CCNP ENCOR 350-401 | REVIEW

how's it going guys welcome back to the buff nerd i know that it's been a little while since uh my last video a couple of things have transpired and slowed things down since the last time we talked but i am here with a lot of good news and a lot of things that are in the works so if you haven't already heard or saw i have passed the ccnp encore exam for the newbies what is the ccnp encore exam so if you're not already familiar i have a range of certifications that help me get to this role as a network engineer one of those certs is the ccna which is the cisco certified network associate certification this is uh one of the first certifications you can get to really align yourself and you know really dive down that networking path in order to become either a network admin or a network engineer if you're good enough the ccnp is the professional level certification of the ccna so the ccnp is the cisco certified network professional in previous videos i'll talk about uh landing the ccna and trying to figure out exactly what direction i wanted to go if whether or not i wanted to get the ccnp or if i wanted to go down a different path like cloud or network security or try and obtain a firewall certification or whatever the case may be ultimately i decided to go for the ccnp this is a decision that i made maybe about uh eight months to a year ago and since then i've been gearing up to study for the ccnp and finally after all this time after all of the burnouts after driving myself crazy with studying i finally passed let me tell you about the experience the ccnp was the hardest exam to study for taking the certification wasn't as bad it was just studying that was the hardest thing and the reason is because there was just so much material there's so many topics to cover when it comes to the ccnp there is infrastructure architecture virtualization network assurance and just a range of different topics protocols and standards that you have to understand in order to be geared up enough to take the certification before i talk about the score that i achieved when taking the certification i'm just going to talk about the method to the madness when it came to studying for it because that is the most important and most difficult part of taking the ccnp exam the certification will be easy but you have to make sure you know this material first so what i used to study for the ccnp first i used the ccnp official cert guide just to you know have a reference when it came to you know a book that i can go and get additional information on some topics that were a little hard to uh you know a little hard to wrap my head around and you know just to fill in the gaps of course but outside of that i use the website cbt nuggets and they have a video series on the ccnp which is extremely long which was a which was a very good thing but at the same time it was just just intense man there were so many topics and there was maybe about 50 hours if i'm not mistaken of material and labbing that you know i had to do when it came to studying for the ccnp which is primarily why it took me uh about a year in order to get prepped enough to take the certification outside of that of course you know i use what i always recommend you guys i use the boson uh exam environment for the ccnp encore exam in order to uh when i felt decent enough at the topics in order to take some practice tests and you know just get on the same you know on the same highway as the certification so that i knew what to expect new things that i needed to you know go over again or you know all that all that good stuff and with just those three things uh being used to study it still took me almost a year to get prepped to take the ccnp exam those three things i think were a good platforms and uh good material in order to get me uh coached up enough in order to take the zam when i think about it in retrospect but man it was a very long it was a very long journey in order to get uh the encore exam i'm gonna be completely honest with you guys uh uh i was discouraged a lot of the times because a lot of the material that was covered wasn't necessarily things that i would i was doing at my job you know and i just had moments where i was like oh man you know am i really going to use all this information or you know is this going to be beneficial excuse me uh when it comes to seeking jobs or you know are they going to ask about this when it comes to interviews like when exactly am i going to use all this information you know that's one of the things that was constantly in the back of my head because like i said a lot of things that were covered it's not stuff that i was doing at work a cisco sd-wan is something that's going to be flourishing within the next couple of years but you know me still trying to figure out exactly how i'm trying to angle my i.t career you know i just had moments where i was just you know a little on the fence on if i wanted to keep going down this path or if i wanted to pivot towards something else like i said there were so many topics and so many things that were being talked about while i was studying for the exam which was great information when it comes to like that uh tier two tier three level as a network engineer you know of course depending on the company but you know me being still very early in my career you know i just had you know just those moments of you know like just being at the fork in the road and trying to figure out exactly which way i was gonna go which is you know something i think that everybody goes through you know but anyways let's get on to the exam so the ccnp exam was a beast testing 4 was relatively the same as it was with the ccna you get 2 hours and about 100 questions that you have to answer before completing the exam there's no simulations there's no labing during the exam uh the majority of it is uh multiple choice you might have some drag and drops here and there or you might have some um fill in the blanks but the test is along the same lines as the ccna so if you're taking the ccna the structure of the ccnp and how you will be tested is relatively the same just like the ccna uh the two hours was very long me personally i used the entire two hours in order to take the certification i know some people just fly through it they get done maybe 30 minutes early but you know i was really trying to pay attention to what i was doing and make sure that i got you know a thorough understanding of the question prior to answering them as far as the exam topics they covered the exam topics fairly evenly they had a good mix of architectural questions and virtualization questions they didn't really lean any direction when it came to you know you know it's anything being talked about more than the other or anything along those lines i think that everything was covered uh pretty evenly one exam topic that i wish that i had studied more and you know been more conscientious of was uh of course automation and automation is that thing that's becoming uh extremely relevant when it comes to networking and after taking uh the ccnp i realized that that's something that i'm definitely going to have to get comfortable with if i want to continue going down this path to either get the ccie or just when it comes to progressing as a network engineer period because um scripps and python and json and ansible all of those things are starting to become the work smarter instead of harder you know kind of angle that people are using to approach network engineering and network development i scored a 951 on the exam which is very high very impressed with myself like i said if you study the material passing the exam wouldn't be hard it's just studying the material that's the hard part um the journey is like like most people say oh it's not about the destination it's about the journey i concur with that 100 when it comes to the ccnp exam man i i can't get over it the the ccmp just studying for it was just just a lot to be completely honest it was like studying for two exams um the amount of time that i used studying just for the ccnp encore by itself i could have used to study two exams and probably pass two certifications um when it comes to the video series if i'm not mistaken it's uh like roughly 53 hours or something like that when it comes to the c uh cbt nuggets uh video series and the uh specialties when it comes to the ccnp are about half the time um i've seen maybe like 25 hours of videos or 28 or something along those lines long story short the point is um the ccnp encore exam covers all of the core topics everything that you need to know prior to getting that specialty certification like advanced routing or wireless solutions or automation or whatever angle you want to go after finishing the ccmp i was completely burnt out um and i'm not saying this to discourage anybody but that's just that's just how it was um i wasn't even like i was more happy to be done with the exam than i was than i was when it came to actually passing it passing it was fine i'm like great i passed but i was just glad to be done because man is just a solid year of studying the same it's not even the same material it's just a solid year of studying you know one book in one video series that kind of just took a toll on me man i was so burnt out after i took the exam um that's why it took so long for me to make this video because it was just so much man and it just wore me out so bad and on top of that shortly after taking the exam i got covered so on top of being burnt out i was out of commission for 10 days because um i don't know how i managed to get it but um i managed to uh get exposed to covet and catch it that's a whole another story man laura mercy that was hard to deal with while i was sick i was trying to figure out the next avenue i was going to take when it came to my career and um just you know getting on the web and surfing the internet talking to a couple of people that i consider mentors and just trying to get an angle on exactly you know what's in demand when it comes to network engineers as far as specialties is concerned i found out that some of the things that companies are looking for that a lot of people don't really kind of focus on is you know network engineers that specialize in firewalls and wireless which prompt the question that i asked a few weeks back if whether or not when it came to specializing with the ccnp if you would go the wireless route that's one of those certs that not a lot of people focus on i don't even think there's any video series on the ccnp wireless right now um but yeah one thing i was debating on um after getting a recovery is which direction i was gonna go down and uh after doing some research and after seeing you know the kind of material that was available when it came to studying for either wireless or you know focusing on firewalls i decided to focus on firewalls so recently i just brought a dell poweredge r620 uh server and i've been doing a lot of work in order to try to get it set up so that i could do some labs the next video we'll be talking about that but before we go into all of that the ccnp shortly after obtaining the ccnp um i wanted to ask myself was it worth it and that is a hard question to answer right now like i said it's still very early and it's not exactly the ccnp yet it's only half of the ccnp um i managed to talk to a couple of people and you know you know get in the ear of a couple of engineers and you know ask if the ccnp was a good certification to get when it came to trying to obtain jobs and i got a bunch of yes and notes primarily because i told you about them you know wanting people that specialize in wireless or network security so it's a little too early to tell if whether or not this certification is worth it yet what i recommend for someone who has a ccna if they should get the ccmp it's still too early to answer that as well i will say that i've been reached out to quite a lot by recruiters uh when it came to you know different job roles and things along those lines but you know it's weird i get a lot of weird job offerings they ask for like senior senior network engineer oh you know i need somebody with 10 years of experience and i'm like i just became a network engineer a few months ago but yeah like you know once once you get this ecmp on your resume those are the kind of people that reach out to you um i haven't really had a chance to explore that side of things yet but um that's something that would definitely be in the works over the course of the next few months or so you know but anyways that is uh my review of the ccnp but if you do stick with it and you go into the dungeon that battle the beast with all the studying and labbing that you put in you will likely come out on top one thing that i also wanted to mention is that um when it came to studying for this certification um there wasn't a lot of labbing that helped when it came first when it came to studying for this uh particular certification um i noticed that none of the labs that i was doing really helped um a lot of these topics were things that were you know way above the likes of packet tracer and you know a lot of the things that a lot of the topics that were covered in this particular certification wasn't things that i can simulate in a program like that which is one of the reasons why i decided to purchase the dell server because i was going to try and see if i could potentially get my hands on some vms that would simulate you know wireless lan controllers you know potentially sd-wan i'm not sure i haven't really ventured down that avenue yet but that's definitely something that i wanted to mention when it came to you know this particular certification me personally speaking uh labbing maybe helped about 15 to 20 of the time uh outside of that it was more you know just do you know this do you know that you know have you read about this what happens when you do this and things along those lines all i got for you guys today in the meantime stay safe stay positive learn everything do some networking and pick things up and put them down [Music] [Music] you

Channel: TheBuffNerd

Views: 1,065

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: ccnp, encor, cisco ccnp exam, ccnp training, enauto exam breakdown, enauto 300-435 exam, cisco automation exam, cisco training 2019, cisco certification 2020, cisco certifications, cisco certification, cisco certification training, encor 350-401, ccnp enterprise, ccnp security, ccnp automation, cisco certified network professional, cisco encor 350-401, encor cbt nuggets, encor data knox, data knox, Network Engineer, NetworkChuck, cbtnuggets, Boson

Id: doK7Z0maGC8

Length: 15min 15sec (915 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 18 2021