CCIE Blog

By now most studying for the new blueprint of Voice and Security CCIE, have checked their IPexpert.com Members Area and found the most recent installment of the new Volume 1 materials. Remember to check both the Members My eBook Section for your Workbooks and Proctor Guides, and also the Members My Configs Section for your text based configuration files and diagrams.

I want to take a brief moment and describe to you the new format of both of these Tracks’ Workbooks. In fact it will be a very brief moment since little description is necessary, and common sense kicks in that this, of course, is the most logical way to do it. We re-arranged our chapters quite a bit from the old format. Basically it boils down to the fact that we now have one chapter (called labs of course) for every section that Cisco has in that track’s blueprint. So since the Security 3.0 Blueprint has 8 sections to it – so does our Security Volume 1 Workbook. Since the Voice 3.0 Blueprint has 13 sections to it – so does our Voice Volume 1 Workbook. This accomplishes a number of things. One is that you know that everything in the blueprint is covered in our workbook, merely by taking a look at the table of contents structure. Two it gives CCIE candidates a great way to go back and quickly identify, then proceed to study in remediation, any specific section that you may have, God forbid, actually gotten less than say around 80% when you sat the actual Lab Exam last. The third, and I personally think maybe the most important, is it gives us the ability to break each section out, not just by configuration techniques for every technology listed, but also by troubleshooting techniques for every technology. You see, if you happened to be fortunate enough to go to Cisco Live: Networkers last year in Orlando, then surely you heard some of the various Proctors and Content Managers talking quite a bit about troubleshooting and that while it had only been a small part of the lab previous to that time, how moving forward with the advent of the new blueprints it would become a much heavier focused on and tested topic. This makes good sense seeing that we have all heard of a few (not many, but a few) candidates out there who managed to learn the commands to configure everything and pass the lab, but didn’t have a thorough enough understanding of the technology to apply it in the real world. It also helps to cut down on the possibility of the previously mentioned candidates succeeding if they had been in fact cheating by possibly memorizing any of the actual test questions. In this fashion (as in the real world) the candidate has to really know well the technology to be able to not only configure it, but also troubleshoot problems that could have been introduced by the Proctor before the candidate sat down to take the actual lab exam (Bear in mind that I am not at all suggesting that the proctors might be causing problems during your lab exam, only that there will be existing erroneous configurations introduced before you sit down to the exam, and that you would most likely be given some general technology to expect to see them appear in). So that being said – both tracks of our new workbooks have every Lab section broken down into two sub-sections, A and B to reflect configuration and troubleshooting respectively.

So the Table of Contents for Voice looks like this:

• Section 1A: Implement Campus Infrastructure and Services
• Section 1B: Troubleshoot Campus Infrastructure and Services
• Section 2A: Implement CUCM Endpoints (SIP and SCCP)
• Section 2B: Troubleshoot CUCM Endpoints (SIP and SCCP)
• Section 3A: Implement CUCME Endpoints (SIP and SCCP)
• Section 3B: Troubleshoot CUCME Endpoints (SIP and SCCP)
• Section 4A: Implement Voice Gateways
• Section 4B: Troubleshoot Voice Gateways
• Section 5A: Implement Call Routing Policies
• Section 5B: Troubleshoot Call Routing Policies
• Section 6A: Implement High Availability Features
• Section 6B: Troubleshoot High Availability Features
• Section 7A: Implement Media Resources
• Section 7B: Troubleshoot Media Resources
• Section 8A: Implement Supplementary Services
• Section 8B: Troubleshoot Supplementary Services
• Section 9A: Implement Other CUCM Voice Applications
• Section 9B: Troubleshoot Other CUCM Voice Applications
• Section 10A: Implement QoS and CAC
• Section 10B: Troubleshoot QoS and CAC
• Section 11A: Implement Messaging
• Section 11B: Troubleshoot Messaging
• Section 12A: Implement Cisco Unified Contact Center Express
• Section 12B: Troubleshoot Cisco Unified Contact Center Express
• Section 13A: Implement Cisco Unified Presence
• Section 13B: Troubleshoot Cisco Unified Presence

And the Table of Contents for Security looks like this:

• Lab 1A: Implement secure networks using Cisco ASA Firewalls
• Lab 1B: Troubleshoot secure networks using Cisco ASA Firewalls
• Lab 2A: Implement secure networks using Cisco IOS Firewalls
• Lab 2B: Troubleshoot secure networks using Cisco IOS Firewalls
• Lab 3A: Implement secure networks using Cisco VPN solutions
• Lab 3B: Troubleshoot secure networks using Cisco VPN solutions
• Lab 4A: Configure Cisco IPS to mitigate network threats
• Lab 4B: Troubleshoot Cisco IPS to mitigate network threats
• Lab 5A: Implement Identity Management
• Lab 5B: Troubleshoot Identity Management
• Lab 6A: Implement Control Plane and Management Plane Security
• Lab 6B: Troubleshoot Control Plane and Management Plane Security
• Lab 7A: Configure Advanced Security
• Lab 7B: Troubleshoot Advanced Security
• Lab 8A: Identify and Mitigate Network Attacks
• Lab 8B: Troubleshoot Network Attacks

So now that we have talked about the workbook materials, lets move to talking about the latest changes we made to ProctorLabs vRacks for both Security and Voice new v3 blueprint. Most of the new features we have already covered in previous posts, but I will briefly recap:

• The ability to with a single button, load up all of the initial configs necessary for any given workbook volume and lab, without having to open any text files, copy or paste anything in a router or switch. Oh – did I mention that this covers ALL of your servers as well? So for Security – the ACS server DB will be restored, and for Voice – the CUCM-Pub, CUCM-Sub, CUPS, and UC DB will be restored to where we the developers wish them to be for any given tech-focused or even multi-protocol lab. This will help you a great deal with pre-existing troubleshooting configs. In fact I don’t know how we could do without it now that troubleshooting is such a big part of the exam.
• The ability to go ahead and work on your rack devices and later go back and check your DB restoration status.
• The ability to clear any terminal server line or clear all lines
• The ability to revert your entire pod back to a blank default status (great for those of you who might wish to rent back-to-back sessions for a power study weekend – but need to revert everything and load new configs for a new lab without calling tech-support.
• For Voice: The ability to input your own MAC address for your own PSTN phone (be it software or hardware – no difference).
• The ability to Start, Stop, Revert your VMWare Guest servers back to a snapshot (if you only want to clear the config on one server perhaps).
• For Voice: New clients for a total of 3 supported software clients for your SCCP and SIP devices connecting to CUCM and CUCME.
• For Voice: The ability dynamically change your PSTN simulator (router) for E1-R2 or E1-PRI
• For Voice: The ability dynamically change your PSTN’s dialplan so that before your lab, you have studied with a varied view of dialplans – and don’t just have one specific one stuck in your head. This will be dynamically loaded based on the lab you choose when doing a “Load Lab Configs”.
• And of course as always the ability to control the power to your devices

But enough of the talk of what’s new – we’d rather show you what’s new.  This is an in-depth look (and by in-depth I mean a ~40 minute runtime video – HD of course), at not only what’s new – but also how to use it. It covers both Voice and Security, and also for Voice walks you though how to correctly setup the IPBlue client so that it works for both signaling, and maybe more importantly, RTP streams going to the proper instance of the client, and is quickly deployed every future time you open it. In case you didn’t happen to catch any of those links, then CLICK HERE. ;-)

As for what’s up next? Well we have developers continuing to press forward writing new chapters for both the new Voice and Security workbooks, as well as working on the new class material for our ILT and OWLE courses. Since some of you have been asking about what that order looks like – here is the order we have been and will continue working on things in for both tracks:

• Workbook and Proctor Guide Volume 1 (Voice, Security)
• ILT Courseware (Voice, Security)
• Workbook and Proctor Guide Volume 2 (Voice, Security)
• Lab Mentoring Kit (Voice, Security)
• Video/Audio on Demand (Voice, Security)
• Newer, Bigger, Better Somethings ???

As always, the moment they are ready for press, we will upload them to your IPexpert.com Members area, and now also upload all of the new Initial and Final configs for your ProctorLabs “Load Lab Configs” section as well.

And of course – this will always be the first place you will find out about it – so I’d pull an RSS feed to your reader of choice if I were you! As well many times great questions get asked and unclear topics get cleaned up by us in the comments section – so you may want to pull an RSS feed to the comments as well. If you just want info on Voice, for example, but not necessarily on other tracks, you can get more specific on the feed by simply clicking on any category on the right of the page and adding “/feed” to the end of the URI in the address bar. For instance here is just Voice posts, and here is just Security posts.

Happy CCIE Labbing folks!

-Mark