Cisco 300-410 ENARSI | Exam Passed - My thoughts and study tools.

all right hey welcome back to my basement okay so this is Jeremiah wolf and I just passed the Cisco 300 - 410 NRC exam let's take a look at my score and I got a 947 out of a thousand 947 so I feel it's a pretty good score and let's scroll down here here are my how I did on the specific sections whatever you want to call it so I'm happy with that you know obviously this could be a lot better but overall I'm happy with my score 947 so what I want to do is I want to talk to you a little bit about what to expect on the exam how to prepare for the exam or rather how I prepared for the exam and I want to give you a heads up about a few things that kind of could potentially catch you off-guard so let's get into that this is actually the third time I'm recording this video because the first two times I keep forgetting to switch between the screens I am tired not only am i tired from taking the exam which I personally find to be an exhausting process even though I feel really good now that I've passed it I'm still very tired it just takes a lot out of me but I have not been sleeping I think it's just stress from doing the exam so a real quick I just want to give you a heads up if you have not watched my other videos just a little bit about who I am and why I'm taking this exam so my name is Guiness Jeremiah Wolfe and I was in IT from about 1995 until 2013 and during that time I had I was started in sales then I was a technician then I became a systems sort of network Microsoft systems admin Microsoft systems engineer Cisco engineer and all the way up to senior level engineer was at the end of my career in 2013 I left networking to pursue a passion of mine I turned that into a business that I've been doing that for the past seven years some recent changes in my life kind of decided for me well then it's a it's a good time to move back into networking it's just with everything going on it's it's what's best for my family so not to get in that you can see that my other videos but nothing bad is that in fact it's it's only good stuff but so I'm trying to get back in the networking but I have been out of it for over seven years seven and a half years now and you know - in order for me to be able to present myself as competent and to help me get a job I have decided to pursue my CCIE and use that certification as a tool to show potential or Impa tential employers that I do know what I'm doing so I'm kind of working on my way through that and because I prefer more structured learning I'm doing it step by step going through the Cisco exam so I started three months ago on April 16th I began studying a couple weeks later two or three weeks later I took the CCNA exam about five or six weeks later I took the encore exam and then now another three weeks later I have just finished the NRC exam so and then I got gonna take a couple days off and then move on to the next thing so I'm kind of plowing through this so all right let's talk a little bit about the exam first off if you have not if you have not done it before the the Pearson online testing tool thing worked out pretty well I did have some problems I want to show you that real quick the first problem I had it was when I went to login to the website this is the error that I got so this is kind of crazy and I will admit I was kind of my pants a little bit there because I could not get past this I was stuck here and I'm like what the heck is going on and finally I ended up just rebooting my computer I have no idea what what that could have solved but it it eventually I was able to get back in so I got into the website once you get in you know find your exam click begin exam it's going to then run a little app on your computer it's gonna text you a link to your phone you use your phone you need to take multiple pictures of your testing environment of your ID and send that to them and once they approve all that you can then get on so eventually I got past this error and was able to get on I also had problems with my driver's license this is my third time taking the exam with with this remote system thing and each time I've had problems with it recognizing my driver's license just I take this keep taking pictures until it finally likes one I don't know overall otherwise it the process was easy my exam was scheduled for 11:15 I began the process at about 1050 ish and by I was all set up by about 11 o'clock someone came on almost right away and she asked me a few questions she thought that I had a phone on my desk it turned out to be my wrist rest and then she also didn't like because I normally have two monitors my webcam it's right in the center so what I'm looking at this screen this is kind of what she was seeing so she asked me to move my my webcam over so that it would be more centered whatever not a big deal and then I started the exam so now the exam let's talk a little bit about what what was on the exam or rather kind of the structure of it this is definitely a troubleshooting type exam lots of questions about troubleshooting lots of output lots of output now a couple of tips real quick there were several I'm not gonna say the majority but there were definitely several questions where the answer had very little to do with the output basically if you read through the answers it became clear that there was only one possible correct answer whether it was because of sin text or sin syntax or some other reason but there was only one possible right answer so I would encourage you read the question read the answers real quick and that might save you some time before you start digging into all the output a lot of questions had a lot of output and definitely this of the three tests I've now taken CCNA encore and now NRC the NRC I definitely spent more time per question than the other two by a significant amount the other thing minor annoyance just to be prepared for is the the the examples that they give the output there's no standardized I don't know how they do this so sometimes you'll start a question and it'll be a little text box with some text in it you know output other times the exact same amount of text takes up like the whole screen its minor just a minor noise but I really don't like having to scroll up and down scroll up and down too to be able to like see the output see the answer see the app would see the answers there is a lot of questions that man I don't know like I felt like they were almost trick questions a couple couple questions we're like there's two options where they were so close to each other that I feel like the it was almost like not not a fair question come on like in the real world you're gonna have contextual help you're gonna look it up real quick so I you know like like a word transposed or something do you do yeah I don't know whatever there but there wasn't many of those overall I feel that the exam was they actually a really good indicator of your knowledge of the material for this exam because it was mostly troubleshooting and not really like trivia questions I felt that the encore exam had a lot of trivia type questions this exam was definitely like here's the output figure out why this isn't working or what do you need to change to make it work or stuff like that and I that to me I like those types of questions a lot more they much more fully demonstrated my opinion ones ability to actually do the work that one demonstrates ones understanding of the concepts it is my opinion that when it comes to the real world it is really about understanding the concepts and if you need to go look up a command or if you need to you know check a timer or something like that you know you can do that the idea that you have to memorize all the little nuts and bolts for something you might only touch once every six months it's kind of absurd but that's just my opinion so so that now okay I do want to talk about a couple things so let's okay let me switch back over all right now let's take a look at the exam topic so I am on the NRC exam topics on the cisco website and if we scroll down here under infrastructure services this is the only mention of DNA Center and you'll see it says troubleshooting network problems using Cisco DNA Center assurance DNA Center Assurance connectivity monitoring device Health Network health there is in this book there is a whole section on DNA Center assurance where talks about connectivity monitoring device health and network health the questions on my exam had nothing to do with that nothing blew my mind so here's a tip hot tip head on over to the Cisco DNA Center user guide read up on manage me read the chapter manage storage images you can't do that and read the chapter manage your inventory manage storage images manage your inventory those having a familiarity with both of those are going to help you out it's not a huge portion of the exam obviously that this entire section is only twenty five percent and this is only one small part so I'm almost certain that I got all of the DNA Center questions wrong but you know I still did pretty good so even so if you you know take the time the other thing that if you look at the exam topics here your layer three technologies OSPF you know OSPF is a significant part of what we need to understand for this exam but one of the things that is not mentioned here and again I don't think so I couldn't find it it's not mentioned in the book I highly encourage you to read up on OSPF loop-free alternate fast reroute I didn't I've never even heard of this technology so I still don't know what we have to read this we have to read all up on it cuz I don't I don't even know what it is or what it does something it calculates the path ahead of time so for faster reconvergence or something like that which is I kind of remember something being mentioned about that I don't know if it was in the book or if it wasn't seen I kind of heard something but it definitely wasn't covered to the extent that I would have been able to answer what was on the exam so OSPF version 2 loop free alternate path fast reroute take a few minutes and read up on that ok so let's see here how did I prepare for the exam so I spent three weeks studying for this exam I came right off of an RC a-- cook took a couple days off excuse me right off of encore I took a couple days off and then right into an RC I took the almost exact exactly three weeks ago I took the encore exam so it's been a little less than three weeks studying how did I study well first thing I did the book now I love Cisco press back in the day before Cisco press was really a thing you know you kind of like some some some books were okay some books were crap you know me and my buddies who were all studying Cisco at the time we had our favorite authors and whatever but then Cisco press came out and it was a game changer and everything was just like get the Cisco press the Cisco press is always great I don't know if it's because these exams are so new but it felt rushed and there is a lot of typos in here a lot of typos most of the typos exist with inconsistencies between the examples like the graphical examples the figures as they call them or tables stuff like that and the text so there might be a subnet that's different between them or an OSP of area number or something like that and while that doesn't sound too bad there is many times when I was reading this book that I was like what weight and I'd have to go through and look and I'm like it doesn't make sense and then finally be like oh this is they this is a Mis type so a lot of errors in the book if you take the time you're gonna see them you'll figure it out it's nothing's gonna you know cause you to fail but it's disappointing you know on the other hand my wife is actually certified what's it called a copy editor so she took just for fun she took this corset through Berkeley was it I think took her took her awhile like it was it was an in-depth course with you know real like real instructor and grades and stuff and so she's like a certified copy editor and while she could go through a book like this and check for grammar and punctuation those kind of things and you know the style that kind of stuff like there's no way she could ever proofread or copy at it all the technical stuff so III got to cut them a little bit of slack there's so much technical information in here it has to be really hard because what you need is an engineer to proofread this well an engineer is not a copy editor and a copy editor is not an engineer so you know like I'm gonna cut him some slack but there's a lot of errors in the book so I read the book and then the way that I did it because I can only read so much like I try to read about a hundred pages a day that's kind of like my my limit and I'm just like mentally just like I'm done with this so what I do is I read 100 pages a day and then I would also use CBT Nuggets so CBT Nuggets has an an RC course it is 27 hours long and I have really mixed feelings about this too I will say that I really like CBT Nuggets I like the trainers with CBT Nuggets I like the the platform I like their their style how they do things I love I love the labs that they have actually let me see if I can just show you one so we'll click that let that load it'll take a minute or two to load there it goes so I love the labs I love the instructors everything's good the eye as you can see I only watched 80% of this so I skipped completely five hours I just didn't watch there was another chunk of this maybe maybe couple couple of four hours or so that was actually repeat from the Encore course of theirs which I had already watched so I actually skipped all of that too and then there's a lot of stuff that I really felt like I watched it but I'm not sure I got a lot out of it so for me personally with the book I would say maybe of this 27 hours maybe 10 of them are really necessary so the way that I did it as I was saying was I would read a chunk of the book and then I tried to maintain some level of parity between what I was studying in the book and what I was studying via the video so what I would do is I would in the afternoon I would read a chunk of this book then the next morning I would watch a chunk of videos related to what I had read the night before now that's I do that very specifically very intentionally because I take this information in and it's important to sleep after you take in that amount of information it lets your brain process it so that when you watch the videos the next day it's filling in the gaps and it's reinforcing it instead of just kind of dumping more in there and you're just gonna forget it so and so I would always book the night before videos the morning move on to the next topic in the book watch those same videos the next morning that's how I did it so I like the labs but you know this was kind of if if I hit that sort of the point that I was gonna make if I had read the book in its entirety first cover-to-cover I probably only would have watched maybe 10 hours tops of these videos because I just didn't I felt like I got enough out of the book that I really didn't need more but that's me like I I do really well reading from a book not everybody does some people while I hate watching videos I just hate it like it's just it's so mind-numbing like I forced myself to do it but I enjoy reading the book mostly you know to a point lots of other people the complete opposite so you know this is what works for you you definitely do need to read the book there's a lot of stuff in the book that is just simply not in these videos whereas with the Encore I felt that the the videos the CBT Nuggets was just right in line with the book it covered almost everything I do I'm sorry I don't have a good example but I remember as I was going through thinking oh they didn't cover this they didn't cover that so you know I don't know I yeah I don't know so I liked it and you know for the price for 60 bucks for a month I mean come on just do it just get get to CBT Nuggets and and fill in the gaps watch the videos that work for you but here's oh here's a lab now they don't have the scenario in the lab itself you you have to kind of watch the video and they tell you what to do it'd be nice if they could you could see like the topology diagram or whatever but but you're you know you're on a router so you can get in there and here's all the different routers for this lab and then when you're done just close out the lab so I but really good laps definitely very very helpful very helpful so book CBT Nuggets and then the final tool that I used was the bosun exam and I got to say when I was taking these practice tests I was like seriously Bose and why are you asking why are we talking about this why are we talking about that I'm not going to tell you what it was because I don't want to get in trouble for being too specific about the exam but there was a very specific topic on these practice tests where I was like are you freaking kidding me why are you asking so many questions about this one very specific topic there's no way they're gonna ask that many questions on the exam I had like three questions on my tests related to it I'm not gay I'm not gonna tell you what they were because I don't wanna get in trouble but as always Bose in just such a great tool and the thing about Bose them makes it a great tool is when you get when you you know answer the question you hit show answer this is it right here this is what makes this thing worth the price that they're charging and it just gives you a detailed explanation I will argue that I learn almost as much from doing the practice test that I do from the other two from the videos or the book like you know each one is roughly well I would say the book is probably say 40% of my knowledge the videos are probably 30% of my knowledge and then the most an exam is another 30% like it's a huge chunk it's incredibly valuable so not only is it valuable because they tell you why you got the answer wrong it is just as valuable because they tell you why you got it right and there's so many times when you get the answer right or when I get an answer right and then I go and read the explanation and realize I got it right for the very wrong reason so it wasn't that I actually understood it I just happen to get lucky I thought I understood it and I happen to get lucky but when I read the explanation I'm like oh no I didn't quite understand that and then of course they have references for almost every single question so if you're reading this and this is something that I do all the time both with the book and what I'm doing the exams man you know reading something and you're like I just don't get it get on Google type it in or click on the link here and read the article so this is gonna take up you know to your page on on Sisko read the section What's it telling you you know so what am i doing there we go so yeah the bosun test great tool okay so that is that is pretty much it for me regarding this exam again a couple of pointers study tools book you got to read the book CBT Nuggets very helpful very helpful I don't I don't know if it's quite as necessary as I found it for for the encore exam but my dog but it was you know it was it was okay it was helpful for again for the price it's it's worth it and the course the bosun practice exams so worth it the bosun net sim there simulator I would not get just because the the it's like 150 bucks or 180 bucks you get so many labs as part of the CBT Nuggets that you're doing all the relevant stuff so in this case if you're getting CBT Nuggets the the bosun netsim is just not a good value don't don't waste your time or money with it my opinion my opinion but at the same time if you feel like you really need a lot more hands-on then get it so okay I hope that that was all informative I hope that was helpful and I stick around I got some other videos I'm gonna put out here soon about just my CCIE journey where I'm at what's next and I got some more fun stories to share and some tips about just the industry alright thanks for watching

Channel: Jeremiah Wolfe

Views: 6,984

Keywords: CCNP, Cisco, Certification, 300-410, ENARSI

Id: vrsUiVLN8OU

Length: 24min 0sec (1440 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 13 2020