Colin McNamara - CCIE 18233 , RHCE, GCIH, CCVP, GEEK

I just received an email from Cisco finally revealing what benefit the CCDE beta program members will receive for being good little test subjects.

As a CCDE beta participant on the qualification exam, you have given us your time and feedback and have made a significant commitment to making this a valuable program in the market. As a token of our appreciation for your commitment to the success of the program, if you qualify, we are offering the beta of the practical exam to you at a reduced price of $700, a savings of $280 off the retail price of the beta exam along with a priority seat. Cisco will be offering this beta delivery of the exam on October 1, 2008, in Chicago, IL at a Pearson professional testing center. This is an exceptional offer and opportunity to be one of the first individuals in the world to obtain their CCDE certification.

There is a catch here, and hopefully everyone who is participating is able to pull their heads out of current projects soon enough to catch it.

We can’t keep priority seats forever so we’ll need your commitment by August 1, 2008. After August 1, 2008 you will be registering under open enrollment rules and we cannot guarantee your seat.

That’s right, you have 11 days to reply to the email, or forever hold your peace. In my case, them email is already sent. Hopefully I can talk my VP into letting me take that $280 I “saved” him and apply it to a really posh hotel.

–Colin

My bud Darrel from our Dallas office passed his third CCIE this afternoon.

I think Rick (5x CCIE) put it best in a company wide email earlier this afternoon  -

Please join me in congratulating Darrel in obtaining his Storage CCIE. There are only 24 double CCIES (RS/Storage) in the world, so he is probably about 1 of 15 or less in the world to hold all three.

What is everyone’s vote what is next in his career?  And, NO, you don’t have a say, Darrel

A) Service Provider

B) VOICE

C) CCDE

Thanks,

Rick Davis

ePlus, Senior Network Engineer

CCIE - Storage, Voice, Security, Service Provider, Routing and Switching (#5672)

Great job Darrel, everyone is really proud of you. and our apologies in advance to the wife for stealing you for choices A, B or C. (My vote is for C)

–Colin

The CCDE just got VERY real in a big way.The following announcement was posted in the CCDE zone at the Cisco Learning Network. (If you haven’t checked the Cisco Learning Network out yet, I recommend it. Its like NetPro on steriods, but focused around certifications.)

REGISTER NOW for the BETA Practical Exam
Cisco is now registering beta candidates for the CCDE Practical Exam. Cisco has finished development of the second exam needed to attain the CCDE certification, the practical exam, and is now soliciting candidates for the beta delivery.

Cisco will be offering this beta delivery of the exam on October, 1 in Chicago, Illinois at a VUE professional testing center. Only candidates that have a passing score on the CCDE qualification exam may register and participate in this exam. Exam beta pricing is $980US. Register Now by email at:ccdebeta@cisco.com

For my CCIE, it always seemed like a switched turned the moment I put my credit card information in and secured a seat. Before that button was pushed, it was a “future” item to deal with. Once that button was pushed it was a “now” item. Things like going out, having a beer with the guys, video games, etc all got shut down so my focus could burn a hole in the subject matter.

I just sent in my registration email for the CCDE practical. I’ll be in Chicago Oct 1, ready to give it my all. But, the more important lesson I learned from my CCIE was that if you focus your efforts on your lab day, you will fail. However if you focus your efforts consistently over the months before, you have a chance of passing. Now that my registration email has been sent, it is time to turn that focus dial up, lock to the door to my office and earn the CCDE through months of hard work.

See you in Chicago

–Colin

Sunday morning twenty two coworkers and I got off various planes bright eyed and bushy tailed ready to attack a week of learning, networking and having a great time. After a week of classes, and entertaining till 2:00 am each night, we look more like the walking dead.

Of course, it was all worth it. Some people see networkers as primarily an opportunity to prepare for a certification. Others got to learn something completely new. Some even go just for the world of solutions and the various booth babes. What I value the most is the opportunity to see old friends, and make new ones, to sit down with someone you have just met and have a half hour conversation on distribution / access layer technologies, or just throw some darts. No matter what, the goal is to connect, learn and collaborate with my peers. This year, I can say that these goals have been achieved. See you next year at the Moscone Center in San Francisco at Cisco Live Networkers 2008.

Walking out of the convention hall this afternoon we were met with some crazy rain. Luckily I was able to catch some on my Flip Video.

Yesterday evening, a scary realization came to me as I was heading to the CCIE party at the Nascar Bar and Grille. The realization was, that in this ratty shuttle van, there was 26 CCIE certifications, and if we crashed we would take out a significant portion of the engineering leadership in our billion dollar company..

Luckily we made it to the party without dying, ePlus is safe for the time being. It was nice to have Cisco show appriciation to their biggest chearleaders, and even better to run into your peers and share a drink.

The venue was nice, though I am sure in retrospect that the organizers now now that if you pack hundreds of nerds in a room with video games and beer, there is bound to be a line. The party itself did seem to die out pretty quickly, but I do have to thank the folks at Cisco for taking the time to put the vent together for us.

Next year, Cisco is on its home turf. I think I’ll be the first to put my vote into the suggestion box. My vote is for Conference Room “G” . Where ever it does end up, lets look forward to seeing each other again next year.

The AXP is a open platform for the Integrated Services Router (ISR) that enables you to program in-house, custom applications that leverage packet level interfaces with the ISR platform. You can choose to install either a daughtercard (AIM-102) or a network module platform.

Where would you use these ?

You want  your custom application to be able to react, and act on network specific information. Integrating both at a very close level. Fundamentally your application can dynamically reconfigure your router in reaction to network events.

You want to remove common services such as AAA, Syslog, DHCP, etc, IVR apps, Unified communication apps all at the branch office in the ISR. If there is a failure, your router can dynamically reconfigure around that.

AXP architecture

Base Cisco Linux os, IOS CLI, Virtual Instances, C++, Perl, Java, OSGI, Bash. Fundementally this is very similar to a fedora core 4 systems doing paravirtualization.

API Fun - What can it do

1. You can query and change both the router and the network module
2. Leverage Embedded Event Manager (EEM) to trigger events on changes, and react to network events.
3. Network Packet monitoring .. Sniff, Sniff, Sniff

My Questions -

1. How do I automate network updates, similar to YUM?
2. Is Cisco using KVM for paravirtualization?