So now that this seminar is over – this blog post has morphed into a permanent update and archive of what was confirmed here at the CCIE Voice Techtorial at Cisco Networkers.

Without further ado, below is a quick bullet list of things that are now officially confirmed from the Cisco CCIE Voice Content Manager, Ben Ng, for the new CCIE Voice v3.0 Lab Exam.

The format that will follow below is this: Each bullet point will first contain the new piece of information regarding the v3.0 blueprint CCIE Voice Lab Exam that is now confirmed from Cisco and Ben Ng here at Cisco Live! (Networkers), and then will have this character “—>”  and then our Proctor Labs response regarding our preparedness to this announcement about a particular given new piece of information.

• All IP Phones will be 7965′s —> Proctor Labs vRacks updated our IP Phones to 7962′s sometime back. Only thing 7964 & 7965 can do that 7962′s can’t is GigEthernet and Color displays – neither of which have any bearing for the Cisco CCIE Voice Lab. Ben’s reason for 7965′s then? Simply more of these type of hardware available to them when they were developing the lab.
• CUCM and CUCME versions confirmed: 7.0(1) (bugs and all)  —> This is the versions we are running in all of our Proctor Labs vRacks.
• All servers (CUCM, UC, CUPS, UCCX) are running on VMWare —> We are running our Proctor Labs vRacks on VMWare ESX – looks like we are in good company.
• “Possible” that AD/DNS Server introduced down the road, but not Day 1. This means VPIM cannot be tested Day 1 either, since UC requires DNS to function (CUE can use IP addresses, but UC cannot). DNS Server cannot be run on UCCX (only Windows box), so again – will not be tested right away. I would imagine 6-12 months down the road.  —> We have an AD/DNS server ready at Proctor Labs vRacks, and will introduce it into our Mock Labs around that timeframe (expect 4-6 months).
• To reiterate: It is confirmed that Native DC Directory will be what is tested Day 1 and for a little while until they “run out” of content to add.
• Two Windows devices in Lab: UCCX Server and Test PC – both will be used for running CUPC for testing Presence and Device Mobility. RDP into UCCX, VNC into Test PC.  —> Proctor Labs vRacks have CUPC installed on UCCX and will have the candidate install CUPC on his/her Mac/PC (it runs on both) to test this. This way we maintain more physical CPU/Mem (Power) on VMWare Host machine (unlike Cisco has been known for in this lab in the past :-0  ).
• 3 site topology preserved. CUCM at HQ, BR1 remote CUCM site, BR2 is CUCME  —> We are, of course, good here.
• IOS on 3 site routers: 12.4(22)T —> This is the version we are running on our Proctor Labs vRacks.
• Confirmed: NO Video Endpoints in new v3.0 Lab —> Figured as much, but had VTA endpoints ready if we needed to add.
• E1-R2 and T1-CAS are testable topics, however – MANY features require ISDN technology-based features – so expect that ISDN (T1 & E1) PRIs will be much more heavily tested  —> We allow testing of BOTH, and have a ridiculously easy-to-use web interface that requires all of a push of a button to change the PSTN T1/E1 format (CCS/CAS) at Proctor Labs vRacks.
• Some of the new features in CUCM 7.0 that specifically require ISDN (and require a 7961 or better IP Phone) are +Dialing Support, Call Globalization, Localization, and Mapping the Globalized Variant to a Localized Route Pattern. —> As we have mentioned, Proctor Labs vRacks has newer 7962 IP Phones, as well you will see quite an intense international dial plan lab surrounding these CUCM Features coming out here in the next couple of weeks as Volume 2, Mock Lab 2.
• All CCIE test pods will have same IP addressing scheme and PSTN numbering scheme. No more “YY=pod#” for IP or Dialplan numbering schemes
• All CCIE test pods will have same IP addressing scheme – no more “YY=pod#”. However, PSTN and Dial Plan numbering scheme WILL change from lab to lab! —> We made the decision long ago to work tirelessly to provide EXACTLY this feature using Proctor Labs vRacks! Simple press of a button on our web UI pre-loads your PSTN Dialplan (as well as many other pre-configurations)! NO OTHER PROVIDER CAN DO THIS!! (Some claim that they can – but rent a single rack session from them and you will quickly see that their definition of pre-loading configuration means simply a wipe back to a single base clean config – nothing more).
• “Very Likely” that UCCX and VM Ports will be integrated beforehand
• New update to UCCX integration: UCCX Integration WILL BE DONE for you, however be prepared to Troubleshoot the integration.
• New update to Unity Connection integration: UC will be pre-configured with “base” integration info, however you will still be required to know and create Subscribers, Call Handlers, etc. Both of these previous two announcements are very nice timesavers indeed for the candidate. —> As stated above, Proctor Labs vRacks does custom, per-lab, pre-loading of configurations to every device including servers, this means that all future Mock Labs in Volume 2 and Instructor-Led Courses, we will have UCCX/UC ports pre-integrated.
• CUPS Server will NOT be pre-integrated with CUCM (this keeps in line with the blueprint). Also there are 3 types of Presence clients used in exam: IPPM (IP Phone Messenger – basically IM on the IP Phone), CUPC-control of 7965, and CUPC standalone softphone-mode. —> Proctor Labs vRacks has all three of these our labs today.
• IP Phones “Do not have VLANs assigned”, but that does not preclude them from being pre-configured in CUCM(E), just definitely not registered when candidate sits down  —> See our above note for how we can and do test both (or any scenario for that matter really).
• IP Phone Firmware changes are definitely testable topics at both CUCM and CUCME sites (study this well folks or else it could cost you a LOT of time!!) —> We test it!
• @ Dialplan (predicated upon a given country’s national numbering plan), and so therefore also Route Filters – has not ever previously been a testable topic. At this point it will still not be tested, however in the future Ben stated that they reserve the right to leave it open as a future testable topic, although it probably won’t be anything that happens in the near future. —> Again, we are on top of it and plan to  incorporate it into later Volume 2 Mock Labs.
• 4 Open-Ended Questions (OEQ’s) focusing on “Core Knowledge” will be tested from Day 1 (July 16)  —> For this and the next few topics regarding these OEQ’s: We will be releasing our CCIE OEQ Prep Quizzer tomorrow (Monday, June 29th).
• RE:4 Open-Ended Q’s: Will have 30 mins to answer 4 questions, answers will be 5 words or less, if you finish early you can proceed onto Lab Configuration
• RE:4 Open-Ended Q’s: Must answer 3/4 correctly, if you do answer EITHER 3 or 4 of the 4 Q’s correctly – both result in award of 21pts, then you need 59 points from Lab Config portion of exam, so in essence – you need ~75% to pass the CCIE Voice Lab
• RE:4 Open-Ended Q’s: Purpose is specifically designed to “Preserve Integrity and stop [people from] passing who just memorize lab [tasks from cheat websites]“
• RE:4 Open-Ended Q’s:  During these 4 questions you will NOT have access to any resources (Cisco Documentation Website or 4 SRND PDFs on desktop). Restated: You have no resources other than your brain during the 4 OEQ’s.
• Voice Lab Exam testing centers to include Dubai, Bejing, and Bangalore. More seats “should” mean more availability. We hope.
• All CCIE Voice grading is still being done by hand by the Proctors at the moment. May integrate automated grading at a later date.
• Configuration of Dial Plan is not checked. Grading is based on results: (i.e. test calls are made, primary gateways shutdown, test calls are made again to test backup gateways, etc).
• If a gateway is not registered you will score 0 on dial plan.

So as clearly stated next to each update, we starting planning ahead more than a year ago for this change, and all of these updates confirm that we were dead-on track for 100% of these changes. We have ALL (repeat 100%) of these things in our Instructor-Led Training courses and our Workbooks: TODAY!

Cheers,

Mark and Vik

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Stay tuned to this blog or our study list, we will make an announcement once these preparation tools are available.

Cheers,

Mark

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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.

It now takes 10.

Now, I’m really not trying to brag about our new capabilities, but this announcement is really exciting and extremely unmatched, so please be sure you read this thoroughly! ;-)

Quite frankly, after checking out the competitor’s offerings first hand, I can tell you that we are the only CCIE training vendor that can bring you any of the new features that I’m about to announce.

First off, one of our avid OSL_Voice posters, Jonathan Charles, made this comment and proceeded to ask this question over the weekend:

OK, the V3 Lab Blueprint has this statement:

The blueprint is a detailed outline of the topics likely to appear on
the lab exam. This blueprint introduces pre-configurations of basic
tasks (such as phone registration, basic application integration,
basic dial plan, etc.), in order to devote additional focus on expert
level skills (advanced configuration and troubleshooting) assessments.
As usual, knowledge of troubleshooting is an important skill and
candidates are expected to diagnose and solve issues as part of the
CCIE lab exam. The topics listed are guidelines and other relevant or
related topics may also appear.

The statement, “This blueprint introduces pre-configurations of basic
tasks (such as phone registration, basic application integration,
basic dial plan, etc.), in order to devote additional focus on expert
level skills” seems to indicate that the phone will be preconfigured
and registered and the dial plan may already be built…

Am I understanding this correctly?

Yes Jonathan, you are reading that correctly.

So what does it all mean? Well, quite simply put it means that depending on which lab you receive when you sit down to your actual CCIE Voice Lab Exam, you may have some phones that are pre-registered but not necessarily fully configured, you may have some basic app integration (e.g. Presence or UCCX might be integrated, maybe Unity Connections), maybe there is a basic Dial Plan in place (e.g. Basic CSS/PT infrastructure and/or basic Route Patterns configured). But look what is also contained in that statement, and also what follows directly afterward on Cisco’s v3 Blueprint webpage:

..in order to devote additional focus on expert level skills (advanced configuration and troubleshooting)

and then:

… As usual, knowledge of troubleshooting is an important skill and candidates are expected to diagnose and solve issues as part of the CCIE lab exam.

If you take the pre-configuration statement, along with the fact that not only in the above preface on statement about troubleshooting on the Cisco v3 blueprint page, but also the fact that every single one of the 13 sections contain the heading “Implement and Troubleshoot“, I’d say it is fairly clear that Cisco is going to have errors introduced into pre-configuration of your lab exam, before you sit down, that you are going to need to troubleshoot and correct (of course they will point you in a general direction to find the errors, and not simply leave you guessing as to what they are). Well if that is the case, then how are you going to practice those types of troubleshooting skills, if the errors are not already pre-loaded into your practice labs? Same thing with the advanced configurations – how are you going to be able to focus more on the advanced sections, leaving time to still finish your entire lab in a timely 8 hours, if your practice labs don’t already have those pre-configurations in them? I suppose you could put everything in yourself, but that takes a bit of your very valuable (and very limited) practice time, not to mention that, even if someone else wrote the practice lab, if you are forced to introduce the errors into your starting configuration yourself, they are going to be fairly easy to troubleshoot – don’t you think? – and thus not giving you even near adequate preparation for what you will face in the real CCIE Lab Exam.

So all of this, along with our experience in building, maintaining, renting, and getting user feedback and feature requests on our virtual Voice vRacks over the past 4 years is what formed the very impetus behind our long struggle to provide and perfect what we have come to offer on our v3 blueprint Voice vRacks: namely Proctor Labs Load Lab Configs feature.

Proctor Labs vRack: Load Lab Configs

Let’s dive into what is new about this feature. As we have mentioned before, this feature allows us as developers to not only pre-configure all router and switch devices with basic configs and errors for troubleshooting, but also allows us to have all of this pre-configured for you in every server used in any practice lab that we offer. NOTE: This does NOT mean that we have a “wiped clean CUCM server” (as some competitors have told me they are doing and that they think somehow compares to what we are doing – it’s not even close). This means that your CUCM Pub, Sub, CUPS, CUC and UCCX – ALL have DIFFERENT pre-configurations and DIFFERENT specific errors loaded onto them for EACH lab, before you begin said practice lab! So you may be working on a particular Mock Lab, let’s call it Mock Lab A, and maybe there are 5 errors for troubleshooting (few in QoS, few in DialPlan, etc), and some phones and gateways registered. Then later you may be working on, say Mock Lab B, and there are NEW errors pre-configured for you for this lab (maybe a few in CSS/PT, some problems with your GWs registering or sending calls to the PSTN, and maybe some basic CSS/PT/RPs are already there for you to use).

Loading these pre-configurations used to take around an hour for us to do, and admittedly, sometimes there were errors (hey – this is still CUCM, and it’s not exactly perfect in DB functions when hitting it hard in a lab environment). I mention that in case there are those that read this, that used this new feature on our vRacks as early adopters, and decided not to continue using it due to the long wait.

Well the wait is over.

They now load, error free, in under 3 minutes.

That’s everything, servers, routers, switches. New pre-configs, errors, everything, with proper DB replication working on CUCM Pub/Sub. Under 3 minutes.

On top of that – we did away with the “Show Status” button. We thought it too cumbersome to have to go back to another webpage to view the status of your routers and servers loading their basic configs. So we decided to put that status directly next to the device on the main vRack webpage. And of course in the screenshot below note that we offer not only T1/E1 PRI, but also T1/E1 CAS in the PSTN config, as well as the ability to enable SRST Mode for BR1 Router – all with simply the press of a button. One more new thing is that if you click on the Server name or IP Address, servers that should be HTTP’d into will launch a web page to that IP Address, while servers that should be RDP’d into (UCCX) will launch the RDP window.

Proctor Labs vRack: Router and Switch Status

One last thing, we previously mentioned that you were able to use your own hardware phones, not only for all of your practice labs, but also as your PSTN phone. However we limited this to only the Cisco 7960 model.

Limit removed. Use a 7960, 61, 62 or 65 model if you like. Simply choose the model before entering your MAC address and click Submit.

Proctor Labs vRack: PSTN Phone Type and MAC Address

So that’s it!

• 6X faster servers
• New PSTN Phone support
• New status directly on main vRack page
• … and most exciting, Load Lab Configs, that work everytime, in under 3 minutes!
• On all twenty-four of our new v3 Voice vRacks

Don’t you just love technology? Even if you don’t have a rack session at the moment, feel free to login to Proctor Labs using our demo account, and play around with the new features. We’re sure you’ll agree, there is nothing like this anywhere.

Happy labbing folks,

Mark

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Troubleshooting has always been a part of the CCIE lab in one form or another. Whether we look back to the days when the lab was a 2-day lab and the 2^nd half of the 2^nd day was entirely set aside for troubleshooting, or moving to the 1-day format where your own careless mistakes could mean you were in for a world of debugging to see what you did wrong, or even more recently up until now where Cisco began building small inherent errors into your initial configurations and then giving you a heads up with a task and points associated to fixing it. By the way, for you conspiracy theorists out there, they put the errors in before you get to your lab – and NO, they do not perform any ‘live’ error introduction while you are inside of your 8 hours, thus my word “inherent”.

Well moving on from those days till now, we come up against a new blueprint change recently for Voice and Security. This past year at Cisco Live! Networkers ‘08, we got to talking with a few of the Cisco Content Managers for various tracks (mainly Voice and Security) and also listening to their presentations and Q&A time with the crowds after the Techtorials. What we very solidly came to understand was that it is Cisco’s goal moving forward with the CCIE program to largely increase the amount of troubleshooting they request the candidate to perform, hoping to increase the amount of expertise they garner from said candidate while they have them captive in the lab. I mean let’s face it, configuration is absolutely necessary and fundamental – no one is contesting that – but without a solid understanding and ability to troubleshoot, that knowledge only goes so far in the field.

Simply put, the ability for an engineer to be able to troubleshoot effectively in the field is paramount. So now Cisco hopes to certify you ability not only to configure well, but also troubleshoot errors that they might have put there for you. Just the same as if you walked into a situation with a client on a network that you had never seen – you would need to be able to perform there as well.

This is the reason behind our decisions to not only mirror the new v3 blueprints for both Voice and Security, but to breakout each section into sub-sections – A & B. The A part of any given section deals with the configuration of a given technology, but the B part of the given section deals with troubleshooting that technology.

For more of a convincing argument simply take a look at the new v3 Voice blueprint and take a look at every section header. Notice that every section begins with “Implement and Troubleshoot”.

Now candidates may ask themselves if they really have time to debug protocols and look at traces (in the case of Voice) while in the CCIE lab. Many candidates that have gone before and ultimately passed have argued in favor of both views, some that there is time enough, and others that there simply isn’t. The argument for not having enough time has been loudest argued (at least that I have heard) by Voice candidates who, up until now, have had so many menial building-block tasks to accomplish to get to the stage to be able to configure the more complex technologies. While I believe that there was very little time in the previous lab for such a thing, I still think there was in fact time, but believe that in the new format of the lab where much more emphasis (and points) are placed on troubleshooting, that you will be given more time to do so. This might mean that the proctors have prepared a lab for you in which many of the more menial tasks that take up a great deal of time, but don’t necessarily prove expertise (registering phones, assigning line text labels, etc), are already configured for you and built into the “Initial” configuration when you go to sit down and begin the lab. How much time you have for troubleshooting also largely depends on your familiarity and comfort level with debugging and trace output. So if you haven’t found that “comfort” (oxymoron?) with them yet, time to dig in and get comfortable – you’re going to need to be!

Cheers,

Mark

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Check your IPexpert.com Members area under the ‘My eBooks’ section for the Workbook and Proctor Guide (detailed PDF solutions) and also under the ‘My Configs’ section for the router/switch text file solutions. The corresponding ‘Initial’ and ‘Final’ configs have also been loaded up into the Proctorlabs.com Voice v3 vRack UI as well – and are ready for your use.

Lab 5A and 5B are under way and should be available very shortly, so stay tuned!

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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.

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