CCNP Passed!

As of October 28th 2014 I'm officially a CCNP! After my ROUTE exam I jumped right into the SWITCH material. SWITCH was a lot easier for me to digest as I work with Layer 2/3 switches almost on a daily basis. This exam alone helped my day to day tasks tremendously along with giving me the confidence I need to tackle a few data center projects currently going on. The SWITCH exam took me 3-4 months to complete.

Today I finished up my CCNPby taking the TSHOOT exam, which was actually pretty fun. This is basically a lab simulation that tests your troubleshooting skills using CCNP level knowledge. If you aced ROUTE and SWITCH than this exam should be a breeze for you. I studied for about 2 months for this exam. I reviewed ROUTE topics since there was the 4 month gap between diving into the routing material.

With the SDN craziness on the way, I'm going to spend the next 3 months digging into Python. This will also give me a much needed break from certifications. After that I'm going to start hitting the Cisco designs certs for the rest of the year. I acknowledge that my design skillset is my biggest weakness. While I do not expect to walk away being able to take on a Network Architect type position, I do believe this will give me the foundation I need to head in that direction.

CCNP Route Test: Yes it's Hard, and Yes I Passed (Barely)

I've completed the CCNP Route exam yesterday. Yes it's just as difficult as you think, but not impossible. I highly recommend the CCNP Simplified series along with their 101 labs, you truly do have to understand why each routing protocol works the way it does.

After passing this exam, I now understand why there is the CCIE. I simply had more questions rather than answers as I progressed through my study material.

Next up is the SWITCH exam, I previewed the book material I will use which is the Cisco OCG and the CCNP Simplified series. I'm at a lost about what I'm going to do for setting up my switching lab. Setting up a routing lab is simple, just use GNS3 but of course GNS3 doesn't support switching yet in their software.

I have one lonely Cisco 3550 at home from my CCNP: Voice studying. I think I'm going to bring my 3550 to work and borrow whatever layer 3/2 switches I can find to setup a lab. Either that or Ebay but I'm trying to avoid that if possible. I'm still on the fence on rather or not I should sell the 3-4 routers sitting in my rack doing nothing, only time will tell.

I plan to contribute to this blog more which I've abandoned for quite a while due to life in general.

Still Routing Around

I've had a bunch of life changes this year but I'm still here and getting back into the swing of things. I've been primary planning, designing, and implementing LAN technologies the past 18 months. SDN is really starting to take off and I want to ride on the coat tails of it along with data center design.

I'm back to studying CCNP R&S again and it's a lot easier to dig into it with the network experience I've gained compared to my first attempt 4 years ago. I'm only about 1/4th through the FLG Routebook but I plan on keeping a steady past. Network projects and after hours maintenance is a huge killer on persistence along with general life.

My immediate goals have changed a lot but the end goal is to own a business of my own of some sort. I've tried a lot of difference things and experienced a lot of different failures but I plan on pushing on and just work smarter and harder.

Local Route Group is for Winners

There's still a lot for me to learn when it comes to digit manipulation and simplifying dial plans. Last week I read up on local route groups along with practicing it in my lab. It vastly cuts down on the amount of partitions and CSS's needed. As to not copyright this link provides a better explanation:

Local Route Groups

This is something I may keep in my back pocket when we get around to changing the dial-plan configuration on our CUCM.

I have a feeling once I get to CIPT2 and Globalization it may change the way I ever design a dial-plan from scratch.

Voice Lab Fully Functional

It took a lot longer than expected due to life in general; but my voice lab is fully functional. With the current career shift I'll probably be finishing the CIPT1 test and then going back to Routing and Switching. Then after that I'll be moving towards the design certs as my role is now focused on network implementation and design.

I rolled out a few new networks already with my team which includes planning, designing, and implementation. This includes VoIP, wireless, and security so I've been learning a ton. I'm filling all the gaps that's been missing since I was thrown into mainly VoIP from the start.

Anyways I knocked out a lot today:

1. Configured Extension Mobility on my CUCM Servers
2. Created Extension Mobility profiles and logged the users in
3. Re-provisioned HQ PRI to use only 3 channels
4. Configured Partitions and CSS's
5. Configured Route Groups, Lists, and Patterns for both the HQ and Branch site
6. Created Translation Patterns for DID's
7. Configured correct Dial-Peers on PSTN router and Branch Router (HQ Router uses MGCP)
8. Created Corporate GPO on Domain Controller (wanted to relax the default security settings)

Here's a picture of the route patterns I created:

Here's a picture of me testing out a call using a DID:

CUCM LDAP Synchronization Tip

  I finished chapter 4 in the CIPT 1 book along with creating a few labs to go with it. I was stuck with getting LDAP to synch with my domain controller that had Active Directory. For some reason it wouldn't save my settings due to authentication issues. After viewing http://www.markholloway.com/blog/?p=1189 I noticed that the username had @domainname while my username didn't have this info. Once I added this portion LDAP synched and life was good.

Next up is chapter 5 and I still have a few more chapters to go until I finally register a phone!

P.S. Never hit the undo button in Google Blog, it deletes your entire post and there's no way to go back that I know of. Especially since it auto saves ever 2 seconds which can make things even more useless... Super Frustrating

A lot Smoother Installation - VMPlayer Tip

I reinstalled the CUCM Publisher last night and the install went a lot smoother than a few months back when I attempted to install it on ESXi on an old HP server. VMPlayer worked surprisingly well even though it's not as convenient as VM Workstation.

The only issue I ran into was getting connectivity to the network which was a combination of things. It didn't like my trunk port on my switch so I changed it to an access VLAN (VLAN 100) for my server subnet. I also had to play with the VMPlayer network settings, once I changed my VM to following connectivity was established:

Network Adapter Settings:
1. Network Connection set to bridged mode
2. Check mark "Replicate physical network connection state"
3. Select the "Configure Adapters" button
4. Select only the Ethernet port or whatever port you use for connectivity, un-select the others.

Tonight I plan on installing the Subscriber and I have to get my hands on Unity Connection still from some where. I have a CUPS 6.0 DVD so hopefully that works when the time comes. At some point I need to run to Walmart or somewhere to pick up a crossover cable, I don't have good tools to make my own.