Sunday, October 16, 2011

Busy month up ahead !!

Got a busy month ahead !! lots to do in very little time !! Building a data-center from scratch .. just the thing I wanted to do for a long time !! Excited but just a little bit worried given the fact that I have not worked on non cisco equipment !! Well here is the time to learn em all .. Not sure how much time I will have to some R&D. Its all about focus and time to bring in all the experience.

Talking about the data-center I am really looking forward to see some implementation using Juniper Q-Fabric devices. I know how the cisco nexus works, but am really curious to see how an identical data-center can be built using both cisco and juniper devices.
With Dell acquisition of Force10 Systems the market will shift again in a year and it will be time to compare all the three.

Well as of now ... time to stop talking and get things rolling !!

Sunday, August 7, 2011

Moving on .....

Its been a month .. I have enjoyed a month of my success .. Now its time to move on !!
I think i can still do a little bit of studying !!

CCIE DC and CCDE are on my radar !! I am not having any time frame at the moment bu do want to get started immediately !! I am not going to few hours weekly unlike my RnS studies.

8th august will be a good day to start my pursuit !! I am making a promise to myself to blog every time I learn !!

I really want to learn mpls in depth !! Also am really interested to see the q fabric of juniper and cisco's response to the same !!

Well all said I am gonna head down the study path once more from tomorrow !!

Tuesday, July 12, 2011

There is no one way !



Off late people have been asking the question, what was your approach to prepare for the lab.I tell them what i did .. then they ask do you think i should follow the same?
Well I tell them there is no one way to approach the lab. Do what you think suits you!

No matter how you prepare, ensure you know your stuff ! Don't rush through your preparation. Use real hardware ! Track your progress and ensure you don't have any grey area. Ask yourself questions about your preparation and answer them truthfully.

NEVER BE LAZY ! Don't feel lazy to go through some stuff your are already aware of. You never know you might learn something new. Join some study list. Ask questions, try answering the ones posted. You can be passive at least read though the questions posted and their answers. Have a open mind !

Practice Practice and more practice with lots of reading will take you there.

Monday, June 27, 2011

Helooo CCIE !!

Finally after a long struggle I am now a CCIe in R&S :)

I want to take this opportunity to thank all of the people who have directly or indirectly helped me along the way.

Its been quite a journey to get here. Countless hours of labbing and studying, multiple sleepless nights, no personal life, many a sacrifice from myself and from my family and a significant investment of money to get here. All I can now say is it was worth it !!

So here is my story !!

Attempt 1:

It was the v3 of the lab. Had scheduled it it 2009 october. For all I know I thought I was ready, I thought I knew it all. Well I thought wrong !!

Had my story posted here: http://ccie-dash.blogspot.com/2009/10/not-my-number-yet.html

Attempt 2:

I took a month break and after a lot of review I bought NMC volume 2 labs. Man this was the game changer for me. The way the labs were laid out were simply superb. I really liked the way the tasks were laid out. Even better was the way the solution to the tasks were given. I learnt a lot and many of the grey areas i had were answered. I loved the troubleshooting tasks. After 8 months of labbing and studying I went to take up my lab.

This was my first go at the v4 of the exam. The first two hours troubleshooting went well. I thought I had the lab nailed but was startled to see the score report. First i was confused I thought I had done well. But eventually i knew where I had gone wrong. QOS was a weak area for me and I had to improve. My spirits were still high because I knew I was very close to being a CCIE.

Had my story posted here: http://ccie-dash.blogspot.com/2010/10/2nd-time-unlucky.html


Attempt 3:

I was on a high and I wanted my CCIE very badly. I booked my lab again for the 3rd attempt. I really practiced hard in my weak areas. Once done I thought I was ready. I got bummed in troubleshooting. Configuration went well. Failed the troubleshooting and passed my configuration. There went another 1400$ :(

This was a turning point in my journey. I decided to go slow and not be overconfident. I took 2 months off enjoyed Christmas and waited for 2011.
January through March all i did was practice and learn technology. I dint leave out one bit of the DOC-CD. I ensured I went though all the sections at least once. I did a lot of reading. I did not race against time this time. I made configurations, broke them, understood all possible errors message meant and where to look for config issues. I revamped my strategy for troubleshooting. For any given scenario I had created a min of 4 to 5 show commands. April to June I worked out all my practice lab irrespective of how comfortable I was with a particular lab or technology. I did a lot of DOC-CD reading. Went through a lot of mails in group-study. I reviewed my labs inside out.

I cut down on blogging, cut down on my social life, no video-games. I made a prison for myself. would go to work, come back and hit the racks. Nothing else. My only focus was the lab.

Attempt 4:

I had my weakness covered. But now I was little scared and my confidence was a little low.

On the day of exam was feeling fresh. When I reached cisco office I was the 3rd person to join the group. It was the first time that there was no RnS other than me. The proctor came in and took us in. We went through the regular briefing session. We entered the terminal room and sat in our seats awaiting our login. I was sweating profusely and my hands were shivering. I failed to login to the system twice. I took a deep breath sat calmly for two mins and logged in again.

Troubleshooting:

I had made up mind to not spend more than 8mins per ticket. I opened the troubleshooting and I spent 10 mins for the first ticket. I told my self I need to be a little more faster. I did well and exceeded my expectations. I started to troubleshoot and resolve issues. I was smokin fast on the issue and it felt good. I still had 3 tickets to solve. The one i was trying to resolve dint give me any leads so i skipped it. went to the other tickets and solved them all. I just had the one i was stuck with and I have 35 mins on the clock. After 20 mins i had my ticket resolved Hee Haw !! So there I was 15mins to go. so i decided to review my tickets I had realized i had overlooked one ticket, tried to fix the issue and unfortunately I was not able to finish that in the remaining time I had. The window just closed out. But by now I was feeling good and confident that this had gone well. Although one of the ticket was wrong I felt good about the other and thought it was enough to get me through.

Configuration:

I went washed my face, got myself some tea. My anxiety had died down and I was feeling confident. I went through the lab scenario for 30 mins in which I Made notes, drew diagrams. Then I started configuring. L2 went well I verified all the section to ensure I dint miss out on any. I zipped though L3 verified my pings at which the proctor called it lunch-in-10mins. I saved my configs rebooted every device and verified my pings again. I was feeling good :)

Had a good lunch. Everyone were silent. Relaxed for 10 mins. After which we had re-grouped. We went in and took our seats. Just to be sure I re verified my pings. 4 hours to go now. I started with BGP and went through other sections non stop for one hour. I wanted a break. saved-reboot-verified-pings. got some tea for myself. Then i resumed with the rest of the config which went well. I was weary of one section, which i skipped hoping that it wont hurt me much.

I had completed my lab and still had 90 mins to go. I verified the entire lab starting from the beginning till the end. saved-reboot-verified-pings. At this point i was feeling good but still had butterflies in my stomach. I thought I dint have anything more to do. I saved my config one last time. Thanked the proctor returned the items issued, took m bad and walked out with still 20mins on the clock :)

I caught up with my friends in the evening, had dinner and started home by 2130. I enjoyed the evening and I still dint have any result by then. Traveled through the night.

0530 in the checked my mail there it was score-result. What was it going to be ?? I logged in to find out that I had Passed !!!

I am finally a CCIE :)

Wednesday, May 25, 2011

Life has been crazy !

The last two month have been really tasking !
I managed to finish 8 NMC labs. Get a change of scope on my project without changing the organization for which i work for(will post about it when it happens) !
Went for therapy i was suffering from !
Been doing a lot of studying ! Labbing mini labs !
Gained a lot of weight :(

Well back to blogging now ! The summer has got me on the move !

Wednesday, March 2, 2011

Multicasting & Security Done !

I missed to to blog for a while now .. been a bit busy ;)

My core focus on the multicasting and security topics went well. The ZBFW in the security section is one are am not 100% comfortable with. Plaaning to read a lil bit more before i lab it.

Multicasting topics have become very clear for me. I prepped it with the troubleshooting in mind and am confident in those topics now.

The INE workbook is what i used for preparation and its very comprehensive.(@lease for the exam)

Hopefully i perform well in the core labs as we progress.

Sunday, February 20, 2011

BGP Third party next hop

One of my buddies got confused with this concept when we had this configured ! So I thought i will blog !!

Assume 3 router R1, R2, R3 are in the common subnet. R1 is in AS1001 R2 in AS2002 and R3 in AS3003. R1 peers only with R2 and R3 only peers with R2. So any routes advertised by R1 or R3 will be learnt via R2 in AS2002. But R2 will set the next hop to the router advertising the prefix(because they are in the common subnet).

Lets check R2 bgp table

R2#sh ip bgp
BGP table version is 4, local router ID is 2.2.2.2
Status codes: s suppressed, d damped, h history, * valid, > best, i - internal,
r RIB-failure, S Stale
Origin codes: i - IGP, e - EGP, ? - incomplete

Network Next Hop Metric LocPrf Weight Path
*> 1.1.1.0/24 192.168.0.1 0 0 1001 i
*> 2.2.2.0/24 0.0.0.0 0 32768 i
*> 3.3.3.0/24 192.168.0.3 0 0 3003 i
R2#


1.1.1.0/24 is advertised by R1 and 3.3.3.0/24 bu R3.

Lets check the bgp tables of R1 and R3 now;

R1#sh ip bgp
BGP table version is 4, local router ID is 1.1.1.1
Status codes: s suppressed, d damped, h history, * valid, > best, i - internal,
r RIB-failure, S Stale
Origin codes: i - IGP, e - EGP, ? - incomplete

Network Next Hop Metric LocPrf Weight Path
*> 1.1.1.0/24 0.0.0.0 0 32768 i
*> 2.2.2.0/24 192.168.0.2 0 0 2002 i
*> 3.3.3.0/24 192.168.0.3 0 2002 3003 i


We see 3.3.3.0/24 next hop hbeing directly pointed to R3 instead R2.

R3#sh ip bgp
BGP table version is 4, local router ID is 3.3.3.3
Status codes: s suppressed, d damped, h history, * valid, > best, i - internal,
r RIB-failure, S Stale
Origin codes: i - IGP, e - EGP, ? - incomplete

Network Next Hop Metric LocPrf Weight Path
*> 1.1.1.0/24 192.168.0.1 0 2002 1001 i
*> 2.2.2.0/24 192.168.0.2 0 0 2002 i
*> 3.3.3.0/24 0.0.0.0 0 32768 i


We see 1.1.1.0/24 next hop hbeing directly pointed to R1 instead R2.
To override this we need to issue neighbor next-hop-self command.
You can refer to this RFC for more information

Sunday, February 13, 2011

Done playing around with MPLS-VPN

Troubleshooting was the focus of my preparation. I wanted to build the network from scratch and troubleshoot it as I went along. I dint know how to put the faults in place and see what happened. SO I decided to build a network and keep varying routing protocols for the same topology !! I must say I am very satisfied with what I had to do :-)

The topologies i used were pretty simple and they looked something like this;




Right from static routes to rip, ospf, eigrp & bgp were configured. I kept the Provide protocl the standard and moved the customer protocol around and again did the other wayt around.

It was very interesting right before my eyes I made some mistake and hit some config errors. Its was nice to get me up to speed. Well I can tell one thing for sure .. I am ready for the lab as far as this topic goes :-)

Although I dint dwell too much with the mpls vpns I think i know enough to deal with stuff that the lab might throw at me.

All said and done there is one topic that i still haven't understood well. Its the SOO(site of origin ) attribute to prevent loops. I did configure it but still I don't get how it works.

If you have the same value configured on both PE the mpls backbone is not used and only the backdoor is used. But when we have different values configured I still hit the same problem. Not sure if I configured it wrong.

Well now mpls is under my belt, other two topic that i will complete over the week include qos and security. Once I am done with that the fun with full scale labs can start again.

Tuesday, February 8, 2011

changing cciedash ...

This is my blog and pretty much I call it my diary..I was planning to do a overhaul to the blog and or create a website to start fresh and then changed my mind to keep it.

However I have planned to make it more useful for me and readers alike !! I was going through multiple blogs and planned to include their links in mine. One that caught my eye was that of jennifer huber who is pursuing ccie wireless and one of the first woman(AFAIK) who is blogging.

Apart from that almost all of the other sites listed in network words top15 list are already listed here.

I will be starting to work on the nexus platforms, so personally i have got a lot of studying and learning to do !! Its becoming increasingly difficult to manage time and sometimes 24hours is just not enough !!

Back to the routers now ..

Saturday, February 5, 2011

2010 -- A year to forget

Suddenly i feel like i have come out of a coma .... when i turn back and see what happened in 2010 ... well nothing much .. everything left hanging halfway... Failed my ccie yet again... deteriorated health wise ... clearly a year to forget.

2011 is here and things are looking much better !! I am able to think much better ... visualize where and what i want to do in the year ahead ...

I will be moving into a better project so work wise also things will be better and most importantly i will be working better to get my ccie number :-)

First off I am revisiting and playing around with mpls at a larger level so that i can do my troubleshooting faster.

I went through the mpls fundamentals to refresh my concepts, took a paper and drew some topologies that i believe will help me learn, understand and troubleshoot mpls better.

Top 7 popular posts on cciedash !