Hey Guys,

Passed CCIE Data Center:

“It  always seems impossible until it’s done”  – Nelson Mandela

Just wanted to update you trough this post that my journey in achieving the CCIE Certificate just came to an end today.

When Cisco announced the CCIE Data Center track in March 2012 I immediately knew that this was going to be one of my goals.
After studying for 13 Months putting a lot of time and effort into this it finally payed of 🙂

Study Resources:

To give some of you pointers of what very good resources are to use:

• INE – CCIE Data Center video course
• INE – CCIE Data Center Technology Lab Online Workbook (came out recently)
• IPexpert – CCIE Data Center Lab Preparation Workbook
• Cisco Press Books – CCIE Data Center Reading List
• Cisco Nexus 7000 Series Switches Configuration Guides
• Cisco Nexus 5000 Series Switches Configuration Guides
• Cisco Nexus 1000V Series Switches Configuration Guides
• Cisco UCS Manager Configuration Guides
• Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers Configuration Guides
• Cisco UCS B-Series Blade Servers Configuration Guides
• Cisco MDS 9000 Family NX-OS Interfaces Configuration Guide
• Cisco Nexus 2000 Series Fabric Extender Software Configuration Guide
• Google 😉

As this list above is just a guideline, there may me other resources out there that you may find better, and that are actually better.

Study method

People in the field will ask me, how I started, what my approach was, etc. etc.

The answer to that is very simple…

1. I downloaded the blueprints – CCIE Data Center Written & CCIE Data Center Lab
2. I copy/pasted each topic into an excel document (to create a list)
3. I searched for resources (online/books/whitepapers/etc.) where I could find information on that certain topics (and keep track of that in that excel document)
4. I reserved a specific time for each topic (some topics take longer to understand then others)
5. Then I started with the study topic-by-topic, technology-by-technology, check what technologies are interoperable and studied those as well
6. When I knew how the technology worked, I started with making my hands dirty and practiced this on real equipment and practiced and practiced and practiced…

Lab experience

• left home on Sunday the 22nd of April around 12:00 PM to drive to Brussels
• arrived around 14:00 and wondered around
• had dinner at 19:00 at Punjab Tandoori Cuisine 🙂
• arrived 21:00 at the hotel (Crown Plaza)
• did some reading there and went to bed 23:30
• woke up 01:00 and was disappointed it was not morning yet
• went back to sleep again
• woke up again 06:00 and was happy (very happy) it was morning (and when I looked downwards I noticed something else was happy as well)
• showered, had breakfast,
• arrived 07:45 at Cisco – Pegasus 2 buiding
• proctor picked the group of examinees 08:10
• started 08:25 with the exam
• finished 16:55 with the exam

Started my lab …

I personally felt that the exam was difficult, very difficult, it really took a lot of effort and I gave everything that I had to finish it.
When I left the exam I was not happy because I experienced some issues that I was not able to solve.
It took me so much effort that it felt that my head was going to explode when I the time was over. I really gave everything that I had in me.

Back home I wanted to do nothing else then just watch TV with my wife.

The above is based on my personal opinion so other may think it was easy 🙂 but I think otherwise.

Finding out I passed…

Thank you

• my Wife – Shareen

• my colleague – Mio
• my colleague – Francesco
• my colleague – Nadir
• my colleague – Joost
• study pal – Roie

Thank you very much for helping me out, explaining me things that where not clear…

Hope you guys will pass soon as well (except for my wife of course :P)