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Diva Cupcake
Aug 15, 2005

Generally once a year on certs that I actually want to study for and attain. It's been almost a year since my CISSP and OSCP is definitely next.

Sometimes I'll cram in a cert out of obligation like VCP. I really have no interest in it any longer but gently caress ever trying to get it back if it lapses.

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Krispy Wafer
Jul 26, 2002

I shouted out "Free the exposed 67"
But they stood on my hair and told me I was fat

Grimey Drawer
I’m going to try for one a year. Got Sec+ last year, trying for ICND1 this year, and will aim for ICND2 next year.

YOLOsubmarine
Oct 19, 2004

When asked which Pokemon he evolved into, Kamara pauses.

"Motherfucking, what's that big dragon shit? That orange motherfucker. Charizard."

Kashuno posted:

General question for those that browse here; how often are you picking up a new cert? once a year? once every couple years? multiple a year?

Two or three a year usually, but my job benefits much more from them than most.

Bigass Moth
Mar 6, 2004

I joined the #RXT REVOLUTION.
:boom:
he knows...
For the main track Cisco stuff I'm trying to get to the next "level" every 2-3 years, since they expire every 3 years anyway if you don't keep taking tests.

There are some supplementary things that I like to focus on and take exams for. It helps me study to know there is an end goal.

Katamari Democracy
Jan 19, 2010

Guess what! :love:
Guess what this is? :love:
A Post, Just for you! :love:
Wedge Regret
This semester in college is a little rough on me. The intro to networking is rough and it's sucking the life out of me on my off days. I loved Testout when I was learning to get my A+ but I am using the same program to just the intro to networking and it sucks so hard.

E- To be fair I only bombed one test and my instructor has given our class full permission to only use written notes during the tests. Hell the last two tests I did today I feel I didn't do too bad on them; an 88 theory and a 100 on the lab simulator.

Katamari Democracy fucked around with this message at 02:45 on Mar 6, 2018

Docjowles
Apr 9, 2009

Katamari Democracy posted:

This semester in college is a little rough on me. The intro to networking is rough and it's sucking the life out of me on my off days. I loved Testout when I was learning to get my A+ but I am using the same program to just the intro to networking and it sucks so hard.

E- To be fair I only bombed one test and my instructor has given our class full permission to only use written notes during the tests. Hell the last two tests I did today I feel I didn't do too bad on them; an 88 theory and a 100 on the lab simulator.

I can't speak for anyone else, but it took a long time for networking to click for me. Hopefully you can find a learning resource that works well for you. Once I finally "got it", a jumble of a thousand questions and pieces of info all fell into place and made sense as a whole. Focus hard on layers 2 and 3, as (kind of by definition) everything else builds on those. If you don't understand what's happening at that level, you're going to build mental models about what's happening higher up the stack that are totally bogus and just make things worse.

Labbing is crucial, and it sounds like you're already on to that. The concepts can be pretty abstract and hard to grasp until you lab them up.

IMHO it will be super worth your while to pass at least the intro to networking course, even if you never intend to make networking the focus of your career. Literally everything in IT traverses a network in TYOOL 2018 and you're gonna have a better time if you understand the fundamentals of what's happening on those networks.

Apparently ranting about the importance of networking is going to be my posting gimmick in 2018 :dealwithit:

KillHour
Oct 28, 2007


I bought the All In One CISSP book. Reading through this is going to be like pulling my own teeth out, but is there anything else I should be studying? Also, don't be a moron like me and buy it in-store at Barnes and Nobel. I paid $80 for the loving thing.

Judge Schnoopy
Nov 2, 2005

dont even TRY it, pal
WGU alumni are eligible for an unlimited Pluralsights subscription. I've been using it to learn CISSP, NSX, and all sorts of other good stuff.

I would never pay for Pluralsights but as a free resource it's pretty drat nice.

KillHour
Oct 28, 2007


I'm a dirty college dropout non-degree-haver. :(

Yeast Confection
Oct 7, 2005
It's not too late. I'm going to be enrolling with WGU this year after graduating from college (the canadian version)... 11 years ago :smith:

Krispy Wafer
Jul 26, 2002

I shouted out "Free the exposed 67"
But they stood on my hair and told me I was fat

Grimey Drawer

Katamari Democracy posted:

This semester in college is a little rough on me. The intro to networking is rough and it's sucking the life out of me on my off days. I loved Testout when I was learning to get my A+ but I am using the same program to just the intro to networking and it sucks so hard.

E- To be fair I only bombed one test and my instructor has given our class full permission to only use written notes during the tests. Hell the last two tests I did today I feel I didn't do too bad on them; an 88 theory and a 100 on the lab simulator.

I’ve been in networking for going on a decade now and it still feels like an alien concept sometimes. I learned almost everything on the job, which is great for practicality, but means I’ve got big gaps in my knowledge for stuff I’ve never had to do.

It’s strangely expensive, but the site networklessons.com does a good job of explaining networking technologies that you maybe haven’t had experience with.

Diva Cupcake
Aug 15, 2005

KillHour posted:

I bought the All In One CISSP book. Reading through this is going to be like pulling my own teeth out, but is there anything else I should be studying? Also, don't be a moron like me and buy it in-store at Barnes and Nobel. I paid $80 for the loving thing.
Cybrary CISSP (free)
Official ISC2 Practice Questions
Official ISC2 Study Guide
11th Hour CiSSP

Those were my primary resources. Risk Management is a slog but not too difficult. SDLC was the bear for me.

some kinda jackal
Feb 25, 2003

 
 

KillHour posted:

I bought the All In One CISSP book. Reading through this is going to be like pulling my own teeth out, but is there anything else I should be studying? Also, don't be a moron like me and buy it in-store at Barnes and Nobel. I paid $80 for the loving thing.

Anecdotally speaking, 100% of the material on my exam was found in "11th hour CISSP" in just the right amount of detail needed for the questions I saw on the test. The official CISSP CBK is "good" in the sense that it goes into all the detail you'd need to understand the material, but is often overwhelming and .. all over the place, I found.

I may not be being objective because I did go through a bootcamp before I read "11th hour CISSP" so I already knew the material, but my impression was still the above -- the exam only asked questions which I would have answered by having read nothing but that book.

KillHour
Oct 28, 2007


All of that is very helpful, thank you!

some kinda jackal
Feb 25, 2003

 
 
I just want to point out that the bootcamp was an amazing peoplewatching experience to pick out people who had literally no real world experience and were only there because their company paid to fill a quota. It was pretty amazing.

KillHour
Oct 28, 2007


I assume those are the same people that put "Jeff Bullshit - CISSP" on their business cards.

Diva Cupcake
Aug 15, 2005

Martytoof posted:

I just want to point out that the bootcamp was an amazing peoplewatching experience to pick out people who had literally no real world experience and were only there because their company paid to fill a quota. It was pretty amazing.
This was literally me at a $5k PMP bootcamp. I noped right out of even attempting the exam.

dogstile
May 1, 2012

fucking clocks
how do they work?

Martytoof posted:

I just want to point out that the bootcamp was an amazing peoplewatching experience to pick out people who had literally no real world experience and were only there because their company paid to fill a quota. It was pretty amazing.

I remember sitting through one of these for some watchguard qualification, they put me on the advanced course a week after I took the basic course.

The guy asked me what made me want to come on the course and he seemed to appreciate it when I said "company needed to fill a quota, but i'll pay attention".

Then the place we were at tried serving us some fancy food (read: nibbles) and seemed a little offended when everyone went to the indian place across the street for some actual food.

FCKGW
May 21, 2006

Got my Security+ :stoked:

On to Cisco ICND1 now


As an aside, WGU is finally adding a full fledged CS program in June. Their degree plan just got published and they're looking to be ABET accredited too
https://m.wgu.edu/content/dam/western-governors/documents/programguides/2017-guides/it/BSCS.pdf

Mayne
Mar 22, 2008

To crooked eyes truth may wear a wry face.

Diva Cupcake posted:

This was literally me at a $5k PMP bootcamp. I noped right out of even attempting the exam.

Also me when I got my first IT job and got sent to MS Premier Workshop where the guy is explaining how they built ADFS to serve 100+mil users and I'm sitting there going "hmm, I know what DNS means".

Bigass Moth
Mar 6, 2004

I joined the #RXT REVOLUTION.
:boom:
he knows...
Has anyone done the Cisco CCDA recently? I am reading reviews and it sounds like the official cert guide sucks rear end (shocking, I know) so I want to get some perspective on what material was useful to those who passed. Kind of a lot of topics on the outline, so I'm wondering if I should do it or just go into the CCNP R&S instead.

https://learningcontent.cisco.com/cln_storage/text/cln/marketing/exam-topics/200-301-desgn.pdf

ChubbyThePhat
Dec 22, 2006

Who nico nico needs anyone else
It seems I have been tasked with getting my VCP6.5-DCV. Anyone get this or the VCP6 recently? Anything I should really watch out for or is it pretty straight forward? (Note I have lots of VMware datacenter experience)

vanity slug
Jul 20, 2010

Passed the AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner exam today. If you have a heartbeat and have a basic understanding of the popular AWS components, you'll pass it as well.

Katamari Democracy
Jan 19, 2010

Guess what! :love:
Guess what this is? :love:
A Post, Just for you! :love:
Wedge Regret
Testout has come out with version 5 for their networking courses: http://www.testout.com/lp/network-pro-5

Have not really noticed much but I did see that they removed unnecessary information regarding network signaling, SCADA systems, some assessments from network policies :argh:.

But the labs load up a lot faster and are more stable than it has been. So that is a plus! :angel:

Krispy Wafer posted:


It’s strangely expensive, but the site networklessons.com does a good job of explaining networking technologies that you maybe haven’t had experience with.

I went ahead and dumped 1 dollar and so far he is good at explaining things to me. Testout can sometimes be a little off so this is a welcome different point of view. I appreciate it!

My instructor also pointed me to Danscourses so I need to check him out as well.

Katamari Democracy fucked around with this message at 21:13 on Mar 7, 2018

Krispy Wafer
Jul 26, 2002

I shouted out "Free the exposed 67"
But they stood on my hair and told me I was fat

Grimey Drawer

Katamari Democracy posted:

Testout has come out with version 5 for their networking courses: http://www.testout.com/lp/network-pro-5

Have not really noticed much but I did see that they removed unnecessary information regarding network signaling, SCADA systems, some assessments from network policies :argh:.

But the labs load up a lot faster and are more stable than it has been. So that is a plus! :angel:


I went ahead and dumped 1 dollar and so far he is good at explaining things to me. Testout can sometimes be a little off so this is a welcome different point of view. I appreciate it!

My instructor also pointed me to Danscourses so I need to check him out as well.

I really like his diagramming actual actual router and switch command output. Most courses skip showing what each field means. Like I can run some commands and pick out the bit of data that I've been trained to look for, but it's good to know what all of the stuff means. He's also really good at showing the configs for each example. Now if it was only $20 a month instead of $40.

Katamari Democracy
Jan 19, 2010

Guess what! :love:
Guess what this is? :love:
A Post, Just for you! :love:
Wedge Regret

Krispy Wafer posted:

I really like his diagramming actual actual router and switch command output. Most courses skip showing what each field means. Like I can run some commands and pick out the bit of data that I've been trained to look for, but it's good to know what all of the stuff means. He's also really good at showing the configs for each example. Now if it was only $20 a month instead of $40.

I live in the USA and for me it's 29 dollars a month. :confused:

MC Fruit Stripe
Nov 26, 2002

around and around we go

Katamari Democracy posted:

I live in the USA and for me it's 29 dollars a month. :confused:
Sometimes people post from memory and their estimates are a bit off. Hope this alleviates your confusion.

Krispy Wafer
Jul 26, 2002

I shouted out "Free the exposed 67"
But they stood on my hair and told me I was fat

Grimey Drawer

Katamari Democracy posted:

I live in the USA and for me it's 29 dollars a month. :confused:

For some reason I thought it was $39.

Okay. I wish it was $20 instead of $29. I cancelled this month, but I will probably sign up again at some point when I can spend more time on the site.

sloshmonger
Mar 21, 2013

ChubbyThePhat posted:

It seems I have been tasked with getting my VCP6.5-DCV. Anyone get this or the VCP6 recently? Anything I should really watch out for or is it pretty straight forward? (Note I have lots of VMware datacenter experience)

I passed the DCV6 about 2 months ago. If you've got a lot of experience you should already know the practical parts, but knowing the various system and licensing requirements, editions and configuration limits will be helpful. I ended up using a study guide from vBrownbag and it was helpful, but my VMware experience was not as recent.

sudo rm -rf
Aug 2, 2011


$ mv fullcommunism.sh
/america
$ cd /america
$ ./fullcommunism.sh


sloshmonger posted:

I passed the DCV6 about 2 months ago. If you've got a lot of experience you should already know the practical parts, but knowing the various system and licensing requirements, editions and configuration limits will be helpful. I ended up using a study guide from vBrownbag and it was helpful, but my VMware experience was not as recent.

Anything else besides the vbrownbag stuff? i've decided to grab dcv6 since i took the class a couple years ago.

Doctor_Fruitbat
Jun 2, 2013


I fell off the cert train for a bit for various reasons mostly related to being bummed out about life, but I'm back on the wagon. Despite what people were saying about security on the last page, I should probably finish up the N+ first, since I'm mostly read up on it already.

FCKGW
May 21, 2006

N+ will give you a good foundation for understanding the Sec+ basics so it’s not a bad idea.

For Sec+ I highly recommend Darrel Gibson’s book and premium site. His performance questions were exactly like the test. Should run you $50 for everything if you get the kindle version.

sloshmonger
Mar 21, 2013

sudo rm -rf posted:

Anything else besides the vbrownbag stuff? i've decided to grab dcv6 since i took the class a couple years ago.

That and Mastering VMware vSphere 6 [https://www.amazon.com/Mastering-VMware-vSphere-Nick-Marshall/dp/1118925157] which gives goes more into best practices and isn't directly VCP related.

Krispy Wafer
Jul 26, 2002

I shouted out "Free the exposed 67"
But they stood on my hair and told me I was fat

Grimey Drawer
Messer (I think that’s his name) has a good Security+ cheat sheet for 10 bucks. Lots of data in an easy to read format and worth reading one or two of four times before taking the test.

Doctor_Fruitbat
Jun 2, 2013


I've got the Gibson books, although the Network+ overview only covers some of the material so far, which is a shame (the practice test questions book is good, but for actually learning the material I find it to be kind of a clunky format). I watched through Messer's video series previously but I wasn't aware you could actually buy the course notes, so I think I'll pick those up; his videos were good, but overall I think written material sinks in much more for me.

fordan
Mar 9, 2009

Clue: Zero

MJP posted:

loving balls, this is going to really make it suck to keep VCPs current. Does VMware not realize that not everyone is milking company dollars for their required course?!

I'm late on this, but why would this be an issue? Once you have a VCP you don't have a education requirement anymore, you just need to do the delta exam (or a different VCP or the AP or DX) and can prepare any way you like (books, vBrownbag, video training, etc)

MJP
Jun 17, 2007

Are you looking at me Senpai?

Grimey Drawer

fordan posted:

I'm late on this, but why would this be an issue? Once you have a VCP you don't have a education requirement anymore, you just need to do the delta exam (or a different VCP or the AP or DX) and can prepare any way you like (books, vBrownbag, video training, etc)

If you're like me and didn't take the delta exam in time, you have to retake the class.

welp

Bigass Moth
Mar 6, 2004

I joined the #RXT REVOLUTION.
:boom:
he knows...
I've decided to go down the CCNP R&S route for now before diving into the CCIE Collab deep end for a couple years.

I have been looking up lab setups and suggested gear. I will be using IOS images in GNS3 since I can get pretty much anything I need through work, but is there a list of the actual hardware Cisco uses for the testing? I keep seeing people say a few 2811/1941s for routers and 3560/3750s for switches.

ChubbyThePhat
Dec 22, 2006

Who nico nico needs anyone else

Bigass Moth posted:

I've decided to go down the CCNP R&S route for now before diving into the CCIE Collab deep end for a couple years.

I have been looking up lab setups and suggested gear. I will be using IOS images in GNS3 since I can get pretty much anything I need through work, but is there a list of the actual hardware Cisco uses for the testing? I keep seeing people say a few 2811/1941s for routers and 3560/3750s for switches.

I'll echo that for 2811's and 3560's. Everything I've ever done was those. I think I had one 1841 router in order to set up some fringe case frame relay thing, but that's not tested anymore! Yay!

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Judge Schnoopy
Nov 2, 2005

dont even TRY it, pal

ChubbyThePhat posted:

I'll echo that for 2811's and 3560's. Everything I've ever done was those. I think I had one 1841 router in order to set up some fringe case frame relay thing, but that's not tested anymore! Yay!

GNS3 doesn't support Catalyst switches. I've tried, it's a goddamn nightmare, and I never got it off the ground.

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