Good reading from Marko. Sent to you by johan via Google Reader: Cisco Live 2012 – CCIE R&S News via CCIE Blog by Marko Milivojevic on 6/16/12
After 4 days of incredible technical sessions, social events and overall great fun, another Cisco Live has come to an end. Let’s see what’s new, if anything for those pursuing the CCIE R&S certification. I will divide this post in three sections. I will dedicate one to the CCIE R&S Written test, one to CCIE R&S Lab and the last one to the few hints and updates about future of the CCIE. Written Exam - No blueprint changes. - No format updates. - Opinion: The best Cisco certification test I have ever seen! Let me tell you a short story of my CCIE recertification. As every year, I took the opportunity to recertify my CCIE at Cisco Live, since the exam is included with the full conference pass. A couple of days before taking, I expressed my concerns to Cisco’s CCIE Program Manager explaining how I feel – which was that I would be spending two hours of my life looking at misspelled questions, blurry diagrams and dealing with the overall pain that IT certification exams unfortunately are. Instead of a defensive response, he smiled and told me to take the exam and let him know I feel after taking the test – having added that HE took the quality as almost a personal goal. Knowing whom I’m dealing with there, I got instantly scared – wondering if I’d pass or not (I have great respect for that particular man – after all, you can’t be a nobody and run the CCIE R&S program!). I went to the test, started going through it and half-way through it hit me. This was probably the best ever Cisco certification test I have ever taken! All the diagrams were crystal clear and not only that – they had a consistent look and feel. Questions were tough and challenging. After the exam, I took of to look for the said Program Manager and the only thing I could bring myself to say was “Well done!” I was positively surprised! Lab Exam - No blueprint changes. - No format updates. - Opinion: This blueprint is here to stay for at least a year. It’s really difficult to write an essay about something that has not changed since the last time I wrote about it. The best thing I can do is to link to my previous year report from CCIE R&S Techtorial at Cisco Live. Here is the link to that article: Cisco Live 2011 News and Updates: CCIE Routing and Switching. Everything said in the linked article pretty much remains the same, but let me also add a few things that were emphasized this time around. The presenters emphasized heavily the quality assurance part of the exam process and explained the several steps in the lifecycle of the exam and associated blueprint. The goal is to create a high quality lab exam that is able to certify a minimally qualified candidate for the job role of a routing and switching network engineer. It’s interesting that there is even a separate multi-step process that deals with defining that job description and mapping technologies to it. It’s much less ad-hoc than most people think and contrary to popular belief, exams are not written by Proctors themselves. Another heavy emphasis was on the importance of the task dependencies in the configuration section of the test. While we are all aware of this importance, I have to stress out that some of the dependencies students encounter when being tested are not exactly obvious. In the presentation an extreme (for the lack of better word) example was used that got us all up in arms, but after some reflection, I believe they are absolutely right in using it as an illustration outlining unexpected behavior that could result in a loss of points. As an instructor, I also have to emphasize the importance of dependencies in the configuration section, obvious and not-so-obvious ones. This is, in my humble opinion, something that causes most people not to pass the test. Rumor Mill Let me clarify and reiterate the subtitle here: Everything you read below thins point may or may not happen. These are only bits and pieces hinted at the Cisco Live in public presentations, conversations I had in the Certifications Lounge between various engineers and Program Managers, and my direct interactions with Mr. John Chambers (Cisco CEO), whom I had the pleasure to briefly meet, as well as Ms. Jeanne Dunn (Vice President of Learning at Cisco), who was kind enough to provide me with some nice answers to my questions. None of these are confirmed news or plans. As I mentioned in the previous paragraph, I had the unique pleasure to meet with Mr. John Chambers during Cisco Live NetVet CCIE/CCDE reception and ask couple of questions. Since he is a very busy man, I had to carefully consider what I thought was of importance and one thing was extremely obvious to me. I really wanted to know when and if we can expect to have an officially sanctioned IOS emulator from Cisco. We all know it exists (IOU), but Cisco is not selling it to us. I was surprised to hear that not only are they committed to it, they even have an internally set date for the release of the product that will be an update to the existing Learning Labs. The updated product will allow customers to model their own virtual topologies and test their functionality. I have a feeling that this will be an amazing replacement for an aging unofficial emulator, GNS3 that served us faithfully for years. No information about pricing was given. I was referred to another Cisco eExecutive for further follow-up on this subject, which I will do soon and if the news are so interesting and exciting as I hope they are, I will update you! Lastly, I want to talk about the new CCIE R&S version 5 blueprint… Yes, it’s coming, but not for a year at least. There are not even internal dates set, but work processes have started and this time next year, I will most likely be writing about the changes in the exam. What they will be is also not quite clear at this point and I can only speculate, which I will refrain from doing. Those of you who are planning on becoming CCIEs this year have no concerns about what happens after that! Oh – Also – thank you to all who walked over to me to introduce yourself and of course to those of you whom I already knew. Those who had CCIE ribbons – you know how proud I am of you! Happy studies! – Marko Milivojevic – CCIE #18427 Senior CCIE Instructor – IPexpert Join our Online Study List Print Friendly Things you can do from here: - Subscribe to CCIE Blog using Google Reader - Get started using Google Reader to easily keep up with all your favorite sites _______________________________________________ For more information regarding industry leading CCIE Lab training, please visit www.ipexpert.com Are you a CCNP or CCIE and looking for a job? Check out www.PlatinumPlacement.com http://onlinestudylist.com/mailman/listinfo/ccie_rs
