OK, the wait is finally over for the upgrade we have been promising.

Before I even get into the main announcement, I thought I should bring something else small to your attention. We just made a large investment in our server farm infrastructure, and have increased server performance by a factor of almost 6 times! For instance, the CUCM CallManager Service Parameter’s web page used to take around 60 seconds to load.

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Tags: 3.0 blueprint, CCIE, Load Lab Configs, Proctor Labs, Proctorlabs, v3, Voice, vRack

… giving you more features that is! (Seriously – ask my wife if you think that statement isn’t true. She often asks me if I even have the ability to separate work from home life. Many props to Sarah for giving me up almost altogether these last two weeks!)

Well – we thought long and hard about it (well maybe not that long :)) and decided we hadn’t given you enough features long ago in our last ProctorLabs vRack upgrade. So we decided since it had been so long, we decided we that we just had to give you a few more. A few of these are nice if you just want to practice with these technologies and will most certainly be used in later labs of ours. One of these is a must have that honestly, I am not sure how we (or you) lived without until now.

We have always given you the ability to change your PSTN BR2 E1 from E1-PRI to E1-R2 CAS or back from E1-R2 CAS to  E1-PRI with these buttons pictured: 

But now we are giving you two new functions regarding the PSTN simulator (router): The ability to change your PSTN HQ T1 from T1-PRI to T1-CAS with FGD or back from T1-CAS to  T1-PRI with these buttons pictured: 

And also the ability to change your PSTN BR1 T1 from T1-PRI to T1-CAS with FGD-EANA or back from T1-CAS to  T1-PRI with these buttons pictured: 

And finally, saving the best for last, we are giving you the ability to throw your vRack’s BR1 site (and all of it’s devices/functions) into SRST mode. This might sound simple, and in the real lab you might simply shut down your BR1 Serial link and all would be grand. However, in our vRacks, your BR1 Serial link connects your BR1 router back to your HQ router and then back to your EzVPN (hardware or software) IP Phones, and so you can’t really just shut it down or else those phones can’t connect to the BR1 router and register in SCCP (or SIP now:)) to the Call-Manager-Fallback a.k.a. SRST. You also have the challenge that if the lab you are working on happens to have you configure the BR1 router as a MGCP gateway, or even if it has you register DSPs in the BR1 router using SCCP to the UCMs, that those devices need to “stop talking” to the UCMs in order to do any sort of fallback (such as MGCP Fallback to H323 mode thus releasing a PRI or CAS trunk). 

So what we have done is create a simple button to do all of this on your vRack web UI. Here it is:

One thing to note: All of these functions are only available for the new Voice v3 blueprint’d vRacks.

Now if you are one who has your own hardware, you of course can do all of this manually yourself in your own lab. However I do have to say to any of you considering whether to rent a vRack for your Voice studies or build your own rack, I remember back to when I was studying for my Voice exam, and had my own lab, and honestly how much time I wasted (no seriously – wasted) trying to not only get my lab setup in the first place, but then deal daily with getting servers reset, re-building PSTN files, dialplans, etc, etc, and how if I had something like the vRacks and the incredibly simple interface and between session automatic revert and extensive error checking logic that we offer at ProctorLabs, how much more time I would have had for actual studies that mattered. Oh well – I didn’t – but you do! Capitalize on it!

Also to note – on my last post regarding the vRack updates, in the comments section, one person asked about if a few new features were possible mainly regarding localizing PL rack rental timezone information based on where you are (or preferences chosen in your account settings) and also about if the “Load Lab Configs” function could give the ability to you to choose with a checkbox which devices to load or not to load on a given Initial or Final config. Well the simple answer to his question – I wanted to be a rather public one – and that is that ALL of this functionality and more is on the horizon. We haven’t even come close to showing you all of the Spades up our sleeve and ready to show the Straight Flush we have once the River card is played. (sorry couldn’t resist the Hold ‘Em reference) So be a little patient with us – we are continuing to develop in the background – I can assure you!

Cheers and Happy Labbing!

-Mark

Tags: CCIE, Proctorlabs, v3 blueprint, version 3, Voice, vRacks

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.

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Tags: CCIE, hardware, Pods, Proctorlabs, Security, updates, v3 blueprint, version 3, Voice, vRacks

As Vik just posted - Voice got a major overhaul yesterday. As Vik mentioned, we at IPexpert have been in talks about this upcoming change for almost a full year now – and have been planning major upgrades for our ProctorLabs racks for some time now. I want to take a brief moment to discuss with you the status of our Voice vRacks and what you can expect from us in the upcoming months.

First off lets take a look at what we have already at ProctorLabs vs what we still need. 

• Servers - √
• ISR Routers at every site – √
• PVDM2s - √
• VWIC2-1MFT-T1/E1s - √ (though we will be adding more)
• ESW Modules - √ (though we will of course be adding the 4-port version)
• CUE Module - √
• Cisco Unified Communications Manager 7.0 - √
• Cisco Unified Communications Manager Express 7.0 - √
• Cisco Unified Contact Center Express 7.0 - √
• Cisco Unified Presence 7.0 - √
• Cisco Unity Connection 7.0 - √
• IOS 12.4T - √
• Catalyst 3750 Switches – ok, so here is something we have to buy.

We are also going to be adding memory to our already powerful 8-core servers. A lot of memory. Heaps actually. Our servers will have memory in spades. Point taken? Anyway, moving on – we will also naturally be adding a lot of additional DSPs since CME can now support hardware CFBs and the HQ router will have to pull double duty where the 6608 blade lets off (and boy is it time to let those 6608 blades RIP! (for those of you who know your H323 RAS debugs well – no, that was not a Request In Progress message ;). I digress.

Well as far as the hardware that does need to be purchased – I can tell you – the BOM has just been submitted to Cisco and the hardware should be on its way very soon. In the meantime – we have 90% of what you need today to study with.

I will say that again: IPexpert and ProctorLabs have 90% of what you need to study with for the new 3.0 lab blueprint. TODAY.

As I did mention – we have been preparing for this change for quite some time now!

Well – while I do have quite a bit more news in terms of some (major) upgrades that we will be making to ProctorLabs interface soon, and more specifically to your ability to practice your Voice labs with ease, but I don’t want to give away too much in this article. I want you to come back for more (and let me tell you, your coming back will be worth it when you see what we have planned for ProctorLabs and for Voice).

Ok – I will give you a teaser. Currently you can practice with your own 7960 hardware phones if you use our EzVPN solution – right? Except that we still make you use IPBlue or CIPC for your PSTN phone – right? Not in just a tiny while. Soon you will be able to simply key in your PSTN MAC address to a HTML text box and hit update, and your particular 7960 hardware phone will be your PSTN phone as well. Code is written – just has to be added to the website. Small things – but they make day to day life practicing for the CCIE Voice Lab so much easier – don’t they?

You tell me. Respond with comments and let us know how we could make your CCIE Voice Lab exponentially easier to practice using ProctorLabs. (I can tell you though – most of what you probably can think of – is already in the pipeline!)

BTW – not related to hardware – but did I mention that you will see new BLS material coming from us beginning in January? You can’t digest 3 whole Volumes at once – so why would we release them to you in that format? Doesn’t make sense. So we won’t. We instead will be releasing them to you lab-by-lab as we get them ready and up to our high standard.

Later.

Tags: 3.0 blueprint, ccie refresh, ccie voice 3.0, hardware changes, new blueprint, Proctorlabs, Voice