Troubleshooting Workbook

As my lab attempt revealed, my troubleshooting technique isn't as good as I thought it was.  As such I've been going through the Micronics Troubleshooting workbook which was written by Narbik and Dan Shechter.  So far I find it pretty helpful.

It comes with 10 Troubleshooting labs following the Narbik topology,  it ships with two Locklizard PDFs - one is just questions only, and the other with the answers for verification or when you finally give up.  Each lab has around 15 tickets which encompass routers and switches.  Currently I've been allocating myself 2 hours per lab.  Some tickets I can resolve very quickly, others take a bit of time to identify and resolve the problem - it's good though.

Although its a very small thing, I have stopped using Putty Connection Manager and have gone back to untabbed Putty windows with the "Always on top" and "Right Click = menu" which is what the lab environment uses - when I encountered this in the lab I found it a little disconcerting particulary during the troubleshooting when there were on the order of 30 possible devices to work with.  It wasn't the cause of me failing that section, it just help fluster me a little.  Already I am taking this into my workflow and learning to close down sessions that I don't actively require, while a very small thing on the scheme of things.  I think it might give a slight advantage next time I sit the lab (BTW it is possible during the lab to change the settings of Putty but I would rather save those few minutes of terminal configuration to be used for solving tickets)

If you're interested in trying out some of the tickets from the workbook without risking your cash - checkout some of Dan's mini TS Lab tickets to get a sense of the style and the whole of Lab #3 is available for free for you to evaluate.

Status Update

It's been two weeks since I attempted the CCIE R&S Version 4.0 Lab in Sydney (I have just returned from a vacation in Europe which started right after my lab attempt).  I found the lab pretty tough but doable.  For me by the time lunch time came around I was pretty sure that by the middle of the day, I was doing the famous expensive lunch (which at the Sydney campus was not bad to be honest)  My technique for troubleshooting just let me down - I have no excuses in this area, my speed and technique did not do me any favours here.  It was difficult to keep going once that section closed down with a number of outstanding tickets.  The configuration section was a different story, I found it relatively straight forward - a few variations of things I didn't necessarily expect but the experience gained using training materials from IPexpert and Narbik did arm me with the capability to deal with them and with the config section I achieved a pass.

I guess a little distance between reporting the status here allows the emotions to settle, and the time away from the routers and mailing lists are able to let me have a little break to regroup, re-energise and know that this is definitely something I can pass and that I intend to face the lab again in the next couple of months.  I intend to mainly focus on my increasing TS capability to be much faster in problem diagrnose and repair (but not ignoring the config portions) as to when I set my next date it will depend on when I believe I am ready and my workload (returning from a long vacation may mean I have a lot of catch up there)

For those interested in what the lab is like, the lab exam demo is very much on the money and may be helpful.