Passed the CVOICE Test!

It's about time! It took me a little longer than I expected due to a lot different outside variables but I finally got over the hump on this one. It took the following to get me through:

Books:
Cisco Voice Gateways and Gatekeepers
Cisco QOS Certification Guide
Cisco (CVOICE) Foundation Learning Guide (Kevin Wallace)
Sybex CVOICE 8.0 Study Guide

Videos:
Kevin Wallace 1 exam a month (1ExamAMonth.com)
IPExpert CVoice videos

Other:
Mnemosyne's
Forums
Lab's...a bunch of labs
Colleagues
Real World Experience


By far the hardest exam I've taken so far and there's 4 MORE to go before I'm certified. I can finally get back to building out my lab though. Hit hard on QOS, CUBE/Gatekeeper, VOIP Calculations, and Voice Signaling theories.

About Ready for the Retake!

After a hectic 4 weeks including business travel and settling into the new house; I finally finished the last 3 chapters of the Sybex CVoice book. I'm going to review and go over study notes for the next 3-4 weeks and hopefully have the CVoice scheduled and PASSED this time around. There's a good 5-6 network projects going on at the same time right now. 2 VoIP migrations and even 1 PBX migration happening within the next 6 months.

The PBX migration starts next week, I'm working with an outside consultant for this one. I finished the new dial plan to integrate them on to our CUCM yesterday. There's also multiple MPLS and IPVPN turn-up's happening around the globe. I have all the networking hardware I need to make my voice lab, I just need to purchase a rack for all this stuff and cable management. I'm looking at Dell 2950's for my VM environment, can't wait to have the lab built, but I'm looking forward to how much more I still have to spend for it lol.

Three More Chapters Until Test Retake

I'm starting to make some head way through the last book I picked up for CVoice. I'm hoping to have the last 3 chapters finished in another 6 weeks, it all depends on how busy I get at my gig. Right now I'm working my way through the H.323 Gatekeeper and CUBE chapter. Followed by the oh so famous QoS chapters. Looks like I won't be able to rent any lab time through INE for the entire month of July due to book camp weeks. That's alright I'm already planning and designing my new and improved lab, I plan on even getting a comm rack this time around!

INE Labs and a Quick MGCP Tip

Slowly but surely I'm making through the Sybex CVOICE book, I'm about 65 percent of the way the through. I've been going through the hands on labs in the book as well, utilizing the INE rack rentals since I'm unable to access real equipment at the moment. I'm not going to lie, just figuring out how to connect to their labs have been difficult...for me. I tried the VPNless method and the Cisco VPN client methods so far. Using the VPNless method I couldn't connect to a lot of the equipment for whatever reason. When using the Cisco VPN client, it seemed to work a lot better but I couldn't access anything else outside of the the lab rack.

I'm sure this has more to do with me than anything else to be honest with myself. The racks are designed for people prepping for CCIE so in the back of mind I feel as though my comprehension of the technology itself is preventing me to wrap my head around on how to correctly connect to their equipment. I may be wrong though, at least I'm able to accomplish what I need so far. I believe over time I'll become more familiar on how to properly connect to everything. If not I'm not afraid to ask for help.

MGCP TIP:

I'm sure most of you know this, in order for MGCP to work correctly and pull the XML file from CUCM, the name on the voice gateway and the CUCM must have the same exact name!

Well it was bound to happen but I'm finally broken in at my new job and made my first mistake that caused downtime for a few sites. I was tasked with installing a template on all of our gateways which included giving them our domain name.

The official syntax for this is ip domain-name domainname; the use of this command changes the name of the Cisco device. So if your device host name is called Gateway and you add the domain name to the device i.e. ip domain-name contoso.com, the official name for the device is now Gateway.contoso.com. Even though the device considers Gateway.contoso.com to be its name, the host name will still appear as just Gateway when you're staring at the CLI.

Unless you changed the name to Gateway.contoso.com on CUCM as well, it will not know how to reach this device. The trickiest part about this is that it doesn't rear it's head right away, Our gateways didn't use the new name until exactly 12:00 AM the following Saturday after I gave them their new domain info. Watch out for this!

Almost Ready to Buy Rental Time

I've been slowly working through the Sybex CVoice book while also getting acclimated to my new job role. I'm about half-way through the book and I should be plunking down some cash to rent some lab time from INE pretty soon.

Cisco SAF Videos for Free on INE

I'm just writing this note to remind myself that I can view the INE videos on SAF for free.

http://blog.ine.com/2012/04/18/call-control-discovery-via-service-advertisement-framework-part-1-of-6/

 I still have a ways away before I start truly studying on this topic but I'm going to need all the help I can get. In other news, I start a new role as Network Engineer (may not be the official title) in a week for a global company. I'm pretty excited but nervous at the same time, I should be able to soak up a ton of knowledge from this new opportunity.

I have to give back my 2821's and I'm not in a position to spend $1400-2000 to replace them. Plus I would really need to get the 29xx models at this point in time. I'm going to start renting lab time because this will save me time, money, and physical space.

I've Been Hitting the Books Slow but Steadily

It's been a very busy month both personally and professionally. I would be lying if I said failing the CVoice exam didn't make me just want to give up on certs all together. With that said I still managed to finish QoS book and I'm working my way though the Cisco Voice Gateways and Gatekeeper book. I then will finish that up with the Sybex CVoice book and start labbing again. The QoS book grew my knowledge A LOT but I def. couldn't take everything in but that doesn't matter because this books goes above and beyond the QoS material I've read in the official book and even the test I failed.

I hope to sit this test again in the next month or so depending on what my $$$ funds look like.