Hey, I'm the reddit guy! Thank you for making this, very helpful to get a taste for the in person exam experience. I appreciate you taking the time to try to address each question rather than skimming through and cherry picking. Good luck on your next attempt! You seem like a very thoughtful, smart, and awesome person.
Knowing that you're going to fail is a great tip. I failed the JNCIE-SP and it shocked me to the core how unprepared I was, after months of studying hours a day. The value of certifications has changed recently in my opinion, and the high costs for an expert cert in terms of time, effort, and money need to be carefully weighed versus alternative certification paths that diversify your skill set and greatly broaden the opportunities you have for employment. My failed JNCIE-SP attempt cost me $1600 in test fees alone, and I almost couldn't even take it because you need to be employed by an eligible employer in order to register for the exam. I found out about the employment requirement after I had studied for months, but lucky for me my contract gig made me eligible. Now after my failed attempt I can't even get basic entry to mid level jobs doing something basic and simple like working with a firewall because I wasted all my time trying to be an expert in something that isn't at all in demand instead of pickup up a diversified set of certs that enable me to be hired across multiple domains in technology: security, cloud, development, data, ai ... instead all I have to show for myself is a sloppy youtube channel showing that I failed to learn expert level concepts only relevant to small niches that likely aren't hiring anyway 😵😵💫🥴
and I'm lucky, for others who fail, they'll have nothing to show at all, except financial problems, it's important to understand fundamentally what these certifications are meant for, they are meant for principal engineers at major companies, or at the certification vendors themselves, to prove that their years of experience is legit, so that the vendors can trust that experts are working with their equipment. They're not meant for anybody off the street. If a company isn't sponsoring you to take an expert level exam, paying for your attempts, providing a bonus and direct promotion opportunity for passing, if you don't have a supervisor wanted you to pass for direct career advancement, if you're not even employed right now, in my opinion an expert level exam isn't for you, no matter how smart you are, sure if you can pull it off the world is yours, but you do that at the expense countless other certs: azure, aws, palo alto, dev net, junos devops, countless others ... that cost less time and money to pass, that ARE meant for anyone off the street to take and pass
I'm delighted to see you back!! I'm about to start my CCDE study once I pass my ccnp. And I have been using your videos since my ccna. Thank you for the help you have provided!
Hey Jeremiah, so you mentioned that you're planning to make an upcoming video about preparation and how to prepare exams. Would really appreciate if you take into account 1) What studying is like as a grownup (and not just someone who's in college and the whole environment is built around his studying. 2) Managing the timetable with family, work and exams 3) How to *avoid a burnout* - Important 4) Where the social or extracurricular aspect of life comes into all of this? Best of luck for your next attempt at the exam!
Thanks for sharing your feed back Jeremiah! You’re inspiring all of us. Min 44:33 I can see you passing that exam. The confidant and way when you were explaining the doo section tells a lot! You got this man. Looking forward to see your next video.
I also go into exams (of _any_ kind not just IT related) with the same mindset. It's NOT a negative mindset. It's called being a _PRAGMATIST_ It's very freeing, to be blunt. What's important is to *Never Give Up* 👍🏿 Channels been highly informative and inspiring!
Cisco offer CCIE practice labs. Each lab is 4hrs and cost $50 to do. Might be worth looking into it to see if that would have helped. I'm really put off by a certification where candidates will fail first time. I don't see how testing whether you can complete tasks in super quick time without thinking things through prepare you for the working environment. The certification seems to be just a vanity exercise. I'd rather invest my time broadening my skill set and doing something else after the CCNP such as Fortinet security. That said I won't be able to access the CCIE lounge at a Cisco Live event 🙂
The practice labs are not really related to the exam. The consensus is that they are MUCH easier than what you will see. Also, each lab is only related to a very specific topic. Right now I think they have a couple SDA and a couple SD-WAN labs. I did only one practice lab and used it mostly to get familiar with the interface.
Thanks for the video and sharing your experience, it helps all of us on the same journey which hopefully is a small consolation! Some tips/observations from myself: - You can open the documentation during design, at least in Brussels we were not stopped from doing so. The proctor also looked over my shoulder several times and saw me doing it. It's actually a good time to get familiar with it, like you say, you're not in a rush. If you need during DOO, you're probably dead though. We WERE banned from using Geany during Design, however. - Something that I thought whilst in the middle of failing on my second attempt this week, use the pen and paper to write down everything you were not 100% sure on so you can read it just before you walk out of the building. - I'm guessing that all bricks and mortar lab locations are closed across the whole of August (purely a guess on my part), which does suck. It's time they scaled up the testing, no Covid reasons for keeping it reduced which is causing bottlenecks. I guess your confident about picking up the v1.1 extra bits then in fairly short order?
Confident about 1.1... NOT AT ALL. :) (Well maybe a little bit.) From reviewing the new blueprint (Khawar did a recent blog post about this), I don't think it's going to be too much different. A couple of reasons. 1) The things they wanted to test on in v1 for R/S are still worth testing. And they have the R/S portion stripped down so much already I don't think they can take much more away. 2) The SD stuff is SLOW. This is going to be an ongoing problem, IMHO. If you've done the v1 exam then you know that the SD portion is pretty basic stuff. I mean the SD-WAN specialist test was much harder. They are likely to expand that portion, but not too much. There's just not enough time. (In fact I'm starting to suspect that SD may force Cisco to return to the 2-day exam. We'll see.) Anyway, all that said my plan WAS to take v1.1 as soon as it comes out and fail. Then spend 3 months studying and take it one (hopefully) last time before the end of the year. However, spots have been opening up (I think it's people hitting the 30 day pay deadline and not paying). So I booked a second attempt for a few weeks from now. If I fail that one... I don't know what I'll do. Shit is getting expensive.
@@jeremiahwolfe Good luck in your retake! I hope you make it, and can never think about this again. I've been going over the new blueprint compared to the old, one thing I do like about the new is that it is more descriptive, even about the older subjects. The scale of this exam is now so vast they are missing off entire bullet points from the blueprint completely. I personally think they should remove MPLS, it's already on the SP exam, I really doubt many enterprises are configuring this themselves. With family commitments, it's hard for sure. Just get ready for that tough conversation; "Now, I might need at least another 2 attempts... " :)
Totally agree with you about the dumps. When I took the R&S practical the first time it was the v4 syllabus and some of the other people there were openly discussing dumps and asking other candidates if they'd seen the latest ones etc. Took me two attempts, second attempt was right after 5.0 had released so presumably there were no dumps available at that point. 10 years ago it was well worth doing, but I think today people need to think a lot harder about what it will do for them. Back then the exam was almost all about fundamental networking, the fact you were doing it on Cisco was incidental and the knowledge was easily transferable to other vendors. The exam now goes way too far into Cisco specific technologies for my liking.
I've failed twice, man. These CCIE labs are tough. But listen, Cisco is releasing a 'lite' vDNAC next month that will be FREE and only require VCPU 32 and 256GB RAM and we have the CML 2.5 Cat9kv VM now so we have everything we need to build any Cisco EI lab topology now. 100% virtual. So EVE-NG Pro and ESXI vDNAC... we got this! Let's keep our heads up and keep pressing the envelope.
I hadn't heard that the lite vDNAC will be free. Can you confirm that? Will it be part of CML? My Cisco account doesn't have access to download anything, but I'd buy CML if I got the vDNAC.
As someone whose been to Richardson 6 times in the last year (and going back in a couple of weeks) this is dead on. Best of luck going forward, Jeremiah!
Hello Jeremiah Failing is part of the process you got this you have been studying for the CCIE for a while. Second attempt you will pass is normal in terms of the people that have 5 6 CCIE is because they have done nothing else that CCIE most of the Time if you ask them for other Technologies most Likely they will not know no offense, The CCIE is not for Everyone it Takes courage to do it , i did Failed My Comptia Cysa+ Years ago Version 1 it was a hard exam because it was all about scripting language but i knew it and i was happy with the results as you said The first attempt its recon as recommendation since there is a new Version of CCIE don't go on October Go on december you will kill it Lets create a study group with all of the candidates for CCIE lets kill it looking forward to watch the Video of the Material you have used i believe the design Book has to be read
I never understand why Cisco give you so little time in the exam. I understand it's proves your ability to create solutions quickly but racing against the clock rather than focusing on answering the question properly doesn't make sense.
That's the thing. You have to race the clock AND answer the question properly. Hence "Expert." It was a brutal exam, but I also think it was fair. I'm excited to study more and try again.
You are partially wrong on people who use dumps or solutions. Couple of guys I know have failed 1st time & even 2nd time after using so called dumps. LOL.!! All the very best for your 2nd attempt.!
