As many of you know, I had the honour and good fortune of being able to take part in beta testing the JNCIE-ENT lab in August of 2011. The day completely wiped me out and I was walking around in a daze for the remainder of that week. While I knew the technologies I was unprepared for the time-management skills required to pass this lab. Needless to say it was no surprise when I received my fail-mail advising me that I was unsuccessful.

Well after almost a year, I decided it was time to get back on the horse and try again for getting those digits. Here in Australia the Juniper lab exams are only offered every 3 months, and I felt I was unprepared to sit the exam when it was offered in January. I knew that a friend of mine, and now colleague, Cooper Lees was preparing to take his JNCIE-SEC exam during the May schedule so I decided to book my attempt for the same day.

I have spent a lot more time working with Junos and various Juniper hardware devices in the time since I took the beta exam in August, and I was now a lot faster on the CLI, and didn’t need to refer to any documentation during the exam (except verify some config when I thought I had completed each step correctly! Needless to say… I hadn’t).

I had the good fortune at both my previous job at eintellego and also my current position at ICT Networks to have a wide variety of Juniper equipment at my disposal to create a lab environment in which to hone my skills required to get through the exam. I made quite extensive use of these labs to prepare and its true that nothing beats hands on experience when it comes to the lab. The JNCIE-ENT exam is based on EX4200 switches and SRX240’s – so be prepared to configure and support anything on these devices (sometimes items on “the edge of the blueprint”!).

So the lead up to the lab date was “exciting” with Cooper and I giving each other some “friendly rivalry” to try and be ready for the exams we had in front of us. We swapped experiences and ideas back and forth. Even though we were sitting different exams, having somebody else work with you on problems during prep time was certainly a god send. I had this during my prep for the beta with Nick Ryce and Chris Jones, both of whom have now gained their JNCIE-ENT certification.

On lab day Cooper and I met around 8am for breakfast near our office (which is only a few blocks from Juniper’s Sydney Office). A hearty breakfast of Bacon, Eggs, Grilled Tomato and Coffee certainly helped calm my stomach. After some banter about how we just wanted to “get this thing started!”, we decided to head over to the lab location and wait. We got there a little early, but it gave us time to settle down. The foyer area outside the room that served as the lab location included a table tennis table, an xbox and a pinball machine. Cooper showed off his fine table tennis skills while the rest of us pretended like we weren’t stressed 😉

While talking to the other candidates, we worked out that there were 3 attempting JNCIE-SEC, 3 attempting JNCIE-SP, and just myself attempting JNCIE-ENT (The “easy one” apparently :P). All of the candidates had a wealth of experience behind them including front line engineers, instructors and consultants. This was great company to be a part of.

Well the next part of the day is all covered by NDA, but I can tell you that I was wiped out by the end of the day. I feel like I was much better prepared this time around, though I am not sure if I scored enough points to earn a pass. I have already gone over some of the “stumpers” from the exam and worked my way through various solutions.

Im reasonably sure I am going to have to give this lab another attempt, but there is not much I can do about that now. This is all in the hands of the Juniper Certifications Team now. There is a 21 day SLA on the turn around of lab results, so all I can do is wait and prepare to book my next attempt.

I would like to leave the following advice to anybody preparing to take the JNCIE lab in the future:

• Prepare for time management. There is a lot crammed into the exam
• Read the entire exam. There are a lot of steps throughout the paper that can be consolidated and completed at the same time. I suggest making a list of all questions that affect each device and trying devise a strategy on how to meet all requirements before diving in.
• Know all of your topics. The lab exam is laid out quite clearly by topic, and these topics align with the same major headings as the blueprint. You are required to successfully complete at least one task from each section to pass. This means that you cannot say “Oh, I am weak in CoS or Multicast” and think you can make up your points elsewhere. Not completing a task from each section is an instant fail. BE PREPARED AND KNOW YOUR STUFF!
• My workstation during the lab was a Windows notebook computer with an external keyboard and mouse. You are allowed to bring your own keyboard and mouse if you wish. Unfortunately this was not what was tripping me up. You see, I am a Mac user and I had to get used to the fact that Ctrl is used instead of the Command key – I spent a lot of time pressing ALT 🙁 This will probably not be a problem for most people, but I will invest more time in lambing on a windows computer so I get the hand of where the keys are 😛 This may change in the future, but this was what I experienced.
• The lab is accessed via a VPN + Remote Desktop and a console server. All of this was up and running before I sat down at the lab machine. There was a little bit of lag for keystrokes, but nothing outside of what I am used to working on customer equipment in remote locations. Due to the time constraints in the lab though, you will want to be well versed in the Junos CLI short cuts (including Ctrl+W, Esc+b, Esc+f, Ctrl+A and Ctrl+E at the very least). These should help you move around the CLI without waiting for your console to catch up.
• Unlike other vendors, then JNCIE lab does include external machines that operate to show if your configuration is working. Be sure you know how to diagnose correct operation of your protocols and features from the blueprint  because it will be of great benefit with these devices behaving correctly.
• And last of all Juniper have made the sensible decision that IPv4 and IPv6 are equal. (Except of course where EX Licenses are concerned!). Know how to configure most of the tasks on each protocol – because you never know where you might get tested! Remember, this is the future of networking whether you like it or not, so get your IPv6 on!

As mentioned, the rest is just a waiting game now, and I promise I will post an update regardless of pass or fail! Until then, Im back to labbing some of the scenarios I came up against that I thought “should have worked!”.

POST: Well this blog post was supposed to be published over a week ago, unfortunately I have received my “Fail Mail” in the last couple of days, so I will be preparing to take this lab once again in August 🙁 This isn’t the worst news Ive received over the past week, as one of my best friends died in an accident at the beginning of last week and the “Godparent Card” has been activated. This is why my post was delayed somewhat as I have been working through assisting his wife and 2 young boys (both under 3) to deal with everything that is happening.

Well it appears that I am well on my way to holding onto the title for two years running, and once again, I haven’t posted anything for a couple of months. There have been a lot of changes going on around here in the past few months which have really taken me away from my “janitorial duties”.

There are three key items that I would like to take the time to update everyone on:

1. All Good things…

The first piece of news, and possibly the biggest, is that in March I handed in my notice as the CTO of eintellego. I have spent the last four years working with an excellent team of engineers and support staff, helping to build up a really impressive list of projects and achievements. I must point out that I myself was only one player in this effort amongst a team of driven and talented engineers.

During my time here I had the chance to work on building Service Provider wholesale networks, Enterprise WANs with 100’s of sites, leading edge Security implementations, Video Content Delivery networks and not to mention a range of emerging “Cloud Provider” solutions. I also had the opportunity to work on my skills in management, sales, and human resources (Glad I’m an engineer!). These opportunities have been a large influence on shaping my career to date as well as helping me plan path into the future.

I would like to give a special thanks to the entire eintellego team, especially Skeeve Stevens who took a chance on me and gave me to opportunity and freedom to grow my skills and develop my own “style”. Many closed door meetings were held between the two of us to “thrash out” the best solution to a problem, and this was certainly an exercise in seeing things from every angle possible (even if it sounded like a battle royal to those on the outside 😉 )

I wish the best of luck to everybody working there, and the best for the future.

2. Of New Beginnings

In late April, after taking my wife on a long over-due vacation, I took on my new position as Senior Network Engineer at ICT Networks. ICT is a Juniper Elite Partner based out of Sydney, focusing on Data Centre and Security deployments for some of the largest enterprise customers in the Australian market.

Even in just the few weeks I have been working here at ICT so far I have already gained exposure to a range of Juniper products that I hadn’t used before, and am learning a lot from engineers who have been working with these products for a long time. Some of the projects I have on my roadmap for the next couple of months are going to provide quite a bit of interesting blog content based around Data Centre and Security implementation and best practices. STAY TUNED!

I’m still finding a bit unsettling to come from a situation where I knew pretty much everything about all customers and all networks to being “the new guy”. Going from a list of a million things to complete and not enough time to complete them to all of a sudden trying to get my hands on as many new projects and I can trying to learn as much as I can 🙂 It’s a good feeling but Im anxious to jump in and play 🙂

3. Of Getting Back On The Horse

Some of my readers may remember that I was involved in the beta program for the JNCIE-ENT lab in August of last year. Needless to say I didn’t go as well as I had hoped, and with the range of things occurring in my personal and professional life over the past 8 months, I didn’t feel up to the challenge of trying again.

Well the good news is that after my vacation and the change in lifestyle, I have gotten back on the horse. My JNCIE-ENT lab exam is booked for 9am this coming Friday (May 25th). This is another reason why I haven’t been visible much lately because I have been trying to study as much as I can to hopefully “bring home the digits”. I also have to get right back into my CCIE R&S studies as the end of September marks 18 months since taking the written!

Now that I have put it out there publicly in this post, Im going to have to work my hardest to pass 😉 Hopefully I will have a happy post in the next few weeks.

Mop and Bucket

Well I hope that explains some of the reasons why things have been quiet around here, though possibly not a great excuse! As I hinted at above, there are some very good blog posts coming out of these upcoming projects that I hope you will all enjoy.

Until then… may all your packets be forwarded expeditiously!