This morning I sat and passed Cisco 200-301 Designing for Cisco Internetwork Solutions.    The exam is not easy, it required an 860 to pass the exam.   17 years ago when I took it only required a 755.    I got 844 17 years ago.    This time I got an 884.    It’s a tough exam as it requires deep and broad networking knowledge across all domains routing, switching, unified communications, WLANs and how to use them in network designs.

That exam officially gives me a CCDA.   That officially makes 7 certifications (5 AWS and 2 Cisco) in 5 weeks.

Next up is the Cisco Exam for 300-101 ROUTE.

Had a strong technical interview today. The interviewer asked questions about the topics in this outline.

• Virtualization and Hypervisors

• Security

• Docker and Kubernetes

  • Storage for Docker

• OpenStack/CloudStack - which I lack experience

• Chef

  • Security of data - see Databags

• CloudFormation - immutable infrastructure

• DNS

  • Bind

  • Route53

  • Anycast

    • Resolvers routes to different servers

  • Cloud

    • Azure

    • Moving Monolithic application to AWS

      • Which raises a bunch of questions on the Application

        • Virtual or Physical Hardware

        • Backend / Technology

        • Requirements

        • Where is this application on the Roadmap in 3 - 5 years

        • How much of the application being used

      • Cost Optimization

      • Security

    • Explain the underpinnings of IaaS, PaaS, SaaS.

These were all great questions for a technical interview. The interviewer was easy to converse and it was much more of a great discussion than an interview. The breadth and depth of the interview questions were impressive. I was very impressed with the answers to my questions by the interviewer. I left the interview hoping that the interviewer would become a colleague.

I passed the 200-125 CCNA exam today.   Actually scored higher than I did 17 years ago.     However the old CCNA covered much more material.   Technically per Cisco guidelines it’s 3 - 5 days  before I become officially certified.

Primarily I used VIRL to get the necessary hands-on experience and Ciscopress CCNA study guide.   Wendell Odom always does a good job and his blog is beneficial in studying.   The practice tests from MeasureUp are ok, but I wouldn’t get them again.

Next up the 200-310 DESGN.

Last time,  I started studying for Cisco Certifications, I built a 6 router one switch lab on my desk.   One router had console ports for all the other routers, and the management port was connected to my home network so I could telnet into each of the routers via their console ports.     It was exciting and a great way to learn and stimulate complex configurations.     The routers had just enough power to run BGP and IPSec tunnels.

This time, I found VIRL, which is interesting as you build a network inside an Eclipse environment.   On the backend, the simulator creates a  network of multiple VMs.

So far,  I built a simple switch network.   I’m using it with the Cloud service Packet as the memory and CPU requirements exceed my laptop.    Packet provides a bare-metal server which is required for how VIRL does a pxe-boot.   I wish there was a bare-metal option on AWS.

I’m still trying to figure out how to upload complex configurations and troubleshoot them.

The product is very interesting as it provides a learning environment for a few hundred dollars vs. the couple thousand which I spent last time to build my lab.

I had a goal 4 weeks ago, to pass 5 AWS certifications in 4 weeks.      I completed this goal:

• AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate

• AWS Certified Developer – Associate

• AWS Certified SysOps Administrator – Associate

• AWS Certified Advanced Networking – Specialty

• AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional

For the time being,  I’m going to be done with AWS certifications, unless I get a position which leverages AWS.      This week I made a list of the certifications that I will look at over the coming year with a goal to complete all of them by August of 2019.    I still have a fall semester to finish, so I’ll stop certifications at the end of August until December to focus on finishing my masters.

The list of Certifications I made.

• Azure

• GCP

• CISSP

• CISM

• Cisco

  • CCNA

  • CCDA

  • CCNP

  • CCDP

• TOGAF

• ITIL

• Linux Certification

Anyone know of any other ones to pursue?    Think it’s a good list for a Solution Architect as it has a broad range of cloud technologies, networking, and security.

I have decided, that my next challenge will be 2 Cisco Certifications in the next 2 weeks.     After that, we’ll see what is next on the list.

I sat the AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Professional exam this morning.   This exam is hard, probably the hardest of the AWS exams I have taken to date.    I did it in about half the allowed time.   Generally, the test is challenging as it covers a lot of topics and each answer always had two correct choices.   The entire exam is a challenge to pick the more correct answer based on the scenario and question with a driving factor of one more or more of the following,  scalability, cost, recovery time, performance or security.

I felt like I passed the exam while doing it, but its always a relief to see:

Congratulations! You have successfully completed the AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Professional exam and you are now AWS Certified.

Here is my score breakdown from the exam.

Topic Level Scoring: