Haytham jabbour’s Blog

Strategy and state of mind May 2, 2009

First of all this Certification will be harder for those who (like me ) come from an engineering background and like  to question every situation ,the reason behind it and how to solve it in different ways and what  is the real benefit from implementing this feature or that, 

And it will be  easier for technicians  who will just implement things as asked   (ow !! well yes i mean the exam not the preparation which is the best part …)

Well for who complicate things (no offence its like I do  ) you don’t have to change this in your whole career you just have to adapt for this exam  , since  they can not test you for more than 8 hours (already we suffer ) do don’t expect super real  scenarios , for the “as is guys”  you have a better luck in achieving this so keep doing what you are doing

 

Pre -Strategy  I will sure post mine but first read well this part

 

Myself I read all posted strategy and did not find myself in any full one  but in many parts and this cost me to fail first when I adapted a strategy because  it worked for someone else and it did look fine to me but was not super fitting  so develop your own does not matter how wrong it may look to others  as long as it involves 3 parts  

 

A- reading

B- implementing

C- testing 

Failing in any of the above will cost you a 1400 lunch ,that if you live in the states , looking at 3K to 4K if you come from  abroad excluding  your cigarettes if you are a smoker like me

 

And if you are confident enough about your   knowledge you can even allow yourself to change strategy on the spot ( oh!!! i can see tomatoes coming on me ) as per required in the exam as long as you stay focused to come back to your bases  ( many people will disagree I know   

I will show you how and I will post 2 sections   my strategy applied and worked-on for a month and the strategy in the exam day

 

My Strategy  (initially  worked on it for a full month like 2 to 3 times  a week 5 times last   week)

 

Timing is  based on remote racks which are very slow from my country (oops someone will be upset now cheers “hodhod”   and thanks Jack )

 

1. Reading  (15 to 20 minutes)
   • during which I note:
     •   infrastructure vlans and ippaddressing 
     • Service params because after you will be lost
     • Important to reread sections
   • Myway   : I prepare  the full dial plan in DETAILS!!  (dp , rl , translations, callerids  , epnm , translations etc  ) in my vision of things I can not configure if I don’t see the full detailed picture from start ( only for the call-routing section I mean)
   •  I don’t draw anything they give you the plan and it looks better
2. Configuration  2  to 2.5 hours
   • all basic infra structure first (NTP,DHCP , VLAN, routing , mulicast) 22 – 25 minutes
     • I know there are much quicker people but if you don’t have your infra running  you may not achieve other tasks
   •  Every router alone fully   except QOS 
   • Qos for all routers and switches  ( if you read the  paper you can add the switching  part to the infrastructure like mls qos  trust etc  , switchport priority extend set qos  on cat port or vlans etc )

 

Ps: you may need to do some work on servers and vgs as well keep it In your mind.

3. Call Manager ( 1 hour to 1.5 depending on the ping rtt from 200ms to 400ms )
   • Left to right top down with the exception of IPMA which is another MYway  which I do before any class or restriction sections (it seems weird  but I can tell you this is the fastest way ever to do IPMA  in less than 8 minutes  if you are slow  like me and in I don’t know how much minutes for the crazy tippers to be proven in my blog )
   • Doing service params
   • Finishing Tilll phones ( which is my slow part ) 
   • Call-routing  here  timing  is 15 minutes max  including RG RL RP and TSP not strange since I have it all prepared from before I don’t have to think  much here.

 

4. Unity  (15-25 minutes depending on complexity)
   • No particular strategy except for always checking
     •  the DNS in network and dns server for vpim
     •   EPNM in the integration and the exchange server and policies
   • Question by question  do your own check-list you do  top down or what ever but keep in mind things that are needed in other parts do it first ,, (stupid example but profiles before users ..)

 

 

5. CRS my best part (15 to 25 minutes  ( yes the range it 10  minutes you don’t know the what they can ask or what could go wrong with the IPPA service be ready for everything )
   • Subsystem
   • Application
   • Script
   • Users and service
6. Finaly IPMA  ( in MYWAY  which I will surely share you don’t have more than 5 minutes to spend here since most of the work is done already )

 

7. Testing 
8. I would like to pay particular attention to this section and call it the use your mind section  of course the regular logic is to test call-routing first  which no one argues with that i also do but for me does not mean testing all rp and css
9. MY WAY   is to test first what can take more time to fix . ( and this is depending on each person troubleshooting skills and  on the section itself  , but I don’t suppose that fixing css on a phone or   a route patterns or  even unity will take the same time as fixing CRS ,or SQL problem  so  use your imagination)

 

Lastly don’t deny your lifetime experience  and limit your mind during the exam

I saw people  putting an ip address in the dns server  to translate it to an ip address  I don’t think a proctor or even I would look at this as a good sign

 

 

 

The Real exam Scenario

 

10. Reading ( 30  minutes it was long full of features  and of course i was stressed )
11. Config  ( till lunch I was  approximately 1 hour  behind my  own  timing and it was depressing  ( u all know that when u get 20 minutes late on your timing don’t you ?) I was declaring failure at 11:30 still not done with QoS)
12. Break relaxed had to choose or to go home or to say I will do it
    • Though about all the people who backed me up and even suffered with me and of course of my self esteem
    •  I  ate and  set the come back strategy  ( had a small snack not  heavy  an juice fresh for vita C u need it  they have a big choice don’t get lost )  had a couple of smokes which I should quit
    • Back from lunch I did my personal record ( personal a lot are quicker  )  in 2 hours I finished from qos till ipma
    • 2:30 strated testing till the last minute
    • And in this exam I surely did not follow exactly my strategy specialy when  I had some problems in my pc or when I had to do 2 tasks in parallel  ( unity and crs)

I said I will do it obviously and here is where I want everyone to know don’t lose the battle before its lost

 

 

 

 

So have a defined strategy but be also proactive to save yourself  …..

It  does not help much to have a bold strategy when time is against you ,,

Don’t be afraid of doing new things if you are sure of it !!

this will be negating a lot of already CCIEs but this is MYWAY and I am sharing it with you  hope this helps

 

sorry for any spelling or typos i am doing this before anything else before even sleeping  ( spent 24 hours without sleeping waiting for the result  )