A year of being CCIE

I complete one year of being a CCIE.
After 3 failed attempts & countless hours of labbing & reading I finally became a CCIE.I have enjoyed the respect and the responsibilities I have been getting as a CCIE. It has taken me half way across the world to new land of opportunity. Not much of a spike in terms of cash inflow though :-)

I have been enjoying the luxuries of life & the things CCIE has given me !! But its time to boot up & move on. Take up more responsibility & not rest on my laurels. The aim is to move on get my CCIE Security followed by CCDE. This is the long term goal. This is where I see myself. I need to blog a lot. Need to come up with a plan to get rolling with my plan. I cant be intense in my study post this year because I need to spend time with my family. So I need to make this 6 months count.

I will blog more & more technical content, which is the way i can contribute to the network community. All said and done back to the Euro2012 game :-)

CCIE Security prep will just get expensive

Well if you are like me relying on online racks to prepare for the lab then you are not going to be too happy !! With the introduction of CCIE Security v4 exam there comes the need for addition & refresh of the equipments used.

It is still a question as to how many will cater to the new format with workbooks & scenarios. But when you look at the Rack Rental side, things will get pretty expensive with an hour worth of rack rental costing you as much as the current whole session itself !! Yes, procuring new equipment & software is expensive but with demand comes the need to price them competitively. I did reach out to my favorite rack rental company... was happy to know they will support the new format & equipment ..but was a lil worried when I got to know the pricing.

It will be interesting if some of the vendors can continue to provide the v3 only labs alongside the v4 labs. This way if you are practising scenarios that do not include the new equipment it will go light on your pocket.

This has got me to think .. what is the best way forward & how much i need to invest in this !!

Cisco Firewalls ... Here I Come

I will be offcially starting with my Firewall concepts of CCIE Security journey from 1st of June. As a first step, I got the Cisco Firewalls book by Moraes. I read lot of good reviews about this book & instantly decided to buy it. This book is very current & covers design & implementation of cisco fiewalls. The book seems to be well balanced with lot of descriptive scenarios. However, this book only covers the network protection aspects, it does not cover the VPN & other features that can be enable using the cisco firewalls.

My goal of progressing towards CCDE, CCIE Security & CISSP is in focus. After effectively wasting April & May ,I hope to make some productive inroads by spending 4 productive hours per day studying.

After 1 year of enjoyment, here we are again for CCIE DASH