Category Archives: CCIE Collaboration Overview

CCIE Collaboration Overview

CCIE Collab v2 Announced

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Finally the day is here- CCIE Collab v2. The new blueprint goes live on July 23 2018.

As expected it seems like the lab will not have any physical devices with everything being virtualized. The clients are remote control of 8845 devices, Spark, Jabber and Cisco Meeting App (old Acano client).

We have the Expressway make its way into the lab along with an Active Directory. Cisco Meeting Server (formerly Acano) is being tested (ouch!) and the traditional UC products are using version 12 (UCM/IMP/Unity Connection and 11.6 in the case of CCX.

For more details take a look here

More details to come! If you are mid-studies on CCIE Collab version 1 don’t get caught in the middle. Get yourself to a workshop and get it done asap.

CCIE Collaboration Overview, Strategy

CCIE Collab- Test Day experience

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If you are sitting the CCIE Collab v1 lab for the first time, take a look at this video to familiarize yourself with the live testing environment.

CCIE Collaboration Overview

State of the Union – Shift to the Cloud (CCIE Collaboration)

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Unless you have been hiding beneath a rock for the past few months, you will have noticed that the Collaboration market is trending towards the cloud and that means less on-premise equipment for Collaboration Engineers to install, configure and maintain. Central to Cisco’s collaboration cloud strategy is Cisco Spark. This is an app that allows secure business messaging / file sharing, meetings through Spark rooms and video/audio calls.

In July 2016 at Cisco Live in Las Vegas, Cisco SVPs Rowan Trollope and Jens Meggers, and Cisco VP Jonathan Rosenberg gave a sneak peek into what the future holds for Cisco Spark. The demonstration at the keynote showed the audience that a new telepresence unit can be taken out of the box and connected to the cloud in a matter of minutes with very little technical configuration. There is no need for anything on-prem-  you just need an account in the cloud and the Serial Number of your client you are good to go. Furthermore, in Fall 2016 Spark will be integrated into iOS 10 which will allow enterprise voice/video calls to be made from an iPhone or iPad. Lots of cool new things in the pipeline! Keep a close eye on Rowan’s blog.
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CCIE Collaboration Overview

CCIE Retake Policy Waiver

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For the remainder of the year candidates who fail a CCIE Lab Exam can re-sit every 30 days. The current policy of waiting 90 days after the first 2 attempts has been waived until Dec 31 2015.

The exact text given by Cisco, which you can find here, is as follows:

“For a limited time, we will waive the current lab retake policy so that all lab candidates will be able to retest for their lab exam with only a 30-day wait period. We’re offering this opportunity in response to your feedback about the challenges faced with longer wait times and difficulty getting a lab seat for retesting. We hear you and we understand your concerns, so we would like to take time to look at the data and evaluate our lab retake policy.

While we do our research, if you register for any CCIE lab exam between now and December 31, 2015, you will have the option of retaking the exam with only a 30-day wait regardless of the number of attempts you may have already made. Get ready to take the next step in your career: register by December 31, 2015.”

Good news for folks who have sat the lab twice and need to wait 90 days for a third attempt.

Happy Independence Day to everybody in the US!

CCIE Collaboration Overview, Strategy

5-phase approach strategy for the CCIE Collaboration Lab Exam

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The blue print that can be found on the Cisco website here reveals that the exam is divided up into 7 sections. I would consider Sections 1-3 as being the foundational core of the test.  In sections 4-7 we build upon the foundations we set up in the first three sections. It’s also worth pointing out that sections 1-3 comprise 70% of the exam. In this article the lab exam is broken down into 5 distinct p

Phase 1: Campus Infrastructure (30 mins)

In addition to a 30 minute lunch break, there are 8 hours of time allocated for each candidate to complete the assigned tasks. The cost to sit the exam is $1600 (not including taxes that need to be paid in some testing centers). That equates to $3.33 per minute. For every minute you waste being idle, that is over $3 down the drain. Unless you like throwing money away then try and maximize productivity especially at the beginning of the day. This will have a big bearing on how well you are going to score.

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CCIE Collaboration Overview, CCIE Collaboration Written

CCIE Collab Written – suggested reading materials

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The CCIE Collaboration Written should not be under-estimated as it is a very tricky exam (if one avoids the easy options that are available having performed a quick google search). One of the challenges is that very few, if any, companies offer a quality training for this particular test.

Cisco have provided information about the exam topics here.

The suggested training material can be found here.

Having taken a quick look at the suggested training material you should realize that it will take you an entire lifetime to go and read/watch everything suggested. No criticism intended but the list is somewhat exhaustive and it would be very difficult to read the thousands of pages suggested and be able to digest everything. In this article I have tried to provide a little more focus on where candidates should channel their energy. By no means is this a comprehensive list of the entire blueprint but I think somebody with experience with Cisco Collaboration technologies will find the information here will complement their existing knowledge and help prepare for the Written exam.

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CCIE Collaboration Overview

Attention CCIE Voice Converts

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If you have a CCIE Voice certification and have not converted to CCIE Collaboration- well you have a year to figure it out because on Fed 13 2016 your time is up.

As a reminder you have 3 options:

(1) Pass the CCIE Collaboration Lab exam. You will then hold 2 separate CCIE certifications (Voice and Collab) plus any others you have.

(2) Pass the CCIE Collaboration Written exam and then permanently convert your CCIE Voice to CCIE Collab by raising a support case here: https://ciscocert.force.com/english

(3) Keep your CCIE Voice as it is and hope that this Collaboration thing doesn’t take off.

I know there are lots of folks in the first category- better get moving!

CCIE Collaboration Overview

CCIE Collab bootcamp – Instructor feedback

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After several months preparation of CCIE Collab racks and class material, it came as a relief to finally be back in the classroom talking to humans again! Our inaugural bootcamp took place in our San Jose training center week beginning June 23, 2014- this is just a quick overview of what to expect when you come to a CollabCert bootcamp.

Classroom facility

It was a mad rush to get this classroom ready in time and we just about made it (minus one essential item- the coffee machine). We invested in some purpose built desks large enough to fit 6 endpoints and a computer. We have some really good views of Silicon Valley (not that there was much time to look out of the window). Here are a few  snaps from the inaugural class!

SONY DSC

SONY DSC

The downtown location is 5-10 mins away from San Jose airport with plenty of hotels walking distance away from the facility. I’m really excited that our future customers will enjoy the experience.

CCIE Collab Racks

Our racks are local to the classroom- if there are any issues with hardware/cabling/etc it can be resolved there and then. We have built the racks in an almost identical way to the testing centers. Each student has access to the 9971 and 7965 endpoints on the desk, ISR-G2 gateways equipped with PVDM-3, CUE installed on the SRE and a hypervisor more than capable of running the appliances and Windows servers.

Format of Class

You never really know the format of a class until it has been taught and I was relieved to find that the material could  be covered in 5 days. The format of the Instructor Led Bootcamp is very much focused on the hands-on aspect of learning. The instructor demonstrations and whiteboard chat accounts for about one third of the class with the remaining two thirds open for hands-on lab time. Our labs are delivered using our new web-based Learning Management system and every question that is asked in the lab has a full explanation.  The topics covered in the class as well as the topology can be found here.

What to do before attending class

The class has a big  emphasis on call routing- so knowledge related to the building blocks of the UCM namely Call Routing and its associated features is essential. SIP trunking and SIP Troubleshooting formed a big part of the class- I would say that a third of the time in class was spent troubleshooting SIP signaling and making calls through SIP Trunks. You must have decent working knowledge in SIP Call traces before attending the class. The CollabCert LMS (Learning Management System) and CollabCert Workbook contain particularly large sections related to SIP.

Familiarity with IOS gateways, dial-peers, SCCP media resources is (as was the case with CCIE Voice) another essential part of the course.

You will spend some time on new introductions to the blueprint which include distributed call processing features such as InterCluster Lookup Service (ILS) and Extension Mobility Cross Cluster (a beast!). The more preparation you can do in these areas the better.

Hope to see you in a class soon!

Vik Malhi, CCIE#13890
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/VikMalhi
Twitter: @vikmalhi

CCIE Collaboration Overview

CCIE Lab exam “resit” policy changes

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Some important news that affects CCIE candidates may have slipped under the radar (I certainly missed this and just happen to stumble across it here). If you go to 36 minutes into this video you will see first hand details of the policy changes.

CCIE Written Exam

Candidates will only be allowed to sit the same Written exam 4 times per calendar year. This applies regardless of whether you pass or fail.

Also if you fail a Written exam you are going to have to wait 15 days to resit (as opposed to 5 days).

CCIE Lab Exam

This is a big change. There could be folks out there who sit the lab every 30 days on an ongoing basis (for questionable reasons). It won’t be possible with the new rules since the 30 day policy will only apply between attempts #1 and #2. There is a 90 day window that needs to elapse before attempt #3 can be made. The 90 day window applies between attempt #3 and #4 and also attempt #4 and #5. Thereafter, you have to wait a whopping 180 days for every subsequent attempt. These changes apply for all tracks and are applicable from Aug 1 2014.

So let’s just pretend poor Jo Blo passed the lab on the 7th attempt. He would have passed the lab 660 days days after his first attempt (give or take a few days since I think the countdown starts the day after each lab attempt). How did I get 660:

7 attempts

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CCIE Collaboration Overview

CCIE Collaboration Lab feedback

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I’m really happy and proud to say that finally, 10 years on from passing the CCIE Voice lab exam, I got off the couch and passed the second CCIE that I’ve been thinking about for almost a decade. Here is the proof (for my own benefit!)

ccie verification

The moment Learning@cisco announced this new track back in May 2013, I knew I had no excuse – all I can say is at this impressive rate I’ll be a triple IE by… at least 2024!

Before I begin to provide some feedback, let me give you an upfront warning – this article is long, but for good reason. There is undoubtedly a real lack of solid information out there regarding the CCIE Collaboration track. Hopefully this information goes some way in addressing the multitude of FAQ’s that exist on the numerous forums and mailing lists created regarding this certification.

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