CCIE Collaboration Study Guide and Rack & Materials Update
UPDATE:
Revisions have been made to our materials that obsolete some (but not all) of the information in this document.
Please see the latest updates here.
Introduction
Many of you have been asking us for an update to our CCIE Voice to CCIE Collaboration materials transition. This document will serve to update you both on where we currently are with new materials, as well as give you a transition path and material to work on until we have everything fully transitioned over to the new Collaboration blueprint.
Overview
If you happen to be quite new to beginning to study for the CCIE Collaboration then you may not be aware of what many others already know, namely that this is not a brand new CCIE track, but rather a renaming and slight evolution of the CCIE Voice track. In fact, when we begin to talk about Collaboration, many technologies and products that are very active in your enterprise come to mind: TelePresence, MCUs, WebEx, VCS-C / VCS-E Expressway. Yeah - none of that is in the CCIE Collaboration Written Blueprint nor the CCIE Collaboration Lab Blueprint (Note: VCS is present in the backbone only - and all the hard work is on the VCS and out of the control of the student). So then you think to yourself, "... well Jabber, Jabber must be in the blueprints at least!" - and it is in the blueprint ... and from looking at the written and lab blueprint we can clearly see that it's worth a whopping 6% in the written and 8% in the lab. So then what is new to this lab from the old CCIE Voice exam? Not terribly much. New telephony dial plan features in UCM such as EMCC, CCD, Hunt Group Queuing, ILS and SIP URI dialing. Video --which we were always told in years past from the content manager at the CCIE Techtorials at Cisco Live that it was testable in the old Voice lab so you had to study it and INE covered it in our materials-- there just weren't any endpoints to test it out with, and now there finally are with the SIP 9971 IP Phone with USB camera attached. So really there are a lot of new telephony features, but little in the way of true Collaboration. So then how does this affect your studies and what new material do you really need? While there are quite a number of new features in UCM and other application platforms that we have already developed content for and will be releasing very soon, this means that there is already a vast amount of content that INE offers today that you can be studying with. What will follow is a breakdown of our existing content along with the very few sections that are no longer relevant (basically anything that relates to H.323 Gatekeeper). Everything else that we offer is 100% valid and very much worth studying. Even though this is labeled a Collaboration exam - it is still very much a Dial Plan and Troubleshooting-centric exam, with the vast amount of points going towards getting a proper dial plan functioning along with the necessary media resources to allow that dial plan to function (40%), and troubleshooting that setup (25%). Major difference is simply that now the media resources now include Video. And we have you covered in spades when it comes to dial plan, troubleshooting and all of the other ancillary product-specific topics such as UCCX, Unity Connection, CUE and CME.
Update on New Collaboration Materials
Racks:
We have built completely new racks that should be released into the scheduler at the end of next week. I have included an updated rack diagram below and each rack has the following specs:
- Cluster1:
- VMs: 3x UCM, 1x IM&P, 1x CUC, 1x UCCX, 2x Jabber
- Rack Phones: 3 direct attached 7961s (remotely controlled w/ variphy)
- Remote Phones: 3 including 9971s at your physical study location via L2VPN
- Cluster2:
- VMs: 3x UCM, 1x IM&P, 1x CUC, 1x Jabber
- Rack Phones: 1 direct attached 7961 (remotely controlled w/ variphy)
- Remote Phones: 2 including 9971s at your physical study location via L2VPN
- IP/PSTN Cluster:
- VMs: 1x UCM, 1x IM&P, 1x VCS, 1x TMS, 1x Jabber/JabberVideo
- Rack Phones: 1 direct attached 7961 (remotely controlled w/ variphy)
- Remote Phones: 1 at your physical study location via L2VPN
- Shared between Clusters:
- Site Routers: 3x 2911 running IOS 15.2(4)M5 each with:
- 1x HWIC-2T for Frame Relay (sigh, yes Frame Relay)
- 1x VWIC3-1MFT-T1/E1 for ISDN PRI
- 1x PVDM3-128/256 for Transcoding/Audio/Video Conferencing
- 1x EHWIC-4ESG-P and PWR-2911-POE (branch sites only) for PoE switching
- 1x SM-SRE-710 (branch 2 site only)
- PSTN Router: 1x 2811 running IOS 15.1(4)M3 with:
- 1x HWIC-4T for Frame Relay
- 3x VWIC2-1MFT-T1/E1 for ISDN PRI
- 2x PVDM2-64 for TDM to VoIP
- HQ Site Switch: 1x 3560E-V2 running IOS 15.0(2)SE5
Videos:
I have already recorded 30 hours of videos that cover newer feature topics like Jabber, URI dialing, video phones and video conferences between 9971 and Jabber (w/video) and in depth troubleshooting on MGCP, H.323 and especially SIP, that are being edited by our video department and should be released within a few days. I will update this post with the new playlist in the next section as soon as they finish.
Tasks:
Again, we have already created quite a number of tasks and screenshot-based solutions, and they will be coming out very shortly on our new delivery system that we announced at our INE Rewired party at Cisco Live this week.
How to Use Existing INE CCIE Voice Materials
Below is a list of our CCIE Voice products with links, along with the very few sections of content that are no longer tested and that may be skipped. Also, I offered in another blog post an 18 month plan, complete with downloadable spreadsheet to plan out your exact study dates. As our video department finishes editing more videos and releases them, I will update this post with links to that material.
CCIE Collaboration - Unified Communications on Unified Computing System (UC on UCS) Videos
All new and relevant and necessary for written.
CCIE Collaboration CCD/SAF Videos
All new and relevant and needed for both written and lab.
CCIE Voice ATC Videos
Everything relevant except the sections related to “H.323 Gatekeeper”:
- H.323 Gatekeeper with CUBE - Concepts & Slides Part 1
- H.323 Gatekeeper with CUBE - Concepts & Slides Part 2
- H.323 Gatekeeper with CUBE - Demonstration Part 1
- H.323 Gatekeeper with CUBE - Demonstration Part 2
- H.323 Gatekeeper with CUBE - Demonstration Part 3
- H.323 Gatekeeper with CUBE - Demonstration Part 4
CCIE Lab Preparation Videos:
Everything relevant except the sections related to “H.323 Gatekeeper”:
- Dial Plan - H.323 Gatekeeper: Part 1
- Dial Plan - H.323 Gatekeeper: Part 2
CCIE Deep Dive Series Videos:
Everything relevant except the sections related to “H.323 Gatekeeper” and I even cover things such as CME with both SIP and SCCP phone configurations:
Module 08 :: Expert H.323 Gatekeeper :: Runtime 7 hours 6 minutes
- Provisioning IOS H.323 Gatekeeper
- Registering CUCM with H.323 Gatekeeper
- Registering CUCME with H.323 Gatekeeper
- Routing Calls from CUCME to CUCM via Gatekeeper in Multiple Zones with Dynamic E.164 Aliases
- Routing Calls from CUCM to CUCME via Gatekeeper in Multiple Zones with Multiple Tech Prefixes
- Routing Calls from CUCME to CUCM via Gatekeeper in Multiple Zones with Multiple Tech Prefixes
- Routing Calls from CUCME to CUCM via Gatekeeper in Multiple Zones with Static E.164 Aliases
- Routing Calls from CUCM to CUCME and Back via Gatekeeper in One Zone with One Tech Prefix
- Gatekeeper Call Admission Control
- Routing Calls from CUCM to CUCME and Back via Alternate Gatekeeper Clustering in Multiple Zones with Multiple Tech Prefixes using GUP
CCIE Voice Volume I Workbook:
Everything relevant except the sections related to “H.323 Gatekeeper”:
- Expert Gatekeeper
- Provisioning IOS H.323 Gatekeeper (GK)
- Registering CUCM with an H.323 Gatekeeper
- Registering CUCME with an H.323 Gatekeeper
- Routing Calls from CUCM to CUCME via Gatekeeper
- Routing Calls from CUCME to CUCM via Gatekeeper
- Gatekeeper - Call Admission Control (CAC)
- Gatekeeper - One Zone w/ One Tech-Prefix
- Alternate Gatekeeper - Clustering with Gatekeeper Update Protocol (GUP)
- Extensive Testing
- Troubleshooting Gatekeeper
CCIE Voice Volume II Workbook:
None of the Full Multi-Protocol "Mock Labs" in Volume II contain any H.323 Gatekeeper tasks, but do contain tasks that a CCIE Collaboration lab today would require you to accomplish, making them all great labs for a prospective student to shoot for being able to accomplish in 5-6 hours maximum, leaving you additional time for the extra tasks that would be related to new features. These are still very relevant mock labs!
Recommended Reading
It should go without saying that for any person wanting to attain a CCIE certification, that hundreds of hours go into reading alone (outside of hands-on lab hours) during your studies. Much of this will come as you work within the construct of our materials.
First up is the Unified Communications 9.x System Reference Network Design Guide (SRND) It's around 1200 pages and worth reading every single page.
Reading some of the Midmarket Preferred Architecture guides such as this one for general Collaboration and this one for Jabber can be great entry points and ongoing reference guides.
Also, this time when Cisco wrote their written and lab blueprints, they took some time to include links at each topic level to reading material that are usually system guide references to the topic. Occasionally they want you to pay to gain access, and usually it's really not worth it - plus you already have an INE All Access Pass to the same topics, so it's most likely redundant. At any rate, most of the links are to very good documentation reference materials to read.
CCIE Collaboration Written blueprint breakdown topics.
CCIE Collaboration Lab blueprint breakdown topics.
This next book is incredibly written and covers WAY more than you need to know for the CCIE Collaboration lab, but is still definitely worth the read if you do any enterprise, SP or Data Center work with Quality of Service. End-to-End QoS Network Design: Quality of Service for Rich-Media & Cloud Networks, 2nd Edition
And as Brian so eloquently put it in an earlier blog post, for those of you that have never heard of Cisco Live Online On-Demand Library before, you’re welcome. This is where all the video recordings and PDFs of slide decks live from every Cisco Live convention for the past 5 years. Use the filters on the left to limit your search to presentations with video, from the past few years, and limited to Collaboration and Voice - such as this filter is already setup for.
How to Study for the CCIE Lab Exam
At the risk of ever-so-slight plagiarism (at least I work for the same company :)), I'm going to reiterate pretty much word-for-word what Brian said during his pass of the CCIE Data Center lab, simply because many people that study for this exam probably wouldn't have had much reason to come across and read much in the way of a data center post.
Brian Dennis and Brian McGahan teach a methodology that I have also been personally using and teaching for the past 8 years, even if I didn't always have this very simple set of slides to define it as I found they had when I arrived at INE 5 years ago. I saw these two simple slides they created and that I now use in every class I teach. This methodology is essentially a four step process of learning and testing incrementally. This is also the same methodology that has helped Brian Dennis obtain five CCIEs, Brian McGahan to obtain four CCIEs and the CCDE, and myself to obtain three CCIE, so you can quite easily trust that it works.
The methodology is a basic four step process as follows:
- Gain a basic understanding of the technologies
- Gain basic hands-on experience to reinforce and expand your understanding
- Gain an expert level of understanding
- Gain an expert level of hands-on experience
It might seem self-explanatory that you need to start at the bottom and work your way up, i.e. A then B then C then D, however over the years we’ve seen so many CCIE candidates try to shortcut this process and try to go from A directly to D. Traditionally these are the candidates that end up taking the lab exam 5, 6, 7 times before passing, essentially trying to brute force their way through the lab. Believe it or not, INE has had customers in the past that have attempted the CCIE Lab Exam in the same track 10 or more times before passing. Coincidentally, these are also usually the customers that don’t want to hear that they don’t know something or that their methodology is wrong. Go figure.
The CCIE is much more about the journey than it is the destination. You really only cheat yourself coming out of the process without truly being an expert at the technologies covered, so make sure you really take the time and be meticulous about going through absolutely everything.
Summary
INE has tons of material that you need to make you truly an expert. Don't wait until every last bit of new material has been released to get started now. You need an incredibly deep solid understanding of the core fundamentals, and INE already has 90% of the content you need to make you an expert, and more being released in every few weeks. Also, since INE has made the commitment to treat CCIE Collaboration as CCIE Voice v4 for our customers, and therefore ensure your investment, there is no reason you shouldn't get started with your studies today, and add on to them as we continue to add the new feature topics!
