Narbik kocharians biography of william

Last week I took the Micronics Training CCIE Enterprise Infrastructure v1.0 bootcamp.  Link here.

Due to Covid it was 100% online, but the general outline is:

  • 5 Day class covering Routing & Switching
  • 4 Day class covering SD-WAN & SD-Access
  • Video-on-Demand for scripting & automation.

I have only taken the 5 Day R&S section, so that is what this blog will cover.  When I am able to take the SDA/SD-WAN class I’ll write a separate review.  Anyways, let’s get into it.

Prerequisites

On the Micronics site, they have this:

  • “There are no formal prerequisites for CCIE Enterprise Infrastructure v1.0, but we recommend you have an understanding of designing, deploying, operating and optimizing enterprise networking technologies.”

I’ll be more specific.  Before taking this class, you need to know your routing protocols at least at a CCNP level.  Probably higher.  If you go into this class and don’t know your routing protocols you will be lost and left behind.  Some of the other topics, less so, however you should also brush up on DMVPN.

It’s not that you won’t be able to take the class without this knowledge, but you won’t get anything out of it.  This class get’s really in depth.  For example, if you don’t know how the OSPF database works, then you will be completely lost during the OSPF section.

The Instructor/Delivery Method

The instructor for this course is Narbik Kocharians.  If you haven’t heard of him, which seems unlikely if you are studying for your CCIE, he’s the CEO of Micronics and a triple CCIE.  He also wrote the CCIE Routing and Switching: Bridging the Gap Between CCNP and CCIE book, which is fantastic.  To say that Narbik knows his stuff is an understatement.  He does most of the teaching off the topic of his head, and it’s remarkable how much he knows.

His delivery is 60% lecture, which he does on a “whiteboard.”  In this case it’s on his iPad and the notes are emailed to you the following day.  The rest of it is hands-on labs.  A lot of them are called “directed activities”, where you set up a lab and Narbik walks you through it.  Then there are troubleshooting labs, where you will get a topology and 7 or 8 tickets to resolve on your own.

I have to say that this method works really well.  Narbik does a ton of great lecture, but tells you multiple times that we will prove everything he has to say.  Which is true.  Anytime he explains how something works there is a directed activity where he proves it.  This is really effective when he claims that the Cisco docs are wrong, then proves it in a lab.

The labs themselves are given to you from Narbik’s EVE-NG racks.  Each student is given their own rack to log into and work on for the week.

Hours/Schedule

Everyday started at 10am and went at least 12 hours.  The first two days went past midnight.  The nice part is that Narbik can keep going forever, it’s just when the students are tired that he calls it for the night.  I have to say though by Friday I was exhausted.

As far as the topics covered, here is a breakdown of the days:

  • Monday
    • DMVPN
    • EIGRP
    • RIPv2 troubleshooting labs
  • Tuesday
    • Finished EIGRP
    • EIGRP troubleshooting labs
    • OSPF
  • Wednesday
    • Finished OSPF
    • RIPv2 (this was short)
    • OSPF troubleshooting labs
    • BGP
  • Thursday
    • MPLS with guest instructor Nic Bhasin
    • BGP troubleshooting labs
    • IPv6
  • Friday
    • Finished IPv6
    • QoS
    • IPv6 troubleshooting labs
    • Redistribution

I know it doesn’t feel like there are a lot of topics, but Narbik goes very deep on each one.  For example, the OSPF section was over 8 hours of lecture and labs.  That being said, there was a bunch of stuff that he couldn’t get to.  For those topics Narbik is actually going to be holding Saturday sessions for those of us who attended the class.  Those Saturday classes will cover:

  • BGP Best Path Selection
  • Security topics
  • Multicast

There is no extra cost for these Saturday sessions, Narbik is just giving them to us “for free.”  I also forgot to note that you are able to re-take the bootcamp at anytime at no added cost.  Awesome stuff.

Lab Workbooks

The last part of the course I wanted to mention is the workbooks.  Narbik gives you five volumes of labs to do.  I haven’t open up all the volumes yet, but there are at least 2000 pages to go through.  There were a couple of times where we looked at the workbooks during class, and they are very high level.  I’m going to be going through as much as possible in the coming months to prepare for the lab.

Last Thoughts

I learned a TON during this week.  There were so many features that I didn’t even know existed that we went over.  There were also a bunch of cool ways to use different features that I had never considered before.  More than that though, what I really learned is how to start “thinking” about the CCIE and how to start studying going forward.

For the thinking part, what I’ll say is that you really need change the way you think about network problems.  There were multiple times where Narbik would say “Ok, you have to do this, but you can’t use A,B,C or D to do it.”  In this case A,B,C and D would be the 4 ways you WOULD accomplish it.  So you have to really know the features and think outside the box to use other technologies to solve problems.  There were also plenty of “R1 isn’t working, but you can’t access R1 to fix it and you are only allowed to use 1 interface command to fix it.”  Just kind of driving home the point that you need to be an EXPERT at these technologies.

The biggest thing I got from this course though is how I am going to retool my studying.  Starting now, I’m no longer going to be doings tons of reading and then labbing.  I’m going to switch it up to doing everything in the labs, THEN reading on stuff that I’m confused about or need to dig deeper on.  Then lab it up again.  At the end of the day, this is a practical lab exam and I really need to know the CLI features inside and out before I sit the lab.  Obviously I’m not going to abandon reading books/docs/whitepapers/RFCs all together.  However, I need to shift my focus and do more labs.

Anyways, if you can take this course, I would highly recommend it.  That being said, it runs about $4k.  So if you can’t get your employer to pay for it you are probably better off saving that money and using a lab attempt as an 8 hour “bootcamp.”

I hope you got something out of this post.  This will be my CCIE update for this week.  I also have some interesting videos and posts planned so keep a lookout for those.