Cisco CCNP ENCOR 350-401 - It's a pass!

[Music] good morning everyone hope you are all well so today was exam day for me and i'm delighted to say that i passed i passed the encore exam hooray hooray hooray um i'm absolutely over the moon um i'm relieved i'm glad it's done um but i passed and i am i'm still yeah just get overwhelmed with it i'm so pleased that i've done um so yeah i've passed wow i've passed her past the past brilliant so i couldn't be happier um my wife couldn't be happier either because she gets her husband back now and my children get their dad back as well so um so cool so what i want to do now um i just want to reflect on um a few things um i i want to do this video pretty quickly after the exam um just so things are fresh on my mind so i just want to i just want to jot down with you um what i want to talk about have a little bit of structure so so the first thing number one i want to talk about um i guess the process the process behind the exam the checking in and all that kind of stuff and and what you have to do and then i want to talk about not so much the exam but i want to talk about the exam obviously i'm not going to talk about the questions i'm not going to breach cisco's nda or anything like that i just want to talk about the experience of the exam um and just reflect on stuff like training materials um exam topics and all that kind of stuff because um i've got some interesting views on this stuff particularly but let's start off talking about the exam process okay because this this was this was really different so so so now so number one is last week um last week i don't know what day it is anymore i did a system test so the first thing you have to do with pearson um is a system test and you do that in advance of the exam um takes about half an hour and you have to take some photographs of your workstation from different angles you have to take a photograph of yourself they do a test on your connection a test on your webcam the application has to be compatible on your computer and all that kind of stuff takes about 20 to 30 minutes and you do this in advance of the exam okay so i can't even remember i've done this i don't know what day is it was a few days ago so you do you do the system test first of all okay so that was already done um and i've done that in advance as i say then when it comes to to today so that's what i would call my my check-in this was this morning so my exam was booked for 7 45 okay so i managed to get through my exam and just shy of an hour but it was it was 7 45 that it was booked for okay so i checked in um as per pearson's recommendation about 30 minutes prior to my appointment now what was really cool is um the number one when i checked in this morning um i had to i had was let me rewind when i say it was cool i had to do this again so the system test you have to repeat so you do the same thing again that you've already done so you go through the exact same process um to pass your system test i think they want you to do it in advance of the exam just so you can iron out any problems and errors and stuff like that so i had to repeat that today um and that's why they i think they give you this 30 minute window of time so you can do this um you know in advance um of the exam and you've got enough time to do it so i've done that again um this morning and then and then i kind of i kind of sat there so i done my system test and then it said you're on this kind of screen it says please wait you sit there waiting and it says that this can take up to 15 minutes of waiting and i've read some stories online and seen some video blogs and stuff and some people had different experiences with this waiting bit um but for me this took no more than five minutes okay and then after five minutes the screen kind of disappeared and then up came the normal screen that i'm used to with pearson exams okay so that that kind of appeared and i was i was then in a normal exam environment okay now one thing i'm going to shout out straight away is now i i use a i use an imac um with a 27 inch 4k screen um now for me um in the exam i actually struggled um with the font size of the questions and stuff it was i found myself constantly looking to the top left of my monitor and then down on the top the bottom right i had the button to go next with a huge bit of white space in the middle so it cut the display was a little bit of an issue for me it was actually hurting my eyes if i'm honest with you and i kept looking at how many questions were left and going oh you know i'm gonna and i was i could feel my eyes hurting and i could feel almost like a migraine sort of sensation coming on which you don't want in an exam so i think i think they could something could you could change there something there's something they should give you an option or something like that with a font size maybe i don't know but um so so the the font size was for me i would say kind of an issue i didn't get the opportunity to feedback on that on the surveys but font size i'd say was an issue now another thing to call out is obviously when you're in the exam um you know they're watching you with a camera with your camera which has passed all the system tests and that kind of stuff there are walls around that which i'm not gonna bore you with but you're not you know you can't leave your desk and you know you're not allowed to cover your face and make sounds and people into the room all that kind of stuff so that that that that was um that was fair enough but one thing i want to call out which is which is extremely positive which i didn't actually find until for the last quarter of the exam um is there is a white board now i love a whiteboard and i was i was worried about this because i wanted a pen and paper like um sorry a laminate and a pen like you do in the exams and you're not allowed that on your desk for this exam so i was like i might struggle with that because i like writing things down everyone's different but i do and there was no um obviously ability to do that but there was there was there is a whiteboard and it's right at the top um of the screen in the in the test when you're in the test right at the top you've got a chat up a chat button and you've got a whiteboard and the chat button um you know you can chat with your proctor i didn't have to do that i didn't engage with them at all actually um and then the button for the whiteboard i clicked on it and sure enough you've got a whiteboard and you can scribble and do whatever you want to do on it i didn't actually use it i just sort of saw it when i was like you know my eyes were wandering in the in the exam um but yeah that that so so be aware of that because that for me that um that's really good and they they didn't pitch that anywhere that i could see there was no there was no pitch on that at all and maybe that's a little bit of feedback for pearson is that they they might want to expand on that a little bit more um because i don't recall anything about that um when you kind of enrolled the exam or went through the um you do the standard tutorial stuff that you would always do but um this wasn't this wasn't pitched anywhere um i could see okay so so that that was kind of the experience of um the system test the check-in um and then obviously during the exam i've given feedback about the font size and stuff like that when you finish the exam um standard as you would in the test center um your score does come up it did for me it came up straight away um you know you've got your pass or you fail and you've got you score um and then you kind of exit out and end you do you've got your opportunity to do your surveys and your feedback and then and then the screen just it's gone and you kind of sat there and you're like oh okay it's done and you're back to your normal um desktop um so yeah so overall for me um i i would probably give this whole experience from home um i'll give it an 8 out of 10. i think for me the only thing lacking i mean this was a bit of an issue for me i didn't like this this font size stuff i found that quite uncomfortable right that's just that's just my view but then i am they should they need to be able to accommodate for people with larger screens and stuff like that and and and you know this might be a me problem this might be you know i should but my imac's running is kind of default there's nothing special about it it just is what it is so whether that's an imac thing and i need to sort that out or not i don't know but i think overall an 8 out of 10 for the whole experience i think they've done a very good job um of of this um you know in these challenging circumstances with with covert 19 and that you can take an exam at home is amazing it's a great experience and i would recommend it um as i say that but this this font thing for me if i did it again if i did it again this would be something that i would definitely you know think about but not that i there's a lot i can do about it maybe but maybe it's maybe feedback for pearson so so they go so that that's that's the the pearson bit um and you know that that part of it so hopefully that's helpful to you guys if you're going to go and do one of these exams um just to give you a bit of a heads up as to what what to expect um okay so so now the more interesting part so the the exam so the exam right so six months of my life i've spent preparing for this encore and that started with recapping a lot of ccna concepts and then straight in with ccnp encore so um i mean for those of you that do or don't know me my my background a good 10 years in my life is is networking um and then collaboration so networking is about i had a gap with networking for a few years where i wasn't really doing it um it's always been my bread and butter i kind of changed direction went down the collaboration half and then i've kind of now got off that journey a bit and enterprise networking you know modern version and all the sdn stuff and all that so this was an extremely challenging exam to prepare for because although part of it yes was traditional route switch security wireless automation's obviously new to the table and this was something that was was brand new for me um so there we go so exam now here is my scorecard so straight away a little bit of experience for you when you finish the exam they send you an email and you get um you get you get access to your scorecard and like you your score report like you normally would um when you're in the test center so here's mine now i got i got 951 right which is a big fat past now obviously i'm over the moon with that that i mean i i i'll be honest with you the exam i'm obviously i've got to be careful what i say here because i'm not going to talk about the questions and the content but yes they yes they test you on what is on the exam topics right so yes they're going to test you on the exam topic so in terms of preparation and i've obviously given some of my views on this already yes the official cert guide is cisco press released you know whether it's cisco official endorsed is always a controversial controversial thing but the ocg in regards to the exam oops i can't spell exams sorry um so the ocg with regards to the exam is a big fat yes if you read that book i only read it once and i kind of went back to it occasionally if you read that book start to finish maybe twice if you've really got the time and you can handle that um you're going to be in a really good position as for this encore exam okay however however however i've obviously covered osun at recommendation of other people that you know on the circuit and this for me is was is was massive right without bosun i would not have explored or been exposed to particular areas of those exam topics okay now that's not me breaching the nda and telling you what they're going to test you on the the exam topics right specifically exam topics bosun pushes you harder and and deeper on those exam topics okay now for me when i did this this really you know excelled and pushed me i think pushes the right word push me on specific areas and i remember getting the questions in both of them not having a clue i'm going i've never even seen that um so this this to me is is a must this is a must so if you're gonna prep for encore okay i'd say absolutely the official cert guide and boson for me those two absolutely must okay now obviously there's other stuff that you can do labs goes without saying you absolutely have to lab where you can um there are obviously video on demand based materials out there i've reported previously i had a trial with it pro tv i've used the kevin wallace kevin wallace train course which was which was very good actually that was very very good okay this one it pro tv was was okay i've got a lot of respect for the guys there and i wouldn't say a bad word about them but this was okay i found this was a good high level kind of something you know um version of the ocg so it's comfortable and it was easy to digest i had a trial with it pro tv i didn't take it any further but um overall it was good um you know fair maybe it was fair but i i if you just did that you would will have a chance of passing this encore exam the kevin wallace stuff was very good um again it was high level where it needed to be and it was low level where it needed to be but kw train um with kevin and charles i would i'd give that a yes absolutely this was was was great this was another part of the another ingredient of success for this so official cert guide boasts on materials kw train kevin wallace training right so that that was me that's what i done okay and obviously labs you know i've got gns3 and i was exploring everything i could in detail um obviously you've got um don't forget let me just clear this off do not forget you have your sandbox stuff from cisco yeah when it comes to software defined when and dna center now these were these were both amazing amazing free i even had them bookmarked so i could just literally click on them log into with my creds and off i go i had access to these environments um you know whatever i wanted which was just amazing and i could explore the concepts you know get to know particularly this guy get to know this guy inside out all the options that are available all the things you can do within dna center sd-wan i think was more of a bonus you know to be able to get into the v manage and kind of play around and have a look but the in terms of labs these sandbox environments are absolutely brilliant and one thing they do expand on as well with your sandbox is everything to do with apis so in combination with postman you know you've got the ability from the postman application to do api calls towards the sandbox environments so sd-wan um v manage sorry and and the dna center as well as with postman you know again courtesy of sandbox or cisco doing api calls towards things like the csr 1000v um or whatever you've got running locally on your machine maybe if you've you know if you've enabled um rest comp for example on your csr 1000b you know you've got a lot of tools and options when it comes to to labbing okay so labbing is just a must so slightly go off on the tangent there but that was that was me and obviously you've heard some of that already that was my prep and and what i used and and and i will again just summarize that for you yes so it's really clear number one official cert guide number two video on demand whatever choice you make obviously there are there are others out there number three was boson oh these are not in any particular order now and number four was labs right whether that be gns3 or the sandbox stuff from cisco okay and that's it that was my that was my ingredients of success that's what i that's what i used to get the job done okay so now if i just go into the exam stuff right in terms of what i've done i'm not breaching nda just talking about the exam so my exam i mean i'm very happy with my score i'm very happy with my score there the there were questions in there that were guesses there were questions in there that were easy there were questions in there that were hard right which is probably what you would expect from a cisco exam a bit of everything um and if i then go on to my particular report or score report um my lowest score although i'm very happy with my score overall my lowest score was actually automation um 87 so i yes i've got things wrong in in in areas of this exam um actually got a hundred percent on assurance which is was pretty cool so all that you know homework on dna center and you know ipsla and syslog and all that stuff has paid off but automation was actually my lower score okay now there were and again without breaching the nda some of the automation questions i found challenging i found challenging and i did guess um least a question in regards to automation okay so again it's just you know this was brand new for me this was brand new uh and you know maybe i didn't go deep enough with with certain uh you know items in the automation world um but the fact is i'm very happy with my score okay um the the the infrastructure bit in terms of a lot of the traditional stuff that we do with spanning tree and all that kind of stuff that was that was that was good that was comfortable um i actually got something wrong though but it was it was cool and i was i was happy with that stuff not a problem at all architecture was was was good as well no real issues virtualization again happy this one yes i was very happy with this one because um i'd really really gone to town with things like dna center um you know and ipsla and all things like that security actually surprised me if i'm honest i mean i've got 95 percent right on security um and this is this this this is an interesting one because you know in the in the cert guide obviously there's there's absolutely tons of content on security and the very markety stuff that cisco pitched so again the ocg is enough for you to to to do well at everything in this exam but i don't think on its own it is enough in my opinion i think you've got to at the minimum have something like boson to push you on particular um topics to give you more of the depth um and then lastly as automation which i've just mentioned 87 so yeah i i expected to get something wrong on automation um you know i i've done my best and um as i say i'm still very happy with my score um but yeah there was this was there was some definite guess moments from me when it comes to automation so there you go that's my report and my score um and you get that as i say that's an email they send you after and you click on it and it opens it in a web browser i've actually saved it out as a pdf and so i've got a copy there but that bit that's all standard as you would expect from a cisco exam so there we go um hot it's it's funny to say that it's done um you know and i've passed and i'm obviously so happy i've passed it it's absolutely massive so so what what's what's next for me then what's what's ahead now this is all done um so it was initially like pre-christmas this was all about the ccie um enterprise lab this was the this was the goal was to get here now the encore exam i mean i already had the ccemp enterprise i you know automatically got through the the changes in the cisco exams but but this one this encore 350 401 this you have to go and pass before you can do the ccie enterprise lap okay now i'm as you may or may not know i've got a baby on the way in september and that's my third child and you know my life's pretty busy anyway so i'm looking at the rest of this year at least the next six months to do nothing to do nothing to do with cisco exams and studying and every rest yeah i think i've earned it and six months i'm going to chill out well i'm going to chill out i'm going to be very busy with my family but that's good that's you know their priority one um so six months i'm to call i'm going to say rest no pun intended there with rest um but you know i'm going to take it easy when it comes to these exams then it ultimately is yes this was the the big prize and this encore has put me in a really good place like i'd say a core which is exactly what it is with this core part yeah of core concepts and core understanding of of what you need to either go to the side on your ccmp enterprise and go and do something like nrc or whatever you want to do and then go up to ccie enterprise lab if i if i went and done and prep for this kind of now for our argument's sake there would be topics on there that i would have not gone deep enough for example sd-wan sd-wan i wouldn't have had any of the depth i've got the high-level stuff from encore but i would not have the depth when it comes to sd-wan so i you know when the time comes and whenever it's going to be if it's six months or more whatever um i will almost you know will take stock on the situation and say what i need to go and do nrc um or you know what i can prep for the lab and i can learn all the nrc content on that journey and not put myself through another cisco np level exam maybe maybe not i don't know not sure but we'll we'll cross that bridge when when i come to it so so that's what's next um and yeah absolutely just taking it easy and chilling out um so i just a kind of little spoiler i guess for for something as well i put many many things on my plate in my life um i like to challenge myself but one thing just to shout out in terms of what's next for me and what's ahead is as you may or may not know i absolutely love training i love learning and i love teaching i love sharing knowledge i love everything to do with training now i for a while have been i say plotting that sounds a bit almost evil but i've i've been planning um a training project or training company i guess that i want to be the founder of and and bring to the table and i kind of been going on for a while and the the name of this project or this company belmont company is simple expert okay and this has always been a dream and a plan of mine is to start up my own company delivering it training and that's going to be of course let's go yep so this is on the way this is up and this is coming i don't know when but this is definitely coming and um i don't know what i'm gonna do with it yeah i did actually do um last year um i was quite ill actually and i actually kind of abandoned it but i did actually do an mpls kind of fundamental starting course as a trial a trial and it went well actually i enjoyed doing it and put it together and and and building all my kind of stationary and styles and all sort of things for the for the company so just this is kind of a spoiler i guess but just kind of watch this space for this this is definitely on the way um it's just i don't know when that's going to be i'm not sure when it's going to happen but this is this is kind of my dream is to to do this like on the side of obviously my full-time employment um all the experience i've had as a student and all the experience i've had doing things like in e as an instructor and my general experience with these exams um i want to put into this project and it will just be me at the start and i just want to see where that takes me but i'm really looking forward to that one whether that's before the ccia lab or after i don't know but it's it's on the way and it's it's definitely um definitely gonna happen so there you go slightly tangent there but um but there you go so i'm gonna wrap up now guys um again thank you everybody for for tuning in to these videos um your your likes your comments etc mean a lot it's really appreciated um and again if you are prepping for encore hopefully my videos are helpful to you um and again good luck with your preparation for on call and good luck on exam day if you have any questions about encore if you'd like to chat to me about you're more than welcome to contact me on youtube just to comment or whatever you want to do and we can have an open conversation um obviously i can't talk about the exam questions but happy to assist where i can with anybody on their journey and that's it guys so it feels a bit emotional to sign off on this but um but thank you everyone for watching um and again good luck on your journey and i will speak to you in the future thanks again

Channel: drbabbers

Views: 7,362

Keywords: cisco, ccna, ccnp, ccie, 350-401, encor, ccnpenterprise, exam, boson, pass

Id: RwWs1Bvo0U8

Length: 28min 53sec (1733 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 30 2020