Cisco Certified Design Expert - Exam Preparation

CCDE
WAR ROOM
MOHAMED RADWAN
21 JULY 2016

Agenda
A
Introduction1
Purpose / Benefits2
Prerequisites3
Mind Set4
CCDE at a Glance5
My Journey towards CCDE6
Tips and Sample Questions7

Biography
Mohamed Radwan
16 years experience
Multinational Service Providers
Design and Delivery for Fortune 500 companies
CCIE R&S
CCDE
VCP-NV, CCDP, CCNP, PMP….
Contributed as a SME towards the CCDE program
Other areas of interests (SDN, DC, IoT, Security, …)
Hobbies : Reading, Running, Squash
Contact : abobakr.mohamed@gmail.com

Why CCDE?
CCDE
Certified
N
E
S
W
Career
Knowledge
Personal Goals
Financials

It’s not a Cisco specific
certification
Advance in your Profession
Stretch your technology skill
set and your business skills
Competition
isn’t getting any
easier
Upmarket your
value in the
industry
Enrich your
Knowledge
Career
Financial and
Personal Goals
Technical and
Business Knowledge
Purpose
Why to even think about CCDE?
1
2
3

• Career development as most people moves from
Operations  Implementation  Design  Architect
• Assesses real-life infrastructure network design
(unlike CCIE which assesses configuration,
implementation, troubleshooting and operations)
• Maps to network designer job roles at the expert-
level
Career
Mohamed Radwan CCDE#20140067

• Poor network design is the root cause of many
network problems
Technical Knowledge

• Because not many networks are built to the pillars: scalability,
resiliency, security, manageability
• Paradigm shift from what/How (implementation mind-set) to Why
(Design mind-set)
• Analytical skills
• Focus on customer’s requirements
• Consider limitation and constrains while building your design
• Know Best Practices for specific case, and use them for the benefit of
the customer
• Master the network core knowledge (Routing, MPLS, QoS, …)
Technical Knowledge

• CCDE value towards large projects and designs
• A “good-to-have” or “plus” in few job descriptions
(mainly in US market)
• Financial return is not guaranteed
Financial

• Advance your career
• Part of the elite group of CCDE worldwide
• The only path-way to CCAr
• Self Esteem
• Accomplishments and achievements
Personal Goals

• A certification relevant to designers
• Think “WHY” instead of “HOW, and WHAT”
• Provides a baseline set of skills
– Analytical
– Requirements gathering
– Understand and educate customer
• Technologies are great, however need to use to the benefit of
customer’s requirements
Mind-set

craft customer
experience strategy
and to align it with
corporation strategy
Strategy
who customers are, what they
want, needs? It is the one that
replaces everyone’s guesses
about customers with actionable
insights.
Customer Understanding
understand their business
improvement opportunities and
to translate those requirements
into technology and knowledge
solutions
Interaction
Bridge between Business and Technical

Successful Designer/Architect
05
04
03
02
01
Consider business requirements,
dependencies through project
lifecycle (e.g. tools, people, process)
Ensures project success is
communicated in business terms to
the community
Is a continuing participant of project
teams providing solutions to
business units
Translates business needs into
technology requirements for the IT
project team
Facilitates the development of the
business requirements in business terms
for the client

• No prerequisites for CCDE
• In my opinion candidate should have:
 At least 7 years experience
 3 – 5 years design experience
 Customer facing (Pre-Sales) is a plus
Prerequisites

• Fear of the Unknown
• As per Cisco Certification site
“Cisco Certified Design Expert (CCDE) is for expert-level
network design engineers, expert-level network leads of
IT infrastructure teams, and expert-level network leads
of architecture teams working in job roles that require
them to translate business needs, budget, and
operational constraints into the design of a converged
solution”
Overview

• Expert-level Cisco
certification which assesses
infrastructure network
design skills
• Tie business to technical
• CCDE Exam
 Written exam
 Practical exam
CCDE at a Glance
For More Information:
https://learningnetwork.cisco.com/community/certifications/ccde

• Vendor neutral
• No hardware questions
• No Configuration questions
• Not a business test
• No “budget” questions
• There are business problems driving
a specific technology solutions
• Designs large scale networks in a
variety of business environments
• Identify root-cause and resolve
design level issues
CCDE at a Glance

• Key Milestones:
 2008 CCDE Introduced
 2012 CCDE Version 2
 2014 CCDE Expanded footprint
History

• Russ White:
– Biography:
• 20+ years experiences, Network Architect, Author of ten books on networking
technologies; forty software patents; developed the CCDE and CCAr certificates.
– Books:
• Optimal Routing Design, The Art of Network Architecture, CCDE Quick Reference,
Practical BGP, IS-IS: Deployment in IP networks, EIGRP for IP…and more
– Other publication
• Multiple RFCs  BGP, OSPF, EIGRP, …
• Others
– Khalid Raza
– Alvaro Retana (co-author many of Russ White’s books)
CCDE development team

• Experience
• Service Provider gained skills is a great asset
• For me, I have around 16+ years experience –
majority in Multinational Service Providers
• Almost 10 years design experience
• Customer facing
• The last four years more insight in security , DC,
and Cloud Computing fields
My Journey
Mohamed Radwan CCDE#20140067 Mohamed Radwan CCDE#20140067

• Write your dream and it will come true
• Plan (time, cost, resources, …)
• Evaluate yourself (SWOT)
• READ READ READ
• Always ask why while reading
• Is there a better way to accomplish the task
• Evaluate and weight potential options
Must Do

• Optimal Routing Design
• Definitive MPLS designs
• End to end QoS
• BGP Design & Implementations
• CCDE Study Guide
Reading Path

• Not only as a preparation for CCDE exam, but
they are really good reference in you real work
experience
– The Art of Network Architecture
– MPLS Enabled Application
– Top-down network design -- 3rd Edition first four
chapters
– Selecting MPLS VPN
– Comparing, Designing, and Deploying VPNs
– Network Security Architecture
• skim through all Russ White’s books to get the
feel and thoughts of him
Additional Reading

Few important sample sessions:
• EIGRP in depth
• EIGRP Deployment in modern network
• Deploying OSPF in a Large Scale Network
• Compare IGP protocol
• Scaling BGP
• Enterprises’ Dilemma: Choosing L2VPN or L3VPN
• MPLS Inter-AS
• WAN Architectures and Design
• IPv6 Deployment in SP
Cisco Live

• Cisco Live – continued
– design, and deployment sessions for each technology
– a good tip is using speed watch (VLC as example) it will save u valuable time
which can be used for other kind of preparation
• Cisco Validated Design
– mainly WAN, and SBA area.
Other Resources

• The qualifying exam for CCDE certification
• assesses a candidate's understanding of network design
in the areas of routing, tunnelling, Quality of Service,
Management, Capacity, and Security
Written Exam

• Exam Locations
– Can you spot your city? 
Written Exam

• Decide, Evaluate yourself
• Plan
• Prepare resources
• Follow the plan (determined and flexible)
• Take the exam
CCDE Written

• First, Evaluate where you currently are
• Streamlined Preparation Resources
• Download the spreadsheet and personalize it
https://learningnetwork.cisco.com/community/certifications/ccde/written_exam/study-material
• Exam Topics
http://www.cisco.com/web/learning/exams/docs/352-001_ccde.pdf
Self Evaluation Tool

• Optimal Routing Design
• Routing TCP/IP volume 1/2
• VPN Architecture
• CCDE Study Guide
Additional Reading
• Designing Cisco Network Service Architectures (ARCH) Layer 2 VPN
Architectures
• Network Management Fundamentals
• Network Security Architectures
• Deploying IPv6 Networks
Study Resources

• Pearson Vue
• No prerequisite
• 400$
• Candidates who fail an exam must wait a period of five (5) calendar
days
http://www.cisco.com/web/learning/exams/policies.html#~Req
Taking the Exam

• When will EIGRP protocol converge faster than others IGP protocols?
A. Hub and Spoke topology
B. Full Mesh topology
C. Availability of a feasible successor
D. Availability of an alternate path
E. Fast hellos is configured
Sample Questions
Not in all cases
Link-state better in full mesh
Is it feasible?
No
Correct

• BGP environment with hundreds of routers already configured, and
thousands of neighbourships between them; which enhancement we
can use?
A. Route-Reflector
B. Confederation
C. Router-Server
D. Rendezvous-Point
E. Migrate to OSPF
Sample Questions
No
2nd option
Not valid in this case
Multicast
Correct

• What is considered an advantage of GETVPN over DMVPN
A. Scalability
B. Easy configuration
C. Redundancy
D. Handling Multicast
E. Using public IP addresses
Sample Questions
No
Both
Both
Both
Correct

• The main reason to have out-of-band management
A. Reduce cost
B. Independent network
C. More secure network
D. Higher speed network
Sample Questions
No
Someone can argue here
Usually no
Correct

• ABC Company have 500 site in different locations and all sites are
connected to internet. ABC want to have a secured connection
between all sites which VPN solution will be suitable for such scale
A. IPSEC
B. GET VPN
C. IPSEC over GRE
D. DMVPN
Sample Questions
No
Not Scalable
No, good luck with configuring 500 sites 
Correct

ABC Company have 1 HQ and 2 branches and it is using L3 MPLS VPN with
BGP as PE-CE routing between all sites. ABC Company want to have hub and
spoke topology. Which design will achieve this requirements?
Sample Questions
No
No
Correct

• XYZ Bank have 2 data centers both of them are active and redundant.
XYZ have /24 Public subnet and each data center is connected to
different ISP. Traffic should be routed to the data center where public
service is located and in case of failure all traffic should be routed to
the active DC; What can XYZ do to achieve the above requirements?
A. Add another Internet connection to each DC
B. Use GSS to achieve failover
C. One /25 block is used for the first data center and the second /25 block is used
for the second data center. /25 block will be sent to ISP. The /24 block is sent to
both ISPs and GSS is used for client failover
D. BGP will load balance by default
Sample Questions
No
No
No
Correct

• ABC Company is using a service provider for its WAN backbone
between 10 sites using MPLS L3 VPNs.; ABC Company want to have
their own MPLS, multicast services, and L2 adjacency. What Can ABC
Company do to achieve the above requirements?
A. Request VPLS from Service Provider
B. Request EoMPLS from Service Provider
C. Configure GRE tunnels between all sites
D. Configure GET VPN between all sites
Sample Questions
No
No
2nd Option
Correct

• When building the connectivity, and communication carrier for
sensors/actuator, we are looking for wireless technologies such as:
A. WiFi
B. ZigBee
C. Bluetooth
D. LoRA
E. RFID
Sample Questions
No
Someone can argue here
Correct, the Future
Correct
No

• Cloud Service Providers “CSP” will launch five Data Centres, and
examining the possible solutions for VLAN extension, L2 replication and
DCI between these Data Centres. Which cost-effective tunneling
technology shall they use?
A. L3VPN
B. VPLS
C. Dark Fibre
D. VXLAN
Sample Questions
No
2nd best option
Very expensive
Correct

• Number: 352-011
• Eight-hour exam + one-hour lunch
(not delivered in exam center)
• consists of four sections (25 to 35
questions per section)
• 9 hours exam
 Section 1
 Section 2
 <lunch break>
 Section 3
 Section 4
• Cost: $1600 USD
• Location: Pearson VUE
Professional Test Centers
• Pre-requisite: CCDE Written
• Upcoming exam dates
 Wednesday August 31, 2016
 Thursday November 17, 2016
 Wednesday February 22, 2017
 Thursday May 11, 2017
 Tuesday August 29, 2017
 Thursday November 09, 2017
Practical Exam

• Determine your strength and weakness
• Work on your weakness, don’t forget your strength (revisit them)
• Group Study
• Follow the plan (determined and flexible)
• Take the exam
CCDE Practical

39%
12%
13%
36%
Implement Network
Design
Validate &Optimize
Network Design
Develop Network
Design
Analyse Design
Requirements
Practical Exam Questions

• Merge two organizations
• Add a Technology/Service
• Replace a Technology/Service
• Design failure, and how to fix it
• Scaling
Scenarios

Definitive MPLS Design Book
Local Telco
CHAPTER 3

• Data and long-distance voice service provider in the U.S.
• Owns its fiber and transmission facilities as well as a Layer 2 switching
infrastructure (ATM and Frame Relay)
• Internet service using 350 PE in 100 POP
• MPLS L3 VPN using 250 PE
• Dedicated PE for Internet and MPLS
• Backbone using DWDM technology raw high-speed links (OC-48 (2.488
Gbps) and OC-192 (10 Gbps) >> STM16 STM64
• No protection using the optical for IP backbone only inside the ring>>
relies on IP/MPLS protection when required
• POP is classified as either a backbone (Level 1), medium (Level 2), or
small (Level 3) facility
Overview

Topology

• Layer 3 MPLS VPN scalability; as the predicted growth of this service
over the coming years
• Enrich the Layer 3 MPLS VPN service with QoS commitments
• Offer high-availability commitments to VPN users without additional
CAPEX.
Design Objective

• IGP >> ISIS (for around 3000 routes)
• Single L2 area
– In the future: consider splitting the network into multiple levels
(each POP would be the Level 1 hierarchy). This would be necessary
to also preserve the network convergence times
• Using public IP@ for loopback and pt2pt
– Why>> flexibility to customer to choose whatever range he wants,
easier in case of merger/acquisition
Routing

• Each Level 1 POP has two Internet RRs – P router
• All PE peer locally with RR
• RR hierarchy from Level-1 PoP to Level-2
BGP

• Using LDP for L3 VPN service only
• Internet service in the global routing
– Why >> operate the network as it was before introduce MPLS
• LDP label binding for only PE loopback
USCom has added the 23.49.20.0/22 address range to the filter. This range currently is not used in the deployed network. It is held in reserve in case
the existing 23.49.16.0/22 address block becomes exhausted.
MPLS

• No more than 15% of the total access links of any
given customer onto a single PE
• Limits number of VRF per PE, number of routes per
PE, number of routes per VRF, per site
• Naming convention
• RD per PE for better convergence
• Reserve some RD, RT values (for internal use, central
services, ….)
L3 VPN

• Converged data, voice, and video traffic
• Access link – last mile is not cheap (dedicated per
customer) >> apply QoS here
• Over-Engineering in the core and not deploying any
DiffServ mechanisms >> easy config and operation
• link utilization doesn’t exceeds 40% (help in QoS and
protection)
QoS

• Consider single failure >> don’t design for corner
cases
• Converge in 50 msec for inter-PoP
• Both Internet service and MPLS has the same
protection
Protection and Recovery

• However they config it for specific core links where no DWDM
protection provided
– One hop FRR
– Configure SRLG per interface on the core
• Deploy Prefix Prioritization for FRR routes
• Use Forwarding Adjacency >> advertise the tunnel as route to other
neighbors so the can use it
Protection and Recovery

• Consider Scalability and future growth (ISIS choice)
• Internet service can be kept exactly as before deployment of the Layer
3 MPLS VPN
• Hierarchal solution (POP design, and RR)
• Where core BW is cheap/quick to provision, the core QoS design can
rely on pure overengineering
• Node failures may be covered by minimal IGP tuning to obtain fast
convergence
Lesson Learned

CCDE Practical Exam Demo
Exam Engine
Questions Type
Sample Scenario
01
02
03

• Mainly shows questions types
• Demonstrate exam engine
• To Get familiar practical exam look and Feel
• Exactly 12 Exciting Questions
• https://learningnetwork.cisco.com/docs/DOC-2438
• https://learningnetwork.cisco.com/community/certifications/c
cde/practical_exam/practice
• Let’s try it together 
Outline

• Highlight important facts about current situation
• Requirements
• Limitations
• Documents will remains for the whole scenario, you can get back to it
whenever u want
Requirement Gathering

• You can always re-check the requirements (from documents)
• Highlights is really useful
• Defend your answer
• Watch out  Branching Questions
• QoS : when/where to shape, or police, Hierarchical QoS with Shaping
on the parent
• Tip for Implementation: Follow OSI layers ordering (1 to 7 – physical to
application)
• Think about quick-wins
Tips from the Demo Exam

EXAM DAY
FINAL NOTES
RESOURCES

• Light Food
• At least 8 hours Sleep
• fast reading
• using highlighting colours for the scenario's documentations
• keep focus and concentrating till the end
• It is easy to start strong but by time and while approaching to the
last scenario you will be tired, and mentally exhausted
• don’t panic or get disappointed if the customer choice is different
than the one you proposed (actually this a real life example)
Exam Day

• “Unleashing CCDE” – By Elaine Lopez/CCDE program manager:
https://learningnetwork.cisco.com/blogs/unleashing-ccde .
• Discussion group CCDE study group at CLN
https://learningnetwork.cisco.com/groups/ccde-study-group
• Study Materials page for the CCDE Written
https://learningnetwork.cisco.com/community/certifications/ccde/written_e
xam/study-material
• Study Materials page for the CCDE Practical
https://learningnetwork.cisco.com/community/certifications/ccde/practical_
exam/study-material
• Preparation resources for CCDE at
https://learningnetwork.cisco.com/community/certifications/ccde/written_e
xam/study-material
Resources

Cisco Certified Design Expert - Exam Preparation

Recommended

Recommended

More Related Content

What's hot

What's hot (20)

Viewers also liked

Viewers also liked (20)

Similar to Cisco Certified Design Expert - Exam Preparation

Similar to Cisco Certified Design Expert - Exam Preparation (20)

Recently uploaded

Recently uploaded (20)

Cisco Certified Design Expert - Exam Preparation