Passed the CCIE Data Center (lab) exam ...

Hey Guys,

Passed CCIE Data Center:

"It always seems impossible until it's done" - Nelson Mandela

Just wanted to update you trough this post that my journey in achieving the CCIE Certificate just came to an end today.

When Cisco announced the CCIE Data Center track in March 2012 I immediately knew that this was going to be one of my goals. After studying for 13 Months putting a lot of time and effort into this it finally payed of :-)

Study Resources:

To give some of you pointers of what very good resources are to use:

As this list above is just a guideline, there may me other resources out there that you may find better, and that are actually better.

Study method

People in the field will ask me, how I started, what my approach was, etc. etc.

The answer to that is very simple...

I downloaded the blueprints - CCIE Data Center Written & CCIE Data Center Lab
I copy/pasted each topic into an excel document (to create a list)
I searched for resources (online/books/whitepapers/etc.) where I could find information on that certain topics (and keep track of that in that excel document)
I reserved a specific time for each topic (some topics take longer to understand then others)
Then I started with the study topic-by-topic, technology-by-technology, check what technologies are interoperable and studied those as well
When I knew how the technology worked, I started with making my hands dirty and practiced this on real equipment and practiced and practiced and practiced...

Lab experience

left home on Sunday the 22nd of April around 12:00 PM to drive to Brussels
arrived around 14:00 and wondered around
had dinner at 19:00 at ">Punjab Tandoori Cuisine :-)
arrived 21:00 at the hotel (Crown Plaza)
did some reading there and went to bed 23:30
woke up 01:00 and was disappointed it was not morning yet
went back to sleep again
woke up again 06:00 and was happy (very happy) it was morning (and when I looked downwards I noticed something else was happy as well)
showered, had breakfast,
arrived 07:45 at Cisco - Pegasus 2 buiding
proctor picked the group of examinees 08:10
started 08:25 with the exam
finished 16:55 with the exam

I personally felt that the exam was difficult, very difficult, it really took a lot of effort and I gave everything that I had to finish it. When I left the exam I was not happy because I experienced some issues that I was not able to solve. It took me so much effort that it felt that my head was going to explode when I the time was over. I really gave everything that I had in me.

Back home I wanted to do nothing else then just watch TV with my wife.

The above is based on my personal opinion so other may think it was easy :-) but I think otherwise.

Thank you

my Wife - Shareen
my colleague - Mio
my colleague - Francesco
my colleague - Nadir
my colleague - Joost
study pal - Roie

Thank you very much for helping me out, explaining me things that where not clear...

Hope you guys will pass soon as well (except for my wife of course :P)