Hear ye! Hear ye! Hear ye!
New information, well, relatively new information about CCIE Service Provider version 4!!!!!!!!!
Ok, for those of you in the know, it's probably old news but for me, GOLD MINE!!!
The following link was like DDDDDAAAAANNNNNGGGGG!!!!
CCIE SPv4 on VIRL!!!
OK, so the main thing to know is that VIRL is used for SPv4. If Cisco can state it so can I. What needs to be mentioned is this, there are limitations, like NO BFD for IOS-XRv! Although its supported on CSRs.
I am currently recording CCNA SP NGN 2 for INE and once it's finalized with them, CCNP SP but it's just an email stating "Yeah, we'd probably have you do CCNP SP to fill in that gap". I am stoked to do it. Currently putting together the power points for the different courses.
My main goal is to go through CCNP SP Route, Advanced Route, Core and Edge in pretty much this order grouping Route and Advanced Route together, (lots of similarities) and Core and Edge since they focus mainly on MPLS. That will be a massively HUGE refresher for me as I am now 7 months into my first year as a CCIE. I want to stay fresh so I figured this would be a huge benefit.
So why is this such great news? Well for starters unlike R&S there is like NO resources out there on SP. It's one of Cisco's most niche markets, like Wireless, not many people go that far with it. Collaboration, Security and Data Center are HUGE right now. But if you don't work in those arenas or have exposure what do you do? Well, from a logical perspective it made perfect sense to me, tackle SP. There is already a ton of overlap, but also, if you have never been on IOS XR, a BRAND NEW Operating System.
XR is similar in a lot of ways and different in as many. My first goal as mentioned in previous post was to bring up my XR experience to that of IOS and then move forward, that's coming along nicely. I am hitting ISIS pretty hard right now and really enjoying it. Redistribution and RPLs are next followed by BGP and MPLS.
The main thing that one really needs to do is get equal experience levels on both platforms, then hit the blueprints. Once you learn one topic in IOS, learn it for IOS XR. I have 12 IOS XE boxes running and 4 IOS XR boxes running in ESXi. I am using the EPC feature on IOS XE to use wireshark. CCNP SP will have a lot of that as the courses are delivered.
Until next time keep studying!!!
Thanks for reading!
Rob Riker, CCIE #50693
