I just wanted to say thanks to everyone for your comments. I'll tell you what, when I undertook this journey 9 months ago I was under the impression that the SP lab wouldn't be a big deal. After 2 attempts I'd say that this is much harder than the R&S lab.
To answer some of the prep questions, after doing all of the INE labs and many of the IPX labs, I'd say both are great resources but neither are enough to pass the lab. I can't really get into why too much, but in general I'd say about 30 points on the my last attempt were either based on, or required by, items that weren't coverd by any of the labs I've completed thus far.
Also, while I haven't talked about it much, I have reviewed some of the SP mini scenarios as well. They do a great job covering some of the topics that aren't covered in the other labs.
For any of the vendors out there who might be reading, there's something that I would really LOVE to see in a product. Put together 10 labs based on the same core. Have the same BGP, IS-IS, and OSPF domains and areas preconfigured. Load the configs and start from there. Maybe even make lab 1 building the core. Then make lab 2 an option 1 inter-as vpn, lab 3 an option 2, and lab 4 and option 5. On the lab 5 labs throw in different complexities such as internet access and CSC, on top of the cores. Just my thoughts...
Saturday, June 27, 2009
Bottom Line
I'd say the score was pretty representative on how I feel about the blueprint right now. I'm really comfortable with the core and basic vpn topics and have an "I know I can make just about anything work" attitude.
But when it comes to advanced vpn topics, the configuration is more like a house of cards to me. I can play with it and eventually make it work, but then I'm kind of afraid to touch it and make it all fall down. I need to have the same level of confidence with advanced vpn topics as I do with the rest of the lab.
So I've decided to go back and do some reading. I'm still torn on scheduling an exam in August. Two months out would give me a month for reading and another month for labbing. I might as well go ahead and schedule it.
But when it comes to advanced vpn topics, the configuration is more like a house of cards to me. I can play with it and eventually make it work, but then I'm kind of afraid to touch it and make it all fall down. I need to have the same level of confidence with advanced vpn topics as I do with the rest of the lab.
So I've decided to go back and do some reading. I'm still torn on scheduling an exam in August. Two months out would give me a month for reading and another month for labbing. I might as well go ahead and schedule it.
Friday, June 26, 2009
More studying to do
My score definitely improved, but I still have a little bit to go. I ended up around 70%, with quite a few perfect sections. Unfortunately, the couple of tasks I couldn't do put a possible pass out of reach.
I'm not too discouraged. This isn't a back to the drawing board score. There are just a couple of things I need to get better at.
There aren't any more exams available until August. I'm going to sleep on it to decide if I want to take try #3 then, or hold of a bit.
I'm not too discouraged. This isn't a back to the drawing board score. There are just a couple of things I need to get better at.
There aren't any more exams available until August. I'm going to sleep on it to decide if I want to take try #3 then, or hold of a bit.
Waiting Game
Well, I gave it my best shot. Things really started out great. I got stuck in the beginning for about 10 minutes on a trivial task, which seems to happen a lot as I'm getting rid of my morning jitters. After that, I was flying through the exam. By lunch I counted up 67 points and figured I'd have this thing nailed.
Unfortunately after lunch things got a lot tougher. Some things I didn't really know how to do, and others just didn't want to seem to work. And as they love to do, those two tasks that I was stuck on had another 9 points depending on them. So I had little choice but to work around it. I did consider a workaround, but it would have been tough. When I already have 67 points in the lab, I'm so hesitant to add duct tape and risk losing points elsewhere.
So by time I made my first pass, I counted 87 points and had an hour left. I was feeling pretty good because I think a rule of thumb is to expect to lose 6 of your "sure thing" points. But then I went through verification and one of my 3 point tasks was broken. I only had 30 minutes so I crossed my fingers and did a few reboots. Fortunately everything came back up. Unfortunately, my 3 points didn't come back.
I was left with 84 points, that I felt pretty good about. Not a lot of room to spare.
So at this point I'm figured I didn't pass. If I did it'll be a pleasant surprise, but I'm planning for the worst.
The shame is if I could have got that one task to work, I would have easily collected another 5 points after and would most likely be celebrating tonight.
Stay tuned for the results...
Unfortunately after lunch things got a lot tougher. Some things I didn't really know how to do, and others just didn't want to seem to work. And as they love to do, those two tasks that I was stuck on had another 9 points depending on them. So I had little choice but to work around it. I did consider a workaround, but it would have been tough. When I already have 67 points in the lab, I'm so hesitant to add duct tape and risk losing points elsewhere.
So by time I made my first pass, I counted 87 points and had an hour left. I was feeling pretty good because I think a rule of thumb is to expect to lose 6 of your "sure thing" points. But then I went through verification and one of my 3 point tasks was broken. I only had 30 minutes so I crossed my fingers and did a few reboots. Fortunately everything came back up. Unfortunately, my 3 points didn't come back.
I was left with 84 points, that I felt pretty good about. Not a lot of room to spare.
So at this point I'm figured I didn't pass. If I did it'll be a pleasant surprise, but I'm planning for the worst.
The shame is if I could have got that one task to work, I would have easily collected another 5 points after and would most likely be celebrating tonight.
Stay tuned for the results...
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Squeezing in a little more
I went ahead and did IPX Vol 1 labs on l2vpn and multi-as vpn. I took my time with them and played around with some different configs as well.
I definitely learned some new things so I'm glad I did this.
Incidently, the SP grading takes a lot longer than the R&S grading did. Last time I knew I didn't have a chance, so the extra wait wasn't bad. If I think I'm close, the suspense is gonna drive me crazy.
I definitely learned some new things so I'm glad I did this.
- To do a frame-relay xconnect, the first the "connect" command must be used from global configuration mode. This specified the dlci and underneath it the xconnect is created
- When using multi-as vpn option 3, a three-deep label stack is created. In order: 1) ldp label 2) bgp label and 3) vpn label. The ldp label is used to forward the packet to the AS border router, the bgp label gets the packet to the downstream PE, and the vpn label associates the packet with the proper vpn. I never caught on to the fact that an additional label is used for the bgp label.
- Along with sh ip bgp label, sh ip bgp vpnv4 all label shows the vpn labels.
Incidently, the SP grading takes a lot longer than the R&S grading did. Last time I knew I didn't have a chance, so the extra wait wasn't bad. If I think I'm close, the suspense is gonna drive me crazy.
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Final Preparations
Ok, I think I'm done labbing. I don't want to burn myself out by Friday.
First I'd like to critique my approach last time. I made two major mistakes. First, I didn't redraw the lab diagram. Second, I didn't draw a vpn diagram. I fully believe the failure to do this contributed to my failure. I typically draw an IGP/multicast diagram and a VPN/BGP diagram. Not sure why I didn't do this on the real thing.
Here's what worried me before the last lab:
1. PPPoE: I was struggling before and I usually get it to come right up now. DHCP, local pools, and encryption are non-issues.
2. L2VPN: I setup a few xconnects. Still not much to it so hopefully this won't be a problem.
3. IS-IS knobs: IP Expert covered these really well and I feel a lot better about them now.
4. Advanced BGP features: No change here, but they're still covered well in the doccd
5. MPLS knobs: These are covered well on IPexpert
6. Multicast: MSDP is going much better now, but really convoluted setups can still throw me off.
7. QoS: I think I understand qos-groups better now
8. Security: No change
9. System Management and IP Services: No change
10. VPN: I feel MUCH better about VPN now. I thought I had it down before, but I was really pretty clueless with the inter-as stuff. I'm really comfortable with option 1 and 2, and 3 is going well now too.
Since my last attempt, here's what I accomplished:
INE: Repeat labs 1 and 2
IPX: Vol 3 labs 1-4 and Vol 2 labs 1-3.
All in all, I found the single best next step in preparing for the lab to be IPX Vol 2 lab 1. But I guess Friday will be the real judge for that.
First I'd like to critique my approach last time. I made two major mistakes. First, I didn't redraw the lab diagram. Second, I didn't draw a vpn diagram. I fully believe the failure to do this contributed to my failure. I typically draw an IGP/multicast diagram and a VPN/BGP diagram. Not sure why I didn't do this on the real thing.
Here's what worried me before the last lab:
1. PPPoE: I was struggling before and I usually get it to come right up now. DHCP, local pools, and encryption are non-issues.
2. L2VPN: I setup a few xconnects. Still not much to it so hopefully this won't be a problem.
3. IS-IS knobs: IP Expert covered these really well and I feel a lot better about them now.
4. Advanced BGP features: No change here, but they're still covered well in the doccd
5. MPLS knobs: These are covered well on IPexpert
6. Multicast: MSDP is going much better now, but really convoluted setups can still throw me off.
7. QoS: I think I understand qos-groups better now
8. Security: No change
9. System Management and IP Services: No change
10. VPN: I feel MUCH better about VPN now. I thought I had it down before, but I was really pretty clueless with the inter-as stuff. I'm really comfortable with option 1 and 2, and 3 is going well now too.
Since my last attempt, here's what I accomplished:
INE: Repeat labs 1 and 2
IPX: Vol 3 labs 1-4 and Vol 2 labs 1-3.
All in all, I found the single best next step in preparing for the lab to be IPX Vol 2 lab 1. But I guess Friday will be the real judge for that.
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
IPX Vol 2 Lab 3
Switching:
No issues
WAN:
I had to look up the syntax for one of the PPPoE tasks. I always seem to forget the pppoe-client command on the client end. I'll do "pppoe ?" and since I space through the hyphen I don't see it.
I also ran into an issue with getting the dhcp lease to take. I needed to use the "peer default ip address dhcp-pool" command and also need to stop transposing numbers in ip addresses!
Regardless, I got all this figured out without looking at the answers, so there's no deduction. I can't help it, I still get a smile on my face when PPPoE comes up.
IS-IS and OSPF:
I misunderstood a couple of the requirements, which I'm not taking off for because a proctor would have been able to clarify. I also didn't know the bandwidth for STM-4 off the top of my head, nor did I have any idea where this would be on the doccd. I'm not taking off for that either because that doesn't seem like a likely lab question.
-4 to disable mospf, the command is "ignore lsa mospf".
BGP:
Wow, what a pain this lab is! Nothing terribly difficult, just a lot of little things to keep you on top of your game. Overwritten communities, default configs that break stuff, requriements mentioned early on that you have to remember for later tasks, recursive routing, and interesting "features" making you do stuff the hard way.
-3 confused fast-external-fallover with graceful restart (AGAIN!!!)
MPLS:
-3 missed mpls ldp discovery targeted-hello accept from X
Multicast:
-8 Ok, this lab was fair until this step. Every time I think I'm getting more comfortable with MSDP and bgp ipv4 multicast, these labs throw a curve ball at me. And this was one serious curve ball. A total of 8 points wrapped up in a convoluted community passing, route-map next-hop adjusting, and filtering bgp ipv4 multicast domain for controlling mRPF checks. What a mess. I had it 90% of the way, but no partial credit is given. I would be SHOCKED to see something this messy on the lab...
VPN:
No issues. I went with option 2, but the solutions guide used option 3. Either way seemed to meet the requirements, but I typically have better luck with option 2.
Security, QoS, and IOS (Reviewing):
-3 I probably would have missed some of the flow-export knobs
Total score: 79/100. Of that, 8 points was due to a rediculous multicast requirement. Even if something was that bad on the lab, I'd expect it to be 3 points and not 8. Other than that, this lab mainly focused on IGP and BGP, with a lot of flexibility given on the VPN setup. It was LONG, but really not too bad. The troubleshooting due to bad initial configs was great practice as well.
No issues
WAN:
I had to look up the syntax for one of the PPPoE tasks. I always seem to forget the pppoe-client command on the client end. I'll do "pppoe ?" and since I space through the hyphen I don't see it.
I also ran into an issue with getting the dhcp lease to take. I needed to use the "peer default ip address dhcp-pool" command and also need to stop transposing numbers in ip addresses!
Regardless, I got all this figured out without looking at the answers, so there's no deduction. I can't help it, I still get a smile on my face when PPPoE comes up.
IS-IS and OSPF:
I misunderstood a couple of the requirements, which I'm not taking off for because a proctor would have been able to clarify. I also didn't know the bandwidth for STM-4 off the top of my head, nor did I have any idea where this would be on the doccd. I'm not taking off for that either because that doesn't seem like a likely lab question.
-4 to disable mospf, the command is "ignore lsa mospf".
BGP:
Wow, what a pain this lab is! Nothing terribly difficult, just a lot of little things to keep you on top of your game. Overwritten communities, default configs that break stuff, requriements mentioned early on that you have to remember for later tasks, recursive routing, and interesting "features" making you do stuff the hard way.
-3 confused fast-external-fallover with graceful restart (AGAIN!!!)
MPLS:
-3 missed mpls ldp discovery targeted-hello accept from X
Multicast:
-8 Ok, this lab was fair until this step. Every time I think I'm getting more comfortable with MSDP and bgp ipv4 multicast, these labs throw a curve ball at me. And this was one serious curve ball. A total of 8 points wrapped up in a convoluted community passing, route-map next-hop adjusting, and filtering bgp ipv4 multicast domain for controlling mRPF checks. What a mess. I had it 90% of the way, but no partial credit is given. I would be SHOCKED to see something this messy on the lab...
VPN:
No issues. I went with option 2, but the solutions guide used option 3. Either way seemed to meet the requirements, but I typically have better luck with option 2.
Security, QoS, and IOS (Reviewing):
-3 I probably would have missed some of the flow-export knobs
Total score: 79/100. Of that, 8 points was due to a rediculous multicast requirement. Even if something was that bad on the lab, I'd expect it to be 3 points and not 8. Other than that, this lab mainly focused on IGP and BGP, with a lot of flexibility given on the VPN setup. It was LONG, but really not too bad. The troubleshooting due to bad initial configs was great practice as well.
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