How about to get a cisco certification? Maybe a ccie, If so, Read this article to see what it takes to go down that path and what you can expect along the way.
The reason why I prefer to say that is because the resolutions are easily or hastily made and easily discarded, Whereas when you set goals and you establish a sequence and a time frame for you to get that you're much more likely to achieve it. So what about upping your cisco cert game and getting up to a cisco ccie? Well, If that is what you're interested in read this article, Because as somebody who has gone down that path before I'm, Going to explain what it would take based off of your current search status, What a reasonable time frame is and what you can expect along the Way now I got my search back in 2015. It was quite a different process, So also what I'm going to do is I'm going to update you on the the new process and the new information regarding getting a ccie here in this year.
But if you want to see what I went through, I did do a article on my story and you can check it out in a link up here. I will also link it down in the description below all right. The first step in going down that path toward the ccie is hitting the like button and also the subscribe button, While you're at it. If you haven't already done so, I'm only kidding with you the. But if you do like this content, Please feel free to do that and now on to the real first step, Which the real first step on the path toward a ccie is to get a ccna.
And while the ccna is not a prerequisite for anything anymore, It is still a excellent certification for building the foundational knowledge you need to move forward. So if you haven't already gotten that ccna or you are getting that ccna right now, You're working towards that, I am going to say, Though, That the realistic time frame at an absolute minimum to get a ccnp or a ccie really is probably late. 2024, Maybe even into 2025.
I got my ccna in 2009 and the first time I passed, The ccie written exam was in 2012, So that kind of gives you a little bit of a time frame there that that you might have looking at that. But if you are working towards it, Just remember this there's a great quote. I don't remember who said that, But if you do know, Go ahead and attribute it in the comments down below, And the quote goes like this.
Try to accomplish your 10-year goals in one year. You will probably fail, But you will be a lot further, Along than you thought possible, All right. So if you are working towards your ccna or even if you're working towards your ccnp go ahead and also check out my article I'll link, I'll put it up here and in the description down below about the current cisco certification program, All right.
So looking at the ccnp certification, This is where we can make our play toward the ccie. If you recall from my article on the cisco certification programs, There are two components to a ccnp certification: there is the core exam and the specialization exam within the same focus area. If you've already done your specialization exam great you're on the right path, You just need to get your core exam knocked out if you're looking to make that run at the ccie. Try to get that knocked out sometime in the first half of this year. Now, If you've already gotten your core exam completed or you have the complete ccnp, Then you're already in play for the ccie.
So back when I did my ie and - and I did the written exam in 2014 and and finished it up in 2015, The ccnp exams and the ccie written exam were completely separate. As of february of 2020, The ccnp written exam, The core exam, Is the ccie written exam. So if you have already completed that, Then you have already completed the ccie written exam at this point. What you need to do is build up a support group and that support group needs to be on essentially two pillars. You need a perf, A professional pillar, And you need a personal pillar on the professional side.
If there's somebody, You know who has already passed the ccie and gone through that process, See if t are willing to be a mentor to you and to help you out with some tips as far as going into that lab exam and ways to prepare for that Or just to be a sounding board for maybe some questions that you might have just to to work through and process, Some of the . The knowledge that you need to understand, Or maybe can help you out with developing simula or scenarios where in which you can work through in terms of getting your lab proficiency down. You can also look at building up a ccie support group or a study group where, If there's people that you know within your professional circle, Also working towards it, You can come up with a group together and and help to bounce ideas off of each other or Work on labs and simulations together, If you do not have that in your immediate area, Then you can look online. Do a search for ccie support groups or ccie study groups online and look to join an online ccie study group.
Now, On the personal side, As you will need a support group there too, And this could be family members girlfriend boyfriend spouse, Somebody that you have in your personal life that can be there to support you and understands the value that you are going to get Out of having this certification and the benefit that that will bring to you and your personal or in your professional goals and your career growth, And this can be somebody that can help you out as you're going to get stressed out in in your studies. Uh, Keep in mind you're, Looking at a minimum six months of deep dive, Intensive study and, As I said, That's an absolute minimum. For me, It was more like 18 months, So you're going to be burnt out at some points and you're going to need somebody in your personal life that can either just help you to motivate you when you need the motivation or to help you to to just De-Stress, When you need that as well, All right here is my take on how to pass the cciu lab exam and once you've passed the written exam. What you want to do is you want to go to cisco's website and you're going to want to pull up the lab exam topics for your focus area.
Now, On that list, You are going to have everything that you need in order to pass the lab exam. You will need to have an expert level knowledge of configuring and troubleshooting everything on that list and to get that knowledge, You need to gather any materials necessary . What this could be study materials say the ccie core exam book. That's that's a great starting point and I'm actually going to provide some links down to that for each of the the ccie areas down below just keep in mind.
Those will be affiliate links. So if you choose to use those links great, If not that's entirely up to you as well, But what I'm also going to say is that as you use as you get the resources and the materials to to do that, The cisco press materials are great. But there's you need to go beyond that and one of the greatest resources that I found when I was doing it, And partly because when I did the data center ccie, There was no cisco press materials for it, But look at the cisco support documents themselves.
These are a great resource and you need to be able to go through and study these documents yourself. So, For example, I've pulled up the exam topics, The lab exam topics on cisco's website for the current cisco data center exam. And if we go down here and let's take a look at the data center fabric connectivity here, So this is comprised of 15 of the exam and in here it talks about needing to know ospf and bgp. So what you're going to want to do is if you go and pull up, Say the nexus 9000 configuration guides and the or the nx os configuration guides that would be under the unicast routing configuration guide and right here.
We'Ve got ospf v2 ospf v3 basic bgp advanced bgp. This is the stuff you're going to want to know so you're going to want to go into this and you're going to want to read through all of this and understand everything about configuring and deploying ospf and also troubleshooting ospf on a nexus switch, As that would Be what will help you out for your lab exam, And this is, As I said, This is an example for the data center lab exam. The other thing that I'm going to bring up here in terms of doing your lab exam and preparing for your lab exam lab every day, And if you can get access to a physical lab, I was able to through my employer great do that. If you can't do that, Get access to a virtual lab exam physical is best virtual will also be good too. You can see my article.
I will also link that one about how I get access to free, Cisco, Lab content and lab access for playing around with cisco devices and studying with that. This won't be a full ccie lab exam. If, If that is what you have available to you, But you can at least use it to practice portions of the ccI lab exam. You can also rent labs, Ccie labs.
If you cannot get access to it yourself, There are resources out there and, If you're doing, Say, Enterprise infrastructure. A lot of that can be covered through the cisco modeling labs, Which I covered in my article about free, Cisco lab access that one actually does cost. You, Though, But this is a lab exam - this is a practical lab exam.
You need to lab the more time you get working on the gear, The better off you will be, And you really do need to be able to lab to the point that it becomes. Second nature to you to where and my example configure ospf on the nexus switch. You automatically know the commands the process and how to do that. So that is what you need to know going forward to accomplish the lab exam once you're ready to take your lab exam. Of course.
The first thing you're going to want to do is schedule that and so you're going to log into the ccie portal, Which you can actually access by going to ciscocom, Go slash, Ccie and you're only going to be able to get to it. Once you've passed your written exam, But in that portal you'll be able to schedule the location at one of the various testing sites around the world and there's also mobile labs. So if one of those is coming to your area and you're able to schedule that great do so otherwise you're going to have to travel to your nearest testing location when you actually get to the day of the exam. And you go into to do the practical test that exam as of 2022, Is currently split into two modules. The first module is going to be three hours long, And that is the design module where you're going to be working through a series of scenario-based questions.
Then, After that is over with you're going to go into the five-hour, Deploy, Operate and optimize module, Which is your actual hands-on configuration practical exam where you're going to be required to build out whatever it is. The test asks of you so when you are complete through those two modules, The way to to pass the lab exam is you're going to have to achieve a minimum passing score on both modules and a minimum passing score on the overall lab exam itself. So, To put it one way, If you just barely miss the minimum passing score on a my on the first module, But you really knocked it out of the park and and did excellent on the second module you're not going to pass the exam. But, On the other hand, If maybe you just barely get by on the minim passing score for each of the modules, You may not have had enough points to pass the overall minimum passing score for the exam. So you need to have everything down and your knowledge set as you're going in in order to clear, With a good margin the scores for both modules, So that you will also be able to pass the minimum passing score for the overall exam.
So I hope this information hasn't completely scared you off of the ccie. Yes, It is a long. It is a difficult journey, But in the end once you've achieved it, It is very much a worthwhile journey to have accomplished. I am absolutely glad that I went through that process and . Some people will actually decide to go through it a second time or a third time and become a ccie, X2 or x3 with multiple focus areas. I myself not quite ready to do that.
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