Another JNCIE-SP exam history

I was a little bit late, but I still want to share my experience, maybe it will be useful for someone.

Thanks

The most important and most important thing is thanks to my family, namely my wife and daughter, for their patience and support and understanding. And also to all friends, acquaintances and colleagues!



I was preparing for the exam not one, but together with a wonderful spectrvm , without it the process would have been noticeably more difficult, and so we managed to at least a little, but push each other forward.

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Thanks to the guys from chat in Telegram, who also continue to go the same way and actively helped me and I hope that I also helped them. The chat was formed from a discussion on the linkmeup forum of ideas on preparing and passing Juniper exams.



Big thanks to Poplar Systems in general, and Leonid Mirenkov in particular. Thank you very much, for the hours spent on your lectures, every minute is a large amount of useful tips and knowledge that are very helpful in the work. And, of course, for organizing the exam in Russia, although I didn’t have much, I saved on the train to Amsterdam.

Why all this?

I think that should begin with why I need it. First, it is an attempt to prove to myself that I can do it. Secondly, to somehow fix your experience and knowledge, but this is just another piece of paper, but nevertheless it is for these pieces of paper that people who are not familiar with you assess you. I mean the professional field. So this is a reason to start a conversation from another level. And finally, I just love to learn and wanted to get new knowledge and systematize the experience that I have accumulated.

Where do we start

Before starting the training, I had more than seven years of experience in the operation of carrier networks, and more than ten years of experience in communication networks. For most of this time, I worked closely with Juniper equipment. All this greatly facilitated the preparation.



Also, by the time the training began, I already had a number of Cisco and Juniper Professional certificates. I don’t need them for work, this is purely my own desire to develop and learn and get an independent assessment. It's time to try to get an Expert level certificate.



Morally, I was ready to start preparing right after passing in 2014 of JNCIP-SP , but somehow I didn’t reach my hands and everything seemed to work out.

Tsiferki

If by numbers, I started training on March 29 and passed the exam on December 5, for a total of 505 hours of net time for 8 months were spent on preparation.



All measurements were conditionally divided into two parts: theory and practice, in the end almost 2/3 of the time was spent on practice.

Home laboratory

The first or rather zero step was the purchase of a home server . Actually, this was my home laboratory, where I practiced and experimented. I advise everyone to start training with this step. Without having labs at hand, it will be much more difficult to test in practice the knowledge gained, not to mention the last months of preparation, when you practically spend all your free time in practical tasks. It is good to collect labs on real hardware, but not everyone has a dozen free routers in the lab. Yes, of course, there is a logical system, but believe me, the vMX is much more convenient, not to mention the limitations of the logical system.



Initially, I played around with the laby of VMWare ESXi compiled on VMWare, but this was not very constructive. Laba collect long and dreary. But thanks to the unetlab.com project , the problem was solved very simply. On ESXi, the virtual unetlab was raised (ubuntu 14.04 + KVM + unetlab shell), which solved the issue of simplicity and speed of creating labs. I advise everyone to pay attention to this project, if you have not yet come across it. They are planning to release a new product - EVE (pre-alfa is already available for tests), as the development of unetlab ideas.



Regarding GNS3, I have never been a fan of this application, even in the time of dynamips, I made labs in a text editor and ran them under gynagen, somehow it turned out more convenient. Unlike GNS3, unetlab does not require client installation, which simplifies the process of connecting and creating laboratories. I need a browser and SecureCRT / Putty or any other telnet / ssh client.



I will note that the laba was a crutch connected to the Internet and I could use it from anywhere in the world, with the Internet. It was a big plus.

In short, then, VPC was purchased (the cheapest cost 150 rubles per month) with a real IP and a VPN was sent from it to a virtual server in my home. Through NAT, I got access to the webmord unetlab, and via ssh to virtual routers. But this is not an obligatory step, you can get by with the real IP from your provider, but you can not bother at all on this topic.

Steps

In short, the preparation plan was as follows:

• read all the materials I used to prepare for JNCIP;
• read all the documentation on the recommended sections (without fanaticism, but all) at the same time reproducing examples;
• doing practical tasks from the materials that I can get.

On the ganttpro.com service , I prepared a preparation plan and followed it, adjusting the dates and volume of the completed.



As I understand it now, it is possible and necessary to read the documentation, but we must understand the measure, the degree, the depth. I guessed that they would not climb into the jungle. And many said that the complexity of the exam in the volume and combination of tasks, and not in their complexity. It was obvious to me that there was no sense to read from cover to cover. But in captivity, I delved into some topics, as it became interesting.



I can’t advise you to read everything or not, it depends on your preparation. It may be worthwhile to read as you master some workbook, when it will be clear what topics you are swimming in and what needs to be repeated or studied. But I tried to make the practice as intense as possible, so that I first became comfortable with the theory, and only then went into practice.



Last month and a half I did only practical tasks. Since the exam promised Windows + SecureCRT + notebook, I started a virtual machine with Windows and SecureCRT in the lab, connected to it via RDP, connected the keyboard and mouse with which I planned to go to the exam to my macmini PC and did not switch to osx more.

Where to find time?

I set a bar for myself: get ready 16 hours a week (the figure was taken from the guys from linkmeup from their famous project ). I must say that it is very difficult if you are not on vacation.



I have already noticed that self-education goes much better when there is a clear goal (such as passing an exam for a certificate) and clearly allocated time for preparation. Even if it's just an hour a day. The main thing is to make yourself spend this special hour just for preparation. Probably somewhat simplify the task of allocating this hour at the same time of day.



For example: I usually get up at 7 and leave home for work at 8, now I tighten up the schedule and get up at 6:30 and from 7 to 8 allocate time for preparation. And so every business day.



We get 5 hours a week. There is still a weekend, if you get another 5 hours there on Saturday and Sunday, then you will have 10 hours a week.



It is not very convenient for me to study in the evening, my head is already not so good at thinking and laziness is more difficult to fight.



I started at a slow pace of 5-8 hours a week and gradually increased it. In the past two months, I got up at 5:30 and set aside two hours a day + weekends and left completely at 16 hours a week. Since I entered the rhythm long enough, I felt real fatigue only after the exam and it was very tough!



Well, do not convey the sensations of reading documents on the beach with the iPad, as well as the implementation of examples between trips to the sea, while on vacation - a complete madhouse. The exam is important, but you shouldn't ruin family plans either.



Having some life experience, I understood that I can get an objective picture only using the correct ruler. I immediately started using the toggl.com service to measure the time spent on preparation, this turned out to be very useful.



This is, on the one hand, an objective picture (not a made-up clock, but real minutes), and on the other, some motivator, because every time you can see how many hours I don’t get in a week. Well, the desire to abandon all this also leaves when you see how much time has already been spent on it!

Materials

In preparation I used:

1. Official JunOS 12.3 Documentation - as I said above.
   
   
   
   
2. A set of books from iNetZero is a key element of preparation. The set contains several books whose descriptions on the publisher’s site are very vague. To simplify the task for you, I will give a few comments on each book, so that you yourself decide what to buy: Workbook - labs for each topic of the exam plus one lab for the whole day, answers in the form of configs without explanation. Walkthrough guide - on each topic of the exam a very brief theory and detailed answers for laborers from the workbook, the value of the book was doubtful for me, but maybe someone would be useful. Technology Focused Lab - the book contains quite a lot of laboratories in all exam topics + one large lab test. All labs contain answers and brief comments on them, unlike workbooks. It should be noted that labs do not coincide with the workbook, so having this book will be very cool, there will be even more material for practical training. It should be noted that despite version 1.1, the books contain a fair amount of typos, you can use them, but sometimes the content is puzzling. For the sake of fairness, I note that a number of errors are contained in the Juniper documentation.
   
   
   
   
3. Proteus Workbook - on the Internet you can find this book, but the labs in it are noticeably weaker than in iNetZero, I would recommend it only at the initial stage of preparation, in order to enter the exam topics. As I understand it, the book is no longer for sale and the project itself is not developing, but I can be wrong.
   
   
   
   
4. Bootcamp lab guide - if you manage to find labs from the Bootcamp course somewhere, I strongly advise you to pay attention to these labs, especially on the Full day lab, very much like a real exam (the tasks are not the same, but the very principle of building an exam is close to the original) . True, this lab is for 6 hours, and the exam is for 8, so that proportionally increases the difficulty and you can evaluate what awaits you. If you get to Bootcamp itself, it will be great, it greatly increases your chances.

Exam

I passed the exam in Moscow, thanks again to Poplar Systems, they can take any JNCIE exam once a year. The exam date was successful for me, even though I didn’t read.



On the eve of the exam I bought a couple of redbulls. Usually, when I’m worried, I don’t have any appetite at all, but somehow I didn’t have any excitement and in the morning I quite had a full breakfast and drank coffee.



At the site, we were launched into a room where I aggravated my condition with the first red bus and the work started to boil. Somehow I quickly went into the exam with my head and for dinner I already did 2/3 exam, after lunch I rolled another jar of redbull and finished off the exam. There is 1 hour and 50 minutes left to check! Honestly, I was shocked by how quickly I did everything. In the process of checking and re-checking, a number of doubts in the chosen solutions appeared; after some hesitation, I made a choice. Since the percentage of completion was not indicated in the final report, it is impossible to understand how right I was with the decisions.



It seemed to me that I was somewhat overdone with the preparation, that is why I did everything so quickly, and maybe a lot of experience in operation greatly helped me concentrate and think quickly. Although the organization of access to the hardware itself is horrible, not to mention the 150-200 ms delay, the first 30 minutes are very annoying.

Result

It's terrible, wait for the result of 7 days. Somewhere on the second or third day I began to get seriously nervous. By the end of the week I was all exhausted. And now it's late-late on Monday at last - Pass - # 2563!