blog.ine.com/2013/07/10/how-i-passed-the-ccie-data-center-lab-exam/?replytocom=498302#respond
http://blog.ine.com/2013/07/10/how-i-passed-the-ccie-data-center-lab-exam/?replytocom=498205#respond
http://blog.ine.com/2013/07/10/how-i-passed-the-ccie-data-center-lab-exam/?replytocom=498178#respond
http://blog.ine.com/2013/07/10/how-i-passed-the-ccie-data-center-lab-exam/?replytocom=498173#respond
http://blog.ine.com/2013/07/10/how-i-passed-the-ccie-data-center-lab-exam/?replytocom=498172#respond
http://blog.ine.com/2013/07/10/how-i-passed-the-ccie-data-center-lab-exam/?replytocom=497899#respond
http://blog.ine.com/2013/07/10/how-i-passed-the-ccie-data-center-lab-exam/?replytocom=497897#respond
http://blog.ine.com/2013/07/10/how-i-passed-the-ccie-data-center-lab-exam/?replytocom=497878#respond
http://blog.ine.com/2013/07/10/how-i-passed-the-ccie-data-center-lab-exam/?replytocom=497874#respond
http://blog.ine.com/2013/07/10/how-i-passed-the-ccie-data-center-lab-exam/?replytocom=497799#respond
http://blog.ine.com/2013/07/10/how-i-passed-the-ccie-data-center-lab-exam/?replytocom=497777#respond
http://blog.ine.com/2013/07/10/how-i-passed-the-ccie-data-center-lab-exam/?replytocom=497766#respond
http://blog.ine.com/2013/07/10/how-i-passed-the-ccie-data-center-lab-exam/?replytocom=497746#respond
http://blog.ine.com/2013/07/10/how-i-passed-the-ccie-data-center-lab-exam/?replytocom=497676#respond
http://blog.ine.com/2013/07/10/how-i-passed-the-ccie-data-center-lab-exam/?replytocom=497722#respond
http://blog.ine.com/2013/07/10/how-i-passed-the-ccie-data-center-lab-exam/?replytocom=497632#respond
http://blog.ine.com/2013/07/10/how-i-passed-the-ccie-data-center-lab-exam/?replytocom=497625#respond
http://blog.ine.com/2013/07/10/how-i-passed-the-ccie-data-center-lab-exam/?replytocom=497576#respond
http://blog.ine.com/2013/07/10/how-i-passed-the-ccie-data-center-lab-exam/?replytocom=497563#respond
http://blog.ine.com/2013/07/10/how-i-passed-the-ccie-data-center-lab-exam/
http://blog.ine.com/2013/07/10/how-i-passed-the-ccie-data-center-lab-exam/?replytocom=497599#respond
http://blog.ine.com/2013/07/10/how-i-passed-the-ccie-data-center-lab-exam/?replytocom=497546#respond
http://blog.ine.com/2013/07/10/how-i-passed-the-ccie-data-center-lab-exam/?replytocom=497600#respond
http://blog.ine.com/2013/07/10/how-i-passed-the-ccie-data-center-lab-exam/?replytocom=497541#respond
http://blog.ine.com/2013/07/10/how-i-passed-the-ccie-data-center-lab-exam/?replytocom=497601#respond
http://blog.ine.com/2013/07/10/how-i-passed-the-ccie-data-center-lab-exam/?replytocom=497539#respond
http://blog.ine.com/2013/07/10/how-i-passed-the-ccie-data-center-lab-exam/?replytocom=497602#respond
http://blog.ine.com/2013/07/10/how-i-passed-the-ccie-data-center-lab-exam/?replytocom=497531#respond
http://blog.ine.com/2013/07/10/how-i-passed-the-ccie-data-center-lab-exam/?replytocom=497603#respond
http://blog.ine.com/2013/07/10/how-i-passed-the-ccie-data-center-lab-exam/?replytocom=497521#respond
http://blog.ine.com/2013/07/10/how-i-passed-the-ccie-data-center-lab-exam/?replytocom=497520#respond
http://blog.ine.com/2013/07/10/how-i-passed-the-ccie-data-center-lab-exam/?replytocom=497507#respond
http://blog.ine.com/2013/07/10/how-i-passed-the-ccie-data-center-lab-exam/?replytocom=497514#respond
http://blog.ine.com/2013/07/10/how-i-passed-the-ccie-data-center-lab-exam/?replytocom=497489#respond
http://blog.ine.com/2013/07/10/how-i-passed-the-ccie-data-center-lab-exam/?replytocom=497513#respond
http://blog.ine.com/2013/07/10/how-i-passed-the-ccie-data-center-lab-exam/?replytocom=497471#respond
http://blog.ine.com/2013/07/10/how-i-passed-the-ccie-data-center-lab-exam/?replytocom=497470#respond
http://blog.ine.com/2013/07/10/how-i-passed-the-ccie-data-center-lab-exam/?replytocom=497437#respond
http://blog.ine.com/2013/07/10/how-i-passed-the-ccie-data-center-lab-exam/?replytocom=497416#respond
http://blog.ine.com/2013/07/10/how-i-passed-the-ccie-data-center-lab-exam/?replytocom=497399#respond
http://blog.ine.com/2013/07/10/how-i-passed-the-ccie-data-center-lab-exam/?replytocom=497386#respond
http://blog.ine.com/2013/07/10/how-i-passed-the-ccie-data-center-lab-exam/?replytocom=497372#respond
http://blog.ine.com/2013/07/10/how-i-passed-the-ccie-data-center-lab-exam/?replytocom=497387#respond
http://blog.ine.com/2013/07/10/how-i-passed-the-ccie-data-center-lab-exam/?replytocom=497370#respond
http://blog.ine.com/2013/07/10/how-i-passed-the-ccie-data-center-lab-exam/?replytocom=497393#respond
http://blog.ine.com/2013/07/10/how-i-passed-the-ccie-data-center-lab-exam/?replytocom=497356#respond
http://blog.ine.com/2013/07/10/how-i-passed-the-ccie-data-center-lab-exam/?replytocom=497353#respond
http://blog.ine.com/2013/07/10/how-i-passed-the-ccie-data-center-lab-exam/?replytocom=497388#respond
http://blog.ine.com/2013/07/10/how-i-passed-the-ccie-data-center-lab-exam/?replytocom=497331#respond
http://blog.ine.com/2013/07/10/how-i-passed-the-ccie-data-center-lab-exam/?replytocom=497389#respond
http://blog.ine.com/2013/07/10/how-i-passed-the-ccie-data-center-lab-exam/?replytocom=497324#respond
http://blog.ine.com/2013/07/10/how-i-passed-the-ccie-data-center-lab-exam/?replytocom=497310#respond
http://blog.ine.com/2013/07/10/how-i-passed-the-ccie-data-center-lab-exam/?replytocom=497305#respond
http://blog.ine.com/2013/07/10/how-i-passed-the-ccie-data-center-lab-exam/?replytocom=505592#respond
http://blog.ine.com/2013/07/10/how-i-passed-the-ccie-data-center-lab-exam/?replytocom=505590#respond
http://blog.ine.com/2013/07/10/how-i-passed-the-ccie-data-center-lab-exam/?replytocom=497304#respond
http://blog.ine.com/2013/07/10/how-i-passed-the-ccie-data-center-lab-exam/?replytocom=497294#respond
http://blog.ine.com/2013/07/10/how-i-passed-the-ccie-data-center-lab-exam/?replytocom=497293#respond
http://blog.ine.com/2013/07/10/how-i-passed-the-ccie-data-center-lab-exam/?replytocom=497292#respond
http://blog.ine.com/2013/07/10/how-i-passed-the-ccie-data-center-lab-exam/?replytocom=497295#respond
http://blog.ine.com/2013/07/10/how-i-passed-the-ccie-data-center-lab-exam/?replytocom=497291#respond
http://blog.ine.com/2013/07/10/how-i-passed-the-ccie-data-center-lab-exam/?replytocom=497289#respond
http://blog.ine.com/2013/07/10/how-i-passed-the-ccie-data-center-lab-exam/?replytocom=497285#respond
http://blog.ine.com/2013/07/10/how-i-passed-the-ccie-data-center-lab-exam/?replytocom=497284#respond
http://blog.ine.com/2013/07/10/how-i-passed-the-ccie-data-center-lab-exam/?replytocom=497283#respond
http://blog.ine.com/2013/07/10/how-i-passed-the-ccie-data-center-lab-exam/?replytocom=497273#respond
http://blog.ine.com/2013/07/10/how-i-passed-the-ccie-data-center-lab-exam/?replytocom=497278#respond
http://blog.ine.com/2013/07/10/how-i-passed-the-ccie-data-center-lab-exam/?replytocom=497271#respond
http://blog.ine.com/2013/07/10/how-i-passed-the-ccie-data-center-lab-exam/?replytocom=497270#respond
http://blog.ine.com/2013/07/10/how-i-passed-the-ccie-data-center-lab-exam/?replytocom=497279#respond
http://blog.ine.com/2013/07/10/how-i-passed-the-ccie-data-center-lab-exam/?replytocom=497267#respond
http://blog.ine.com/2013/07/10/how-i-passed-the-ccie-data-center-lab-exam/?replytocom=497264#respond
http://blog.ine.com/2013/07/10/how-i-passed-the-ccie-data-center-lab-exam/?replytocom=497280#respond
http://blog.ine.com/2013/07/10/how-i-passed-the-ccie-data-center-lab-exam/?replytocom=497263#respond
http://blog.ine.com/2013/07/10/how-i-passed-the-ccie-data-center-lab-exam/?replytocom=497255#respond
http://blog.ine.com/2013/07/10/how-i-passed-the-ccie-data-center-lab-exam/?replytocom=497254#respond
http://blog.ine.com/2013/07/10/how-i-passed-the-ccie-data-center-lab-exam/?replytocom=497252#respond
http://blog.ine.com/2013/07/10/how-i-passed-the-ccie-data-center-lab-exam/?replytocom=497251#respond
http://blog.ine.com/2013/07/10/how-i-passed-the-ccie-data-center-lab-exam/?replytocom=497272#respond
http://blog.ine.com/2013/07/10/how-i-passed-the-ccie-data-center-lab-exam/?replytocom=497256#respond
http://blog.ine.com/2013/07/10/how-i-passed-the-ccie-data-center-lab-exam/?replytocom=497250#respond
http://blog.ine.com/2013/07/10/how-i-passed-the-ccie-data-center-lab-exam/?replytocom=497269#respond
http://blog.ine.com/2013/07/10/how-i-passed-the-ccie-data-center-lab-exam/?replytocom=497268#respond
http://blog.ine.com/2013/07/10/how-i-passed-the-ccie-data-center-lab-exam/?replytocom=497257#respond
http://blog.ine.com/2013/07/10/how-i-passed-the-ccie-data-center-lab-exam/?replytocom=497249#respond
http://blog.ine.com/2013/07/10/how-i-passed-the-ccie-data-center-lab-exam/?replytocom=497248#respond
http://blog.ine.com/2013/07/10/how-i-passed-the-ccie-data-center-lab-exam/?replytocom=497247#respond
http://blog.ine.com/2013/07/10/how-i-passed-the-ccie-data-center-lab-exam/?replytocom=497246#respond
http://blog.ine.com/2013/07/10/how-i-passed-the-ccie-data-center-lab-exam/?replytocom=497244#respond
http://blog.ine.com/2013/07/10/how-i-passed-the-ccie-data-center-lab-exam/?replytocom=497258#respond
http://blog.ine.com/2013/07/10/how-i-passed-the-ccie-data-center-lab-exam/?replytocom=497242#respond
http://blog.ine.com/2013/07/10/how-i-passed-the-ccie-data-center-lab-exam/?replytocom=497241#respond
http://blog.ine.com/2013/07/10/how-i-passed-the-ccie-data-center-lab-exam/?replytocom=497240#respond
http://blog.ine.com/2013/07/10/how-i-passed-the-ccie-data-center-lab-exam/?replytocom=497238#respond
http://blog.ine.com/2013/07/10/how-i-passed-the-ccie-data-center-lab-exam/?replytocom=498256#respond
http://blog.ine.com/2013/07/10/how-i-passed-the-ccie-data-center-lab-exam/?replytocom=497260#respond
http://blog.ine.com/2013/07/10/how-i-passed-the-ccie-data-center-lab-exam/?replytocom=497237#respond
http://blog.ine.com/2013/07/10/how-i-passed-the-ccie-data-center-lab-exam/trackback/
http://pdfcrowd.com/url_to_pdf/?height=-1
http://blog.ine.com/tag/ucs/
http://blog.ine.com/tag/strategy/
http://blog.ine.com/tag/storage/
http://blog.ine.com/tag/san/
http://blog.ine.com/tag/nx-os/
http://blog.ine.com/tag/nexus/
http://blog.ine.com/tag/lan/
http://blog.ine.com/tag/dc/
http://blog.ine.com/tag/computing/
http://blog.ine.com/tag/cloud/
http://blog.ine.com/tag/ccie/
http://blog.ine.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/ucs.b.having.a.good_.day_.png
http://blog.ine.com/2012/08/17/otv-decoded-a-fancy-gre-tunnel/
http://blog.ine.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/fcip.mtu_.png
http://blog.ine.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/ucs.b.failed.to_.boot_.png
http://blog.ine.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/golden.moment.png
http://blog.ine.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/tracking-my-time.png
http://blog.ine.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/tracking-my-work.png
http://www.santaclara.hyatt.com/en/hotel/home.html
http://blog.ine.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/right.path_.png
http://blog.ine.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/wrong.path_.png
http://www.ine.com/rack-rental-tokens.htm#dc
http://www.ine.com/instructor-led/ccie-data-center-bootcamps.htm
http://www.ine.com/self-paced/ccie-data-center/workbooks.htm
http://www.ine.com/self-paced/ccie-data-center.htm
http://www.ciscolive365.com/
http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/abstracts/sg245470.html
http://www.amazon.com/Storage-Networks-Explained-Application-InfiniBand/dp/0470741430/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1373487356&sr=1-1&keywords=storage+networks+explained
http://www.amazon.com/Cisco-Unified-Computing-System-Center/dp/1587141930/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1373487326&sr=1-1&keywords=cisco+ucs
http://www.amazon.com/Cisco-Storage-Networking-Cookbook-Families/dp/146646318X/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1373487269&sr=8-2&keywords=nx-os+and+cisco
http://www.amazon.com/NX-OS-Cisco-Nexus-Switching-Next-Generation/dp/1587143046/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1373487269&sr=8-1&keywords=nx-os+and+cisco
http://safari.oreilly.com/
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/solutions/Enterprise/Data_Center/VMDC/2.6/vmdcm1f1wp.html
http://blog.ine.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/m1.f1.mixed_.chassis.png
http://blog.ine.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/nexus.5k.fcoe_.troubleshooting.png
http://blog.ine.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/nexus.white_.papers.png
http://blog.ine.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/lower.is_.higher.png
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/switches/datacenter/mds9000/sw/6_2/configuration/guides/ip_services/nx-os/ipsvc.html
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/switches/datacenter/mds9000/sw/6_2/configuration/guides/interfaces/nx-os/cli_interfaces.html
http://blog.ine.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/doc.pdfs_.png
http://blog.ine.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/chrome.toolbar.png
http://blog.ine.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/ccie.dc_.build_.ss_.png
http://blog.ine.com/2012/06/22/cisco-live-ine-customer-appreciation-party-thank-you/
http://blog.ine.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/bm.ccie_.dc_1.png
http://www.ine.com/
http://www.ine.com/
http://www.ine.com/
http://www.ine.com/
http://cciedcjourney.us/2013/07/29/combining-a-few-study-methods/
http://InnoTechSys.Com/
http://www.ine.com/
http://ccie.sb16.net/?p=62
http://www.ine.com/
http://www.ine.com/
http://www.ine.com/
http://www.ine.com/
http://www.ine.com/
http://snnangola.wordpress.com/2013/07/16/brian-mcgaham-e-como-ele-passou-o-ccie-data-center/
http://www.ine.com/
http://www.ine.com/
http://www.ine.com/
http://www.ine.com/
http://www.ine.com/
http://www.ine.com/
http://www.ine.com/
http://www.ine.com/
http://www.ine.com/
http://www.ine.com/
http://www.ine.com/
http://www.ine.com/
http://www.ine.com/
http://www.ine.com/
http://www.ine.com/
http://www.ine.com/
http://www.ine.com/
http://www.ine.com/
http://www.ine.com/
http://Certjourney.blogspot.com/
http://www.ine.com/
http://www.ine.com/
http://www.ine.com/
http://blog.ine.com/?author=3
http://twitter.com/share?url=http%3A%2F%2Fblog.ine.com%2F2013%2F07%2F10%2Fhow-i-passed-the-ccie-data-center-lab-exam%2F&via=brianmcgahan&text=How%20I%20Passed%20the%20CCIE%20Data%20Center%20Lab%20Exam&related=&lang=en&count=vertical
http://blog.ine.com/category/ccie-data-center/
http://www.ine.com/
http://blog.ine.com/2013/07/10/how-i-passed-the-ccie-data-center-lab-exam/
http://blog.ine.com/
http://pdfcrowd.com

INE Transducer-Arrays (steril) - optune.de · 4 - Informationen zu den INE Transducer-Arrays 1 Informationen zu den INE Transducer-Arrays Die INE Transducer-Arrays sind Anordnungen

INE Transducer-Arrays (steril) - optune.de · 4 - Informationen zu den INE Transducer-Arrays 1 Informationen zu den INE Transducer-Arrays Die INE Transducer-Arrays sind Anordnungen

Documents
Presentatie #INE

Presentatie #INE

Documents
Tutorial INE

Tutorial INE

Documents
Instituto Nacional de Estadística INE - cedla.orgcedla.org/blog/grupopoliticafiscal/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/... · ©INE, febrero de 2015 Instituto Nacional de Estadística Avenida

Instituto Nacional de Estadística INE - cedla.orgcedla.org/blog/grupopoliticafiscal/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/... · ©INE, febrero de 2015 Instituto Nacional de Estadística Avenida

Documents
INE- EXTRAORDINARIO.indd

INE- EXTRAORDINARIO.indd

Documents
CF/016/2020 ACUERDO DE LA COMISIÓN DE FISCALIZACIÓN DEL ... · INE/CG320/2016, INE/CG875/2016, INE/CG68/2017, INE/CG409/2017, INE/CG04/2018 e INE/CG174/2020. VI. El 30 de julio

CF/016/2020 ACUERDO DE LA COMISIÓN DE FISCALIZACIÓN DEL ... · INE/CG320/2016, INE/CG875/2016, INE/CG68/2017, INE/CG409/2017, INE/CG04/2018 e INE/CG174/2020. VI. El 30 de julio

Documents
Ine telmex

Ine telmex

News & Politics
Protect ine

Protect ine

Documents
INE. INDICADORES

INE. INDICADORES

Documents
Ine Multicast

Ine Multicast

Documents
INE/JGE200/2020 · 2021. 1. 6. · INE/DS1521/2020, INE/DS1522/2020, INE/DS1523/2020 e INE/DS1524/2020, la Directora del Secretariado solicitó a las personas titulares de las Vocalías

INE/JGE200/2020 · 2021. 1. 6. · INE/DS1521/2020, INE/DS1522/2020, INE/DS1523/2020 e INE/DS1524/2020, la Directora del Secretariado solicitó a las personas titulares de las Vocalías

Documents
BOLIVIA - INE

BOLIVIA - INE

Documents
Quick Start Guide - consumer-tkbdownload.huawei.com · The product software version is INE-LX1: INE-LX1 8.2.0.106(C900) / INE-LX2: INE-LX2 8.2.0.56M(SP2C900). Software updates will

Quick Start Guide - consumer-tkbdownload.huawei.com · The product software version is INE-LX1: INE-LX1 8.2.0.106(C900) / INE-LX2: INE-LX2 8.2.0.56M(SP2C900). Software updates will

Documents
Título - ine

Título - ine

Documents
Ine Anzoategui

Ine Anzoategui

Documents
IEE(;) - INE

IEE(;) - INE

Documents
INE Guatemala

INE Guatemala

Documents
Documento INE

Documento INE

Documents
Blog Ine Com 2009-05-18 Understanding External Easy VPN Auth

Blog Ine Com 2009-05-18 Understanding External Easy VPN Auth

Documents
Fonte: INE

Fonte: INE

Documents
IEPC - INE

IEPC - INE

Documents
How to find the SWID on Your - Alpine...How to find the SWID on Your INE-W928R INE-W970BT INE-W977BT INE-W987D INE-W990BT X800D-U X800D-ML X800D-VHere you have the possibility to view

How to find the SWID on Your - Alpine...How to find the SWID on Your INE-W928R INE-W970BT INE-W977BT INE-W987D INE-W990BT X800D-U X800D-ML X800D-VHere you have the possibility to view

Documents
Início - INE

Início - INE

Documents
Boletim INE

Boletim INE

Documents
Seminar Ine

Seminar Ine

Documents
Acuerdo INE Financiamiento Partidos INE/CG012015

Acuerdo INE Financiamiento Partidos INE/CG012015

Documents
Acuerdo INE

Acuerdo INE

Documents
Artigo - InE

Artigo - InE

Documents
Understanding STP and RSTP Convergence - CCIE Blog ...blog.ine.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/understanding-stp-rstp... · Understanding STP and RSTP Convergence INE, Inc ... Spanning

Understanding STP and RSTP Convergence - CCIE Blog ...blog.ine.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/understanding-stp-rstp... · Understanding STP and RSTP Convergence INE, Inc ... Spanning

Documents
Recrutamento INE

Recrutamento INE

Documents