All right! My 2611XM and AS2511RJ arrived during last week… From the harware point of view I’ve all that I’ve planned to get. I’ve uploaded some pics of it, but it still doesn’t have any cabling! So for the next couple of months this will be the rack that I will be using for my studies. Now I just need to gather all the necessary cables, I’ve plenty of RJ-45 straight cables, and I already bought the DCE-DTE cables. During this weekend I made the last rollover cables that I need but now I need to make almost 15 crossover cables! Let’s the fun begin!!
A very important matter for the CCIE preparation, as everyone knows is practice, practice, practice… Several options are possible, remote rack rental, dynamips, and of course building our own rack! Unfortunately and with version 4 of the lab blueprint, Cisco really increased the amount of money that needs to be spent on that! 
I’m not a real fan of remote rack because I would become a prisoner of a tight schedule, the availability of the racks, but the major problem with it, is the difference between the time zones where most racks are installed and Portugal’s time zone. With this option I wouldn’t be able to practice every time I could, and between job and family there isn’t no much free time to be spent on studying so it must be wisely used.
Dynamips is indeed a great tool, I’ve already tried on a Quad Core server with 16 Gb of RAM running Windows server 2003, and it really rocks! I was able to start all the devices with “start /all” command without any problem, and in about 3 minutes I had all the devices up and running… and always with great performances, really awesome! Of course the server was not mine, and right now it’s doing what it’s supposed to do… but it was really cool to see that kind of performance! 
Since I don’t have a machine where I’d be able to run efficiently, I’ll only used it in some particular cases, maybe to test some simple scenarios or some particular features like mpls, zone based firewall, etc.
I had already some devices in my rack, and although I’m don’t have the needed budget to build the appropriate home rack, considering that I’ve also recently purchased the CCIE 2.0 program from INE, I’ve decided to build my own rack! The idea is to spend the minimum to get the maximum! Which means won’t have any 1841, 3550, or 3560… Sounds awful, but I’m think it’s possible to build a decent home rack that at least, could allow me to prepare for the core knowledge of the blueprint!
IMHO, a preparation for an exam like the CCIE R&S without touching on real routers and switches does not make sense, does not sound good to me… Or maybe I just a geek and I’m getting some excuses to have my own rack!
Right now, my rack home is based on the following:
- 2x Cisco 2501
- 1x Cisco 2522
- 3x Catalyst 2924-XL
- 1x Catalyst 3524-XL-EN
- 2x Cisco 2610XM
Right now I’m waiting for a AS2511-RJ, and 4x Cisco 2611XM, and when they arrived I will upload some pictures from the complete cabled rack!
Of course, I will continue checking ebay looking for a good bargain, at least for 2x 3550 
Right now I’m on vacations but considering that my son has only 3 months, me and my wife decided to not go abroad this year, since it’s advisable to stay home during the most hot period of the day. So I’ve spend some time at home doing “nothing”. Considering that I have to pass 2 exams till the end of September, I’ve taken some time to study here and there…
The plan for September consists on:
- Pass SNAF till 09-03-2009;
- Pass SNRS till 09-30-2009.
This would allow me to start October’s fully concentrated on the CCIE studies, although that considering the blueprint of the SNRS exam, while I study for it I will get a good picture for some features that I will to master for the CCIE exam
One month later after spent all June abroad working in a project, I’m thinking that after all I love my routine, my country, my life! It’s strange that sometimes we only give the right value to those little things when we can’t have them. I have to stay that was not a easy time!!!
During this project I had an opportunity to stay working there for some time, minimum 1 year. The good side was the amount of money that I’d get paid if I’d accept the offer… but considering that this is not the best time for me and my family, I had to pass it… The primary reason behind my decision is that the country that we are talking about is not the best and safe place in the world to raise a child, and I also had to consider that my wife has a good job so I’d be a total selfish person if I decided to accept it! After a month I’m truly convinced that I’ve taken the right decision, and I’m feeling great for that! Which means that I’m back to my routine… family, friends, hobbies, places… and that’s feel great!!!
About CCIE… ouch! During this month I did not read a single line for the CCIE, since I was totally focus on my son and in some matters that needed to be solved.
Next month (August) I will take some time off, however I will need to pass in 2 cisco exams from a professional level due to job impositions. The good news is that after September I will be FINALY 100% focus in the CCIE studies!
With the beginning of this year I’ve decided to go for the CCIE R&S but with my new job role and my son that have just born on May 5th I’ve not been able to focus on CCIE preparation, even worst I’ve been studying nothing… but I think I was expecting that could happen with so many changes occurring in my life, I’m trying to normalize asap.
Well but in life we need to establish our priorities and I know mine pretty well… Although CCIE is not in the top of my priorities right now, that does not mean I’ve forgotten it, it’s still is a big personal “project” of mine
So, to prove that (to myself) and in order to put me in the right track, I’ve finally decided for a vendor to help me in my pursuit: INE!
They were giving a good discount during the long USA weekend (Memorial Day) so I’ve decided to purchased their CCIE 2.0 Self-Paced Program (Electronic) as also their CCIE Routing & Switching Written Exam Bootcamp!
Although I’m leaving for another month for a new project abroad I will try to watch both CoD’s while I’m there. In this kind of projects the workload is really hard so probably I won’t be able to do more than that!
Strange it that since this purchase I’m feeling a little anxious to start using the products since I’m still waiting for them to become available in my member account! Probably is the responsability of the amount of investment that I made…
Just a quick note about this matter… Since I didn’t have any experience with ACE from the real world, as first step I needed to read a lot the documentation. First I started my search at Cisco site, as I always do, particularly from the “new” DocCD. But the most useful link that I found out, a little unexpected to me, was at the Cisco DocWiki so in this list I put it in the first position since it was the link that in fact served me as guidance to successfully reach my objectives. Here is the links that I used for, and maybe this information can help someone out there not wasting to much time looking for good information about Cisco ACEs:
- http://docwiki.cisco.com/wiki/Category:Data_Center_Application_Services_Configuration_Examples
- http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps6906/tsd_products_support_model_home.html
- http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps7027/products_installation_and_configuration_guides_list.html
Even that this won’t be useful for anyone, for sure that will help me in the future
Awesome, I arrived about a week ago from another country where I was working in a very interesting project. The project was to implement a new data and voice network, where basically I was the engineer responsible for the data network part Of course we had to migrated the data center for this new network with minimal impact… The customer was a bank so you can imagine the responsibility of it… But luckily it went just fine so at the end I felt that the customer really enjoyed our work, which of course it’s great, is very good for my “ego”!!!!
As soon as I arrived my boss assigned me a new task: a little participation on a big project, basically I should implement the load balance solution based on the “new” Cisco ACE 4710 products. At the beginning it was kind of difficult to start it due to the lack of my experience with this product, as also nobody in my company has much experience with this product so I was kind of alone in this task. Anyway, the solution is now up and running and I’ve gained a few more points on this new game
Both these experiences were great and I’m feeling very luckily because for the last couple of months I’ve been learning a lot!
The bad part of this, is that I’ve not been able to study anything, so righ now I’m exactly where I was on pursuing the CCIE
A few days ago I was checking around my rss feeds and reading what others pursuing the same objective are doing when I faced this post. When I was reading that post, seemed to me a very good idea of having a portable ebook reader… Nice tip … If for some reason you hit this post, I want to thank you!
Since buying one of them, even on ebay was completely out of my possibilities, I started to think on a way to achieve something similar to it that could allow me some study time whenever I was stuck for some reason!?!
After some days, I started to think that most probably someone already thought on a solution for that using the PSP (PlayStation Portable), so my next step was to check with my best friend Google
After some time searching, browsing and testing I was able to find a good homebrew application to run on my (slim) PSP: bookr
It’s not perfect but it works just fine, so my best congratulations for the programmers!
That allows me to read my PDFs files any time any place, which is good because some times we just have to wait and opening the laptop is not an option, so that’s a perfect time to study a little with the help of new best friend, PSP!!! So basically me and my PSP became inseparables, wherever I’m going to, my “new” buddy goes with me
Brian McGahan from Internetwork Expert gives an excellent explanation about how to use the new Cisco Documentation!
Check out their free new Class-on-Demand for Understanding the Cisco Documentation, even if you are not preparing for the CCIE RS exam it’s a video that you should watch, if you regularly needs to search some kind of information about Cisco documentation!
Great, great resource!!!
I’m really too behind considering to where I’ve planned to be right now… I’m still reading the Odom’s book, Chapter 14 – “Shaping and Policing “, but the worst is that since the third day in my new job role that I’ve not read a single page
I’ve the feeling that I’m having the big chance in my life, and I’m always thinking about the projects I’m working on, and even during the nights I can’t stop thinking about them… I don’t want to deliver a good project, I need to be superb!
The bad thing is my lack of concentration for studies, I’m really really at a low level of motivating for studies so I’m still stuck in the same page (476) for about a week!
Frankly I think I need to stabilize because too many changes are occurring in my life and in my daily routine, and I’m feeling kind of anxious about all of them, and I’m starting to feeling that can have a bad effect in the results that I want to achieve on those projects… First I thought that maybe could be the pressure, but It can’t be because I’m used to have pressure for a long time, considering that I had being in support for quit some time, so I do know what’s having a customer with a service down or even a network down, and calling us and putting pressure on us to solve their problem… nahh it’s not that… in the other side it’s possible to be kind of a pressure that I’m inflecting in myself or something like that…
Well, I think it’s better to relax a while and try to forget all of this for a while… I’m going to watch some TV and try have a good night of sleep, seems to me a good plan! Tomorrow it will be another day, and maybe I just need to adapt to my new routine!?!?!
BTW, about the status of my productivity chain… too bad to be truth, better not to touch on that matter
