On August 27th I took my first attempt at the CCIE Enterprise Infrastructure Lab. Although I didn’t pass this time, I’ve gained a lot of valuable insights into the exam. Hopefully, sharing this will allow other people to be more prepared for the logistics of taking their lab. My exam took place in Richardson, Texas, so the conditions may differ at other locations.
Flying Out
I chose to fly out two days before my exam. I did this in attempt to be less groggy from travel waking up for exam day. Although it was beneficial, I don’t believe I will do this for this again in the future. I flew out of Philadelphia directly to the Dallas Fort Worth International Airport (DFW) which is about 25 minutes from the Cisco Richardson offices and also the hotel I stayed at. I didn’t rent a car, so I took an Uber from DFW Airport to the Cambria Hotel in Richardson.
The Day Before
The rest day before the exam allowed me to walk to Cisco and scope out what the exam building looked like. Building five was only half a mile from the hotel, so I chose to walk on exam day as well. It surprised me how empty the building was, both on the day before the exam. On the day of the exam there were only three cars in the parking lot. You can’t glean much from the outside of the building since all the windows had a reflective coating. A lot of people told me they couldn’t sleep the night before there exam. Luckily, I didn’t experience this, but what I did experience was a chronic tenseness. I keep thinking that if I study just one more exam topic, it could make the difference between passing and failing.
Exam Day
The morning of the exam, I arrived at building five around 7:55 AM and didn’t expect to be let in right away as I was 20 minutes early. To my surprise when I approached the door, a receptionist let me in. The main entrance to building five has two sets of doors. The first set is unlocked, the second set you have to be buzzed into by the receptionist. When you walk up to the desk, they ask you for two forms of ID. I provided a driver’s license and my work ID. It is recommended to carry two forms of identification, both with a photo, one of which should be issued by the government. The receptionist working that day actually did me a favor and talked to me about something completely unrelated to the test which helped take my mind off the test. She had me pick my lunch on the menu and gave me a name tag. There was only one other person taking a lab that day, and not the same track as me. Once he got checked in the receptionist called back to the proctor and he came out and got us.
The proctor showed us the bathrooms and where we can make coffee if we want some, which was nice. Once we got into the lab, they had us sign in and gave us our desk numbers. The desk number you get corresponds to a locker number that you can put your stuff in while you take the exam. After you sit at your station you login and start your exam.
My Exam Experience
I have to say, I did enjoy the testing software. It was modern, responsive, and well organized. I did not like how you cannot highlight in the tasks window. I ended up copying all of the tasks to notepad and deleting the lines in notepad as I worked through them. Obviously, I cannot comment on exam tasks, but I will say most were fair in my opinion. There were some tasks that I do not think had clear answers, but that seems to be a wider problem with this version of the exam.
Design Module
The first thing I noticed with the design module is that the documentation links works. I was confused as I didn’t think that was available in this section of the exam. I asked the proctor, and he confirmed you can use documentation in design now. I finished the design module with an hour and ten minutes to spare. I feel like you are given a fair amount of time to answer the questions. I actually think I rushed more than I needed to because of how many people I hear run out of time. After design I took a leisurely walk to the bathroom given I had not started the timer for the DOO section yet.
Lunch
Lunch was actually really good, but I would rather have had the choice to not take it. I would have been fine with the snacks I brought, and I think that break in concentration contributed to my failure. Although, it was not as awkward as I assumed it would be. The proctor didn’t care if we talked, probably because there was two of us and we were different tracks. The proctor actually didn’t spend that much time in the room we were in.
DOO Module
I was worried about window management in DOO for a little bit, but I managed to stay organized, close tabs when I was done with them, and only keep the windows open that I need. I realized about halfway through the exam that you could use ctrl+shift+v to paste into the consoles of the devices, similar to Cisco CML. Access to web interfaces is nested in a VNC connection, just like in the CCIE practice labs, but the connection in the lab was amazing. You could not even tell you were inside a VNC session, and there was very little artificing or delay on the connection. My only complaint about the DOO interface is when you would maximize windows you would get some pretty serious artificing until you hit the scroll bar or clicked around.
The Outcome
So, why did I fail? Ultimately, I believe that I met the objectives of all tasks but 2. My problem (from what I believe) was that I did not fit within the restrictions of two of the tasks, and I forgot to go back and do something from before lunch which was my fault for not notating. I really do not believe all but one of the implementation tasks were overly hard, but I do not think the tasks in isolation is why people fail. Imagine you are thrown into a brand-new environment with multiple locations, SPs, protocols, etc and asked to immediately start making changes. Without “feeling at home” in the network it is much harder to get these protocols to interoperate. You don’t know addressing schemes, existing configs, what routes are where, etc.
I’ll be back soon to give it another go, and hopefully with a few simple changes to my strategy I’ll gain my CCIE number.