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!
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