- Now this video has turned out to be a lot longer than I expected, but I'm gonna be covering
some important stuff with regards to the CCNP ENCOR exam. (upbeat dance music) (flickering screen sound) Big announcement, and this
is probably the announcement that most of you wanna know about. I'm now going to be publishing
a CCNP ENCOR course, full CCNP ENCOR course
for free on YouTube. So from next week, expect
to see ENCOR CCNP training for free on YouTube. I already actually have one video that you probably want to go through if you're studying for your
CCNP and that's this EEM video. So, you probably wanna
go through this video if you're taking your CCNP ENCOR exam, but I will be adding more
content from next week. Full CCNP ENCOR course
for free on YouTube, and I'm gonna be doing this in
collaboration with companies such as Boson and hopefully
others to bring you more value. So, I'll be using Boson Software for some of the demonstrations
and explaining topics using their software. Use the XM software to make sure that you're
prepared for the exam. Those kinds of things, again,
Boson do not pay me any money. I have never received $1
or one cent in compensation from Boson Software. I just like them as a
company, really nice people, really nice to deal with and they often give me
stuff to give to you. So I'll rather get vendors
to give me stuff to give away to yourself rather than getting
money from those vendors. If you want to support me, then consider subscribing
to my YouTube channel. Consider buying one of my courses (flickering screen sound) (upbeat dance music) Now, in this video I'm going
to discuss a bunch of topics with regards to the Cisco CCNP ENCOR exam. First thing is Cisco are
supporting remote exams on the 15th of April, so last week Wednesday they
announced that they will support online virtual exams. In other words, you can
take the exam at home or wherever you are in
a proctored environment, so someone is watching you take the exam. Cisco announced this last
week, Wednesday and I decided to take the CCNP ENCOR exam on Friday. So two days later after
they announced this I took my ENCOR exam. This is something I've been
wanting to do for a while, but I haven't because I'm currently in lock-down in South Africa, can't go out except for
emergency supplies, groceries, medical stuff and so forth,
as I'm sure a lot of you are. So this is fantastic. I've been able to take
the Cisco ENCOR CCNP exam from this room, where I'm stuck. And I'll give you my
feedback about that exam. So that's the first
thing I want to discuss and then later on I want
to give you some good news about the CCNP ENCOR exam. Hopefully, this will be
fantastic news for a lot of you. I've been asked many, many
times, almost every day, David, where's your ENCOR course? Okay, so let me talk about the exam first. Now, if you think it's easier than going to Pearson VUE Testing Center, I think you're gonna be surprised. The biggest tip that I'll give you is make sure that you're ready about 30 minutes before
your scheduled exam time. What you need to do is you
need to download some software on your computer, you need to run a test. They are going to ask you for photographs like facing forwards, facing backwards, to the left to the right. You're going to have to
submit those photographs. They wanna see what your
workspace looks like. You can't have stuff on the desk. They are monitoring you through a camera, so if you think you're
gonna get away with stuff, think again. The mistake I made is
I was putting my hand in front of my mouth when I was thinking, so I was concentrating quite heavily on some of the questions by putting my hand over my mouth like this and someone came on and said, "Remove your hand from your mouth. "Don't put your hand in
front of your mouth." So they're watching you to make sure that you don't do anything
that you shouldn't be doing. Now I did find the interface really good. It looks very similar to a Pearson VUE Testing Center interface. So the look and feel of the
questions is very similar. What I really liked is I had
an issue right in the beginning when I started my exam. The fonts were too small on my computer. The resolution on this Mac is very high, so the fonts of the
questions were so small, I couldn't read them. So all I did is send a
message to the proctor saying, "I need some help." And they actually turned on
the audio and spoke to me. So ask them my question. They answered my question
and within 30 seconds, I had my problem resolved. So that was fantastic. That interaction with
the proctors is great but just remember you're
being watched the whole time. If you think you're gonna be
able to look here or there or up or somewhere to see cheat answers, then think again, they're watching you. Now, getting back to what you should do before you take your exam Strongly recommend that you download the software 30 minutes or so
before your exam is scheduled. You have to submit a whole bunch of stuff like your photographs. You have to make sure
that the software works. You can use the camera on your computer, but I actually use my phone. I found that easier. So you can submit photographs
through a web interface or you can SMS them photographs. You basically have to submit
a bunch of information including identification documents. So make sure that you've
got your driver's license or your passport or some
kind of identification before you take your exam
because you have to submit that. You are allowed to have
water as an example in a clear bottle or
clear glass or something. So, you can drink something, but remember you're stuck
for your exam period. So let's talk a bit about the ENCOR exam. It's two hours in length. I had 102 questions. It sounds like that's
what everyone's getting. Same on CCNA, same on
ENCOR, 102 questions. There were no simulations
in the ENCOR exam. The ENCOR exam consisted of single guess, sorry, single answer, multiple choice, so where you have to select two answers. They don't ask you questions like, select all of the best answers. They will tell you, select two answers or three answers. So again, multiple choice, single answer, multiple choice, multiple answers
as well as drag and drops. There were no simulations
on the ENCOR exam, similar to the new CCNA, no simulations at all when I took my exam. But that could change later, but I had 102 questions, two hours. I found that I had more than
enough time to finish the exam so I actually finished with
quite a bit of time left, but your experience may vary, I'm a very bad example of
someone to measure against. I've taken many, many, many
Cisco exams over the years. I'm a CCIE, so to me a
multiple choice exam like this, is nothing compared to the CCIE. After I did my CCIE Lab exam none of these exams really faze me. My attitude is if you fail, that's a pain. If you fail, it costs you money, but just remember you
can take the exam again a few days later. So, I think it's seven days
later you can take the exam. So it's not the end of
the world if you fail and that's my encouragement to all of you. It's not like a university degree. In a university environment, if you fail, you may have
to redo an entire year. We don't have to worry about that when doing certification exams. You can literally wait a week or two and then do some extra
studying and then come back and take the exam again. There is obviously a financial cost and for a lot of people that's very high. So I don't want to belittle
the financial cost of failing or taking a Cisco exam but just remember, you don't
have to spend an entire year re-doing the content before
you take the exam again. You can hopefully take it
again a week or two later. Okay, so ENCOR exam, I found the questions both good and bad. There were some decent questions, I thought there was
some terrible questions. The difficulty of the
questions varied from what I thought was extremely
easy, CCNA level type questions to very difficult questions. Make sure that you learn
the new technologies. Now, I don't want to go
through the entire blueprint of the CCNP ENCOR exam, but things that I remember
that were important are things like SD-Access. Make sure you know the
terminology of SD-Access. Make sure you know the
terminology of SD-WAN. Make sure that you
understand the difference between say VXLAN and LISP. Make sure that you
understand the differences between the different protocols used in these new technologies
such as SD-WAN and SD-Access. I obviously have a lot of background in routing and switching,
traditional technologies as well as Python. I found the newer stuff more difficult just because it was newer. So I spent more time looking at SD-Access and some of the newer technologies rather than traditional routing
and switching like OSPF. But as an example, you
will get OSPF questions. Make sure that you understand
the different types in OSPF. Make sure that you know
LSAs, network types. Make sure that you
understand how BGP works. Basically, all the standard
stuff that you would expect in a routing and switching
exam, I got asked. Now again, they are newer technologies like network automation. Do you know JSON? Do you know how to interpret JSON? Can you read a Python script? You need to know those kind
of things for the exam. But again, I could go
through the entire blueprint and highlight options
from almost every section. Because they are 102 questions, they can ask you a broad range of topics. So, it's not like in the
past where we had simulations and they might focus
just in on one section. There's a broad range of topics. A whole bunch of questions from basically throughout the blueprint. So make sure that you spend time, learning all the topics for the exam. Like I said, for the
CCNA I would concentrate on the newer technologies, network automation,
network programmability. And actually I'll just
bring up the blueprint here to make it easier. So do you know JSON? Do you know Python? Do you know YANG? So, can you describe
high-level principles of YANG? Can you describe APIs of DNA Center? Make sure that you
understand REST API calls and one I was quite surprised
about is this EEM applet. Make sure you know that. Make sure you know the
difference between Chef, Puppet, Ansible and SaltStack. Like I said, I could mention
many, many topics here. Do you know what TrustSec is? Do you know what MACsec is? Do you know the difference
between 802.1X and WebAuth as an example. Do you understand different
wireless security mechanisms? Do you understand ACLs? Can you work out ACLs? So again, I could start from
the beginning of this outline and just highlight topic after topic, like First Hop Redundancy Protocols. Do you understand
different network designs? Do you understand the difference between different wireless
deployment models? So okay, I won't bore you going through all the blueprint options. Just looking at these blueprint options, I can, in my mind,
recognize many questions. I mean virtualization is not traditional routing and switching, but do
you understand the difference between a type one Hypervisor,
type two Hypervisor? Do you understand virtual
machines, virtual switching, Docker, those kinds of technologies, and as mentioned, do you
understand LISP, VXLAN? Do you understand the different types of data virtualization technologies such as IPsec tunneling,
GRE, VRFs, MPLS, et cetera? Basically because we have such
a broad range of questions, 102 questions, they can ask you stuff from any section and don't forget wireless. I'll mention it to you
because otherwise people think there were no wireless questions. You need to know wireless as well. Wireless is really important. The new stuff, wireless,
think of SD-Access, SD-WAN, think of network automation,
network programmability. Basically study properly for the exam. Again, I had some very simple questions, surprisingly simple questions I thought and some difficult questions. Now your mileage may vary as well depending on your experience, depending on how much you've studied. Moral of the story is, you need to study for the Cisco exams. I personally preferred the old exams. I loved the TSHOOT exam that was part of the
old CCNP certification. I loved TSHOOT because for me, with someone with a lot of experience, I preferred troubleshooting a network rather than just trying
to memorize things. I find that the new Cisco exams
are more about memorization, which I don't like. I personally much prefer hands-on. I much prefer typing
show run or show ip route or show something and then debugging or troubleshooting a network
issue or configuring a network rather than just memorizing facts. So I think from my personal point of view, it's a bit disappointing
in the new certifications. There's a lot of memorization. There's not as much hands-on, if you like. But you will need to be
able to interpret output and that's the one
thing you must remember. In the new Cisco exams,
you will, for instance, get screenshots and you will
need to be able to interpret the output of those screenshots. So it's not like it's just memorization. You will need to be
able to interpret stuff but I do feel that there's
more memorization stuff. I think it's just me getting
older now more experienced, I prefer the hands-on TSHOOT
type exams, my favorite exam. That's my favorite CCNP exam. Obviously best exam I think
of all time was my CCIE, very, very tough but fantastic experience, fantastic to pass that exam. So, I prefer those hands-on exams more than just memorization. Okay, but in your case, moral
of the story is, study hard, use the Cisco OCG, Official Cert Guide. I would strongly recommend
that you go through that, even though it's a bit
dry and boring at times. Concepts are covered in a
lot of detail in the OCG. I do think at times they cover too much. So don't get bogged down with
all the nitty gritty stuff. Notice the key words like,
describe layer one concepts. Describe doesn't mean troubleshoot. Here they've got a troubleshoot section but you'll notice a lot of
the keywords are describe. You just need to describe something. There are some configuration options such as configuring OSPF environments, including different types
of neighbor relationships or different OSPF types, point-to-point broadcast, et cetera. Configure and verify eBGP
relationships, that kind of stuff. But in my experience,
I find that a lot of it was more describe. Make sure you understand the concepts. You don't need to configure
SD-Access as an example. They don't expect you
to configure SD-Access, but you need to know all the
different types of devices used in SD-Access. So as an example, you need to
explain the working principles of an SD-Access solution. So know the difference between
control plane and data plane. Which protocol is used for
the control plane LISP? Which protocol is used
for the data plane VXLAN? Make sure you understand that. Make sure that that you know
the different router types, different types of devices you use in SD-Access as an example. Okay, so you need to study
hard for the ENCOR exam. I thought it was an okay exam, I prefer the CCNA to be honest. I preferred the DevNet Associate
exam, but this was okay. Your experience may vary. Please let me know in the comments below, how you found the ENCOR exam and whether you agree or disagree with me, if you've taken it already. Okay, so that was my experience taking the Cisco online exam. So big advice, if you're
doing an online exam, is make sure that you download
and check your computer before your exam starts. So, at least half an hour
before your exam starts. Download the software, make sure that your
computer is compatible. I actually did that the day before, made sure that my computer was compatible, and then I went through the
whole process of registering and sending photographs
and I had to do it again. So I thought that was kind of pointless. But half an hour before
you take your exam, you'll need to submit these photographs. So, depending on how long it takes you, make sure that you start your exam before the start time basically. So get things booted on
your computer and ready. Now, one thing that's strange is you might have to wait 10 minutes before your exam starts. So you can't leave your computer, you submit all this stuff to Pearson VUE and then you've got to
basically sit at your laptop for like five to 10 minutes
waiting for your proctor to come online. So just be aware, go and do all the stuff that you need to do. Go to the bathroom, get
ready, get yourself prepared before you go through this
online enrollment thing and submit your photograph because from that point you're
stuck to taking your exam. So it's a two hour exam,
but you might end up sitting at your desk for
much longer than two hours, might be two and a half hours, because you've got to submit stuff. So, 140 minutes rather than
120 minutes, as an example, is what it might take. I strongly suggest that if
this is your first Cisco exam, you go to the Pearson VUE website, you download the software,
you go through it and make sure that your computer
is compatible and ready. Hopefully you're looking
forward to the new ENCOR course that I'm gonna be creating and publishing for free on YouTube. I do have a whole bunch of announcements and surprises coming up, so make sure that you have
subscribed to my YouTube channel. Make sure that you click on
the bell to get notifications. And if you don't mind, like this video, if you've enjoyed it. I'm David Bombal and I wanna
wish you all the very best. (upbeat dance music)
