CcieDesign.com
David Pfau
CCIE #27727
CCNP
CCDA
CCNA
CCVP
UCCX Design Expert

Want To Contact Me?  You Can Do That Here

I am currently preparing for the CCDE exam and will document my
progress as I go.
Thus far Ive spent the last year reviewing routing protocols, and
training videos.

Last years Cisco LIVE event had a lot of great information to offer.
Sadly I couldn't attend every session but luckily there are slide
decks and ask the expert documents to follow up on.
If you haven't guessed by now I'm not
a web developer.  Perhaps after The
CCDE and I recertify my CCIE from
VOIP to Collaboration, I'll get around
to learning how to program WWW.  
You know, in my spare time :-)  
What did it take to become a CCIE?
In every case that will be an interesting question.
For me, I had just started a professional services consulting company and was already working very long days for clients.  So the
times I had available were early mornings and late evenings.

On average I was studying 6 hours per day during the week and 12 hours per day on the weekends.
After 6 months of intensive study, I took my second swing at the lab exam.  This was right when version 4 of the CCIE lab came
out.
At that time the goal was to go see what the new version of the exam had in store for those that wanted to get the CCIE-V cert.

The new changes to the exam from version 3 were significant and I was absolutely not ready for the test. (I tried the V3 exam
once right when I started studying)
One thing I did figure out though was that the new version of the exam is very tricky.
The short story is I went to San Jose and RTP every month 15 times in a row continually banging my head against one thing or
another.

The score reports were confusing because I'd get 100% in a section on one attempt and do all the same things on my next
attempt in that section and get 30%.
It was driving me nuts!!!!

Here's where things get interesting though...
By eating, breathing, and sleeping (I was literally configuring Gatekeepers in my dreams) CCIE Voice study for a year and a half
I was transformed from a very good voice engineer into a Cisco VOIP machine.
By the time my 17th and final CCIE Lab Exam attempt came around, I could configure a router from blank to a fully functional
PRI gateway with SRST and all the naming / numbering conventions you would ever need in under 5 minutes.
CUCM Unix access and troubleshooting was no longer a thing I needed TAC to help me out with.
Unity Connection and its integrations were automatic.  LDAP / AXL, Call  Handlers, Voice mail advanced functions, were a
breeze.
UCCX configurations were already a strong point for me so this part was easy (if you can call anything in the lab easy!)
Switching and every imaginable version of QOS method would flow out of my hands like water from a fire hose.

Like I said by the time I passed the exam I was a VOIP machine.
More importantly I could do any and all of these components backwards and forwards at any moment AND I KNEW HOW TO
TROUBLESHOOT THEM when there was an issue.

So on my 17th attempt:
I showed up to San Jose with a coat, a sweater, ear plugs (they talk a lot in the lab room) and was ready to rock.
The fellow candidates in the waiting area were mostly sitting there with fear in their eyes (been there many times) wondering
what kind of beating they were going to take that day.
I felt like a boxer getting ready for a fight that I'd been training so hard for that the fight itself was gong to be the easy part.
They called us up, I showed my ID and sat at my Pod.  I didn't let the comment about being at Pod 3 "AGAIN" from the proctor
phase me.  I just grinned and said thanks.
When the proctor was ready for us to start I got to work.
It was an exam I had experience with in the past (at this point I think I had seen probably every variation of the exam)
In the first 10 minutes I had the Lab book read and was ready to move.
By the end of the first hour, all routers and switches were configured.
30 minutes later, I had all users and phones registered and ready to take calls.
The next hour was spent building the dial plan.  It gets tricky when you add the layers they throw at you so its important that
you have read the entire lab book before you start on this part.
30 more minutes on Unity Connection.  Things looking good at this point!  Getting excited but trying not to get ahead of myself.
Next was UCCX.  Call flows were working as requested in the lab book within 15 minutes.
Now all I had left was the advanced functions section.  These seem like small items but they can force you to completely throw
away your earlier configs if you didn't plan ahead properly.  Again READ THE ENTIRE EXAM BEFORE YOU START WORK!
So basically I had the entire exam completed and lunch wasn't for another 30 minutes.
I spent 20 minutes testing call flows and calling presentation information.  Also I was careful to double check all spelling and
capitalization for names to match the exam book exactly.
Then just before we left for lunch, I saved all my configs again (do this often in the lab) .
At lunch I realized I was done with the test and only needed to be patient and thorough in the testing process.
After returning to my pod, I found that some changes had been made somewhere.  Services on my CUCM were failed, telco
connections were partially failed, etc...  (good thing I didn't leave at lunch!) :-)
I restored the router and switch configs from backups of the configs I made prior to gong to lunch and gracefully shut down my
servers and brought them back up again.
Services started and calls were flowing again.
I spent the next 3 hours testing over and over and over and over.... ( you get the point)).  I was 100% sure that every single item
was exactly the way they wanted.
Then with 10 minutes left in the exam I realized that there was no point in testing anything more because there was the chance
that I could break something and not have time to fix it before they called out to take our hands off the keyboards.

I walked out at the end of the exam and caught my plane home.

After leaving Cisco I thought about every little detail and tried to keep in mind that they wouldn't be grading my exam for at
least 8 hours.

Every second felt like an eternity.  The CCIE results page felt like it would NEVER update.  The flight from San Jose to Chicago
had no WiFi so I had to hold my breath for a few hours waiting to refresh my logon screen to see if I had a Number or a score
report.  By the time I got home.... Still nothing.  
The next morning I checked again.  No update.  Was something wrong?  Was something really right????  I wanted to call the
Cisco office and ask the proctors but I knew they wouldn't transfer me through.  
I went into the office and started to pick up on the mass load of work that was always waiting for me when I came back from a
lab exam.  
Just before lunch I checked the screen again and saw something different in the results page.
I thought perhaps I was reading something wrong but sure enough my CCIE attempt result showed......  PASS!!!!!!
Your CCIE Number is 27727
I jumped out of my chair and yelled YES so loud that people at the other end of my office heard me.  
After a few friends came into my office to congratulate me, I called my family to let them know the good news.  Many of them
thought I was crazy to keep trying for this certification.
After about an hour of rechecking the results page to make sure they didn't make a mistake I shut everything down and took
the rest of the day off.

Back to reality where you can look things up when configuring.  Where its okay to phone a friend.  Where TAC is there if you
need them.

Everything seems easier now as a result of this work.  
Hmmmmm whats the next impossible thing I should go do????

Flash forward 2 years and I'm on the CCDE path....
Hopefully I don't have to swing and miss 16 times before I finally get a hit.

The moral of the story is this.
CCIE certifications are HARD.  Real hard, but if you want it bad enough and push hard enough it can be done.  This like many
other things was more about the years spent on the journey than it was about the actual destination.

I hope this information helps others out there that may feel like they are never going to get over the hurdle.
Train hard.  Study hard.  Work hard.  You will be successful.
InternetworkExpertCert.com
Update 3/12/14
After another 50ish hours of viewing CBT's and reading SRND documents, Ive decided to schedule the written exam.  
The test is in 10 days.  
Ultimately Ive found that its hard to stay focused if I don't have a deadline.  So the choice was to let my attention shift to
something else or find a reason to work harder.  
 

Update 3/24/14

Exam day came last week.  I have to say that the CCDE written exam was the HARDEST computer based exam I've taken yet.
This says a lot considering that I've been working in the IT field for over 15 years and have over 40 professional certifications.
The exam had me going back to CCNP routing and design training from 2000 as well as thinking through technical pieces I
implement today.
Between the protocol detail, security solutions, ISP configuration, VOIP, QoS and design, this was one rough test.
After the first 15 questions of the exam I was sure I would fail.

At 30 questions into the exam the thought kept rolling through my head
"Why are you wasting your time.... You know you already failed.  Just walk out now"

The only thing that kept me in the seat was a suggestion I received a long time ago and have shared with students in classes
I've taught.
The message goes like this... Never Ever EVER walk out of an exam before its done.  Do not do this to yourself.  If for no
other reason than simply to see more of the questions they are going to throw at you next time.

So you can imagine my surprise when the score report had that oh so sweet "Congratulations" word right at the top after I
submitted the exam!
I felt like I was just about to throw up at the end of the exam.  I still cant believe I passed.
Whats next???  
Now its time to get serious.  Scheduled practical exam for August 2014.  Now back to the CCIE grind.  Study every day and every
night.  Here we go!