How I passed CCNP ENARSI First Try (exam hacks)

hello and welcome to this video where i'm going to give you the most comprehensive nrc exam review on youtube of course without violating the nda let's get started now this video is going to be a little bit longer because i really have a lot to talk about and a lot of tips to share with you first i'm going to talk about how long it took me to get ready for this exam then i'll talk about what i thought about the exam itself and then i'll share with you my tips on how i passed on the first attempt and how you can as well i've got a list here in front of me so i can remember to hit on each thing i wanted to mention and i guess we'll just get into it how long did it take me that's the first thing i'll address the short answer is it took me three to six months but here's the full story just kind of getting run through my entire background actually but i think it's helpful to run through this so you can see what i had before i decided to start studying so i decided to start studying networking just in general for the first time in january 2018 this is when i signed up to finish the last two years of my bachelor's degree and i started to read the ccna material i was brand new to it so i ended up picking up and putting down the ccna books a lot i didn't do enough cisco in my jobs during college and after college or in college so i ended up getting distracted what i did during that time was get all three of the comptia cert so a plus net plus sec plus and i was working for a small to medium sized msp doing lots of windows admin type stuff so i always knew i wanted to transition to networking and focus on cisco but i just kept reading it and putting it down i actually let one of my i signed up for the ccna the icnd1 actually let the date go by i went to reschedule it and it had already passed so but anyway it's another story um so i graduated in may 2019 i worked some and then i got hired at cisco as a tech engineer in january 2020. by february 2020 i had passed the ccna composite exam right before the whole assert pocalypse when everything changed so i did get the old ccna not the new one and right after that i immediately started studying for encore because looking at the exam objectives i felt this is really not much deeper than the ccna just a little bit more into the protocols and a lot of the sd access and wireless i have another video on that so check the cards or the description and that'll tell you all about what i think about the encore exam so may 2020 is when i ended up passing the encore uh at first i wasn't interested in anarchy at all saying like i'll just continue my studies with my eyes on ccie you have ccie who cares if you have ccd so i didn't really plan to get it and i was kind of thinking well maybe i'll get some of the automation stuff because certain exams for that get you kind of two two and one you'll get the specialization and then half of the devnet i was thinking about doing that and still on my radar but at the end of april actually deployed to my tac team which is the data center routing and switching team during part of the training for that team we went very deep into studying the big three routing protocols so by that i mean ospf eigrp and egp and so at that point i decided the overlap was so much so i was going so deep into these routing protocols and then looking at the objectives of an artsy which we'll pull up here in a little bit i realize hey this overlaps so much i might as well just go ahead and take that exam to finish up my ccnp so this is when my nrc focused study began and this was right around the time of late june or early july now keep in mind i say that an rc focus studying started then but the entire time since january february i have been just going crazy on studying the fundamentals of networking and all the protocols so while i wasn't studying with an rc in mind i was still studying so don't let that guide you or something so after all of this i passed the narcy on thursday august 13th 2020. so that was a long story but i think it's important to paint the entire picture because i could tell you like oh yeah you know i decided to start studying for an rc and you know june and got it in august but that doesn't really tell you the whole thing so that's my story that's how long it took me yeah now my thoughts on the exam itself there are definitely some time-consuming questions on this exam i am a very fast test taker in school throughout my entire school career i was always the first or the second done i finished encore with 90 minutes left and sometimes on the nrc i thought i was gonna run out of time this is the first exam where i had to look up at the time and think about how many questions i had taken and how many i had left and and really look at my pacing and i have never had this concern i know this is a huge concern for a lot of people i have never worried about that on any exam that i ever took and this one was the first one where i was like wow i need to really manage my time and pay attention to this so if you're bad at time and management the only suggestion i have for you is know every objective because the only way to get through it quickly is to know it enough to look and find the answer quickly so if you're bad with time pressure this is going to be a big challenge for you on that exam another thing i'll say is every single bullet point is hit from the objectives that's kind of like okay duh that's why they tell you they're the objectives but stuff you think they won't ask you that much about they will so it's very very service heavy uh i almost say that it should be called advanced services and routing it's not really true the waiting that they tell you on the website is is pretty accurate and just don't do like i did and be like ah they're not really good this is advanced routing it's going to be mostly routing stuff and they're not really going to ask that much about that other stuff and what they do it'll be high level no it's advanced routing and advanced services it's not advanced routing in a little bit of certain oh like no at all know all of it very important continuing on that point i went crazy deep into routing protocols like the function of them and you know how they interact and all this kind of stuff and they didn't hit on that as hard as i thought they would now that knowledge is going to serve me for the rest of my life and for the rest of my career so and i'll touch on this towards the end of the video also don't study to pass the test study for the knowledge but of course when you're trying to pass a test i mean there's to an extent you're studying to pass a test more on this later but my main point is this is advanced routing right it's not you know what is the hello time you need to know that it may or may not be on the exam but this is getting into the advanced stuff they already expect you encore is more about you know how many packet types does ospf use to communicate what is it what is an administrative distance what does what is a metric like all of this kind of stuff like this is like okay we know you know that we're going to start asking you deeper into the protocol so where i made some of the mistake is i should have made a little bit more complex labs don't get me wrong i did a lot of complex labbing but i should have made a few more labs and out again more on this when i start talking about study tools there's another point i want to hit on the next thing i want to mention there's a section four in the back of every official certification guide i'll i'll pull these up later you can see them here two of the books i use but anyway um they tell you in these books read the question again it seems like common sense you know but the way we are now we're programmed to scan quickly we scan emails we scan text we scan everything and we skim and um they say they say in the certification books you know some of the biggest reasons for people failing is not understanding what the question was actually asking or choosing the wrong answer because they didn't read it enough and what i want to say is that i felt the encore as well as the cca were very straightforward there was not a lot of trickery of course you had to read the question and know okay this is what they're asking and this is what the answer should be but i didn't feel like anything was really worded in a way that was like if we're trying to trick you and if you don't read this all the way um you're gonna pick the wrong answer because you're rushing also the answers themselves you have to read the entire answer some of the stuff on this exam is going to be it's not just a couple lines of output you know you need to decipher the output decipher what exactly the question is asking for and then carefully read the commands as well as every argument with the command because there might be something where it's like okay two of these answers are obviously wrong and if you just look real quick either one of the remaining two could be right but if you don't look at the order of the arguments you made a mistake so very very very important to take your time read the question once read it twice and check over the answers in a very detailed way this was more important on this exam than it has been on any other certification exam i've taken my weakest section of the exam was infrastructure security and for me personally that was because i didn't go deep enough into cop i didn't practice enough with cop i didn't study cop enough cop is listed as an objective so i'm not telling you anything that's not publicly available the weighting like i said is is accurate based on what they tell you on the website but i'm just saying i looked at some of the stuff was like i asked you some basic questions about this and they're not going to go deep into it this exam is going to be all about routing look at the objectives look at the percentages know every bullet point that's all i can say now i will tell you about how i passed on my first try and what study resources did i use first of all an rc official certification guide this is a great book to pass the nrc exam you read the intro it says the main goal of the book is to pass the exam and that is true pay very close attention to the trouble tickets in that book every chapter is great it covers again like i said in the encore book people hate these behold they make mistakes this they do that there's 30 errata and it's blah blah blah you know all this stuff this isn't the book you buy that you want to have as the go-to in-depth reference on these protocols the authoritative source on the pro no these are the books you go to when you want to pass the exam now you don't want to just pass exams and then get in interviews or get in situations where you don't know how to answer and you're you know i mean you're not studying just to pass a test of course you're studying for knowledge but at the same time you are studying to pass a test more on this later but i just want to say that that book is great that was again my main resource as far as what is the depth of these things i need to know to pass the exam because any one of these bullet points you see on the objectives and i'll pull them up now this is the heaviest section the layer three text so i've just got that one pulled up but read all of them of course again i've always said this but just read read every bullet point know each part of every bullet point but any anything on here you can go in infinitely deep into it you know but there's only a certain level of depth you need to go to in the exam we're all trying to be effective we're all trying to use our time the most effectively we all want to pass as fast as possible and all these different things so bulk is great for that in addition to the nrc official certification guide this was the first time that i had started to use anki anki is a free program you can download to help you build flash cards and flash card decks to use the spaced repetition method of learning me my method of approaching problems is often you know understand the problem gather everything you need for that and then search and find the answer because you have a good searching ability and a good understanding of what the problem is so you know what to look for and you have a base knowledge of many different things you say okay i remember basically how that works i need to understand it deeper for this particular problem so i don't memorize a lot of information for real life that may be good or maybe bad there's pros and cons to that method but for taking an exam for memorizing things for a test it's horrible so i realized you know what i can be on the command line and question mark things out oh yeah i know i need to go to this configuration mode i need to be in interface mode and i can type the first part of the command question mark tab question mark tab you don't have question mark and tab on the exam so to help me memorize some things like what what sub configuration mode of name drgrp do you change the you redistribute from you know i these kind of things i used um not only labbing because the more you implement it and the more you lab on it you just remember oh yeah to do redistribution and named eigrp is in the topology base subsection uh but also anki flash cards extremely helpful i'm going to use this for the rest of my life for the rest of my career to memorize things because i'll just hit on this now taking an exam getting assert is great but it's worthless for the real life worthless no of course not it's an exaggeration there if they're great i love search i'm going to keep getting them they get you interviews they build your you know clout or whatever you want to call it um they give you credibility but when you're on the phone with the customer troubleshooting a problem they don't call you up and say hey you know my entire network's down is it a my administrative distance is too high on this protocol when i want this protocol to be the one that it chooses is it b my subnet mask is too small is it c no it's just hey you know i'm down i don't i you know blah blah blah help me so you need to study to know how to answer things when you don't have the answers in front of you and so anki really helped me improve my i don't know if you call it short term memory or recall memory or whatever but it really helps so i'm going to use this not only for exams but for things i need to know for my career so i highly suggest that you look into the space repetition model download anki because it's free use quizlet whatever you want flashcards help me never really use them in my life before use them and huge help rule number three bozin again excellent resource the difficulty of posing in comparison to the actual exam again same as i said for encore right on par bozen had a reputation before where the ccna is much much harder than the real ccna so the bozen ccna is way harder than the real one i personally don't feel that that's true for the encore and for the nrc exams i feel like they're right about on par but what i will say is bozen did an excellent job in wording questions in the way where if you rush through it you realize oh i knew that but i rushed through that question and if i would have just read it a little deeper i would have got that right as i mentioned before extremely important on this exam another thing i'll say about bozen is they will ask you some stuff in the bozen when you're going by you're not going to ask me about that i don't see that on the objectives well what does it say uh in the above the objectives it says we might ask you anything this might not be a comprehensive list my advice to you is if you come across something in bozen and you haven't seen it and you don't know it look it up learn it memorize it make flash cards out of it understand why the right answer is the right answer which bozen does an excellent job of giving you the links to the white papers where they found the answer and great explanations again at first when i did the first two i only did two of the practice exams of the bozen and when i did them i was like man this isn't going to be how the real exam is uh you know blah blah blah it again great resource highly recommended they don't sponsor me i don't have an affiliate link for bozen just a great product and uh definitely recommend it while we're on the subject of practice exams the ocg comes with a few practice exams and i'll say that those are great but particularly some of the stuff they ask you in regards to um both exams actually in this regard but uh what they ask you in terms of you know redistribution problems with redistribution things like that really great practice uh really great practice for life really great practice for the exam as you see the objective 1.4 of layer 3 technologies is troubleshoot redistribution between any routing protocols and sources so you definitely want to be able to do that and both of these exams as well as the book are a great resource for that another book that i want to mention this is routing tcpip this is volume one sadly there's not bgp in this volume uh but there is ospf eigrp in four and v6 and there's also a great section on redistribution in there now that was not a main resource for me i bought that because i told you the exam guides are number one objective past the exam this is a deep dive into the real functionality and guts of those protocols so i bought that to have as a reference and to use for my career and when things were maybe not clear enough or they didn't go as deep as i wanted to go in the exam i would pull up the same section and routing tcp and kind of compare and tcp also has an excellent excellent section on redistribution and troubleshooting redistribution so not a must-have but a great addition to your library if you're looking for books to go deeper final thing that i want to mention that i used to pass this exam was you guessed it labbing i used a mix of even g and real gear but it doesn't matter whatever you have that can run ios v so the viral version of ios is going to be perfectly enough for you it can do everything that you need it to do from dmvpn to redistribution to aaa stuff so on and so forth one tip i will give you for labbing with either gns or even g is hook that into your home network i've also made a really introductory video to that uh part or link in the description to that and here's the reason why i recommend that you spin up a like say a windows server right and set that up to be like a radius or a tacack server and actually configure the aaa stuff short story that's what i did i hooked in even g to my home network spun up a windows server 2019 vm and configured it as a radius server and configured radius authentication on a router and i ran into some problems i think i'm going to make a video on this so i don't want to give too much away about what the problem was but long story short i had to enable the debugs for the authentication on the router and figure out why my radius wasn't wasn't authenticating right this was extremely helpful on the exam probably the book has enough in there where you can read it and look at the outputs they give you in the book but just doing it myself and actually using the debug output to solve a problem extremely helpful on the exam um i'm a big every video lab lab lab is king lab lab lab and again this is what helped here labbing redistribution route maps prefix lists tagging all of these are listed in these objectives here extremely important um you need to know how to do that backwards and forwards so the exam is going to give you you know a bunch of output you're going to have to decipher the output then read the question and you know say okay what do they want and then look at four sets of answers sometimes maybe more and it's not just a one line or answer it's it's a configuration that you need to know like and the only way you're going to know that fast enough is if you have done it enough times to know no this is how you set that up so again know these things practice these things set these things up break them fix them come up with your own objectives um i'm thinking about coming up with some some different labs and and you know do this in the way that you know x does y and b does c and b ask f out on eight on a date and you know all this kind of stuff um but really some of the best ways is just going in on your own and saying well if i want to do this how would i do it because then you're forced to find the answer and when you're forced to find an answer rather than looking at examples in a book or something that i tell you it internalizes way stronger another tip on this point is read the question first if you read it again so you fully understand it then look at whatever they show you as output and then read the answers read each answer once and then look again and you know it depends on what the question is what the question type is what it's asking you and so on but um a lot of what these exams i feel are testing are not only your knowledge of the subject but also your logical you know troubleshooting ability your logical thinking ability and your your deductive reasoning and your attention to detail all of these things i just mentioned are extremely important in the real world because here's the thing you might think oh it's so stupid on an exam to switch two arguments and you know one of the answers was wrong and one of the answers is right they're just trying to trick me well you make the wrong move on a hospital router and now you've got patient lives at risk so that's a very extreme example but it's a real example nonetheless and attention to detail in this field is critical maybe you're not putting patient lives at risk but you're down in the network and you're losing hundreds of thousands of dollars a minute i mean again very high uh extreme examples but valid points nonetheless so not only is the exam testing your knowledge they're testing your ability to pay attention to detail and to logically work your way through something you maybe don't understand immediately as a final note on labbing as a study resource leave a comment like this video subscribe if you want me to make specific labs that will help you based off of these exam objectives that you see on screen um i need to know enough people are interested because if i'm going to take the time to do it it's going to take me many hours to create these labs and i'm going to give it you know the best the best type of quality you can have in a lab so just let me know if you're interested in that and enough if enough people say they want it then i'll think about building some of that stuff out in conclusion very happy to finally be a ccnp i remember times when i have a i have a dream board another thing i'll say real quick is you know your mind state is very important believe you can pass see yourself passing all this kind of stuff not going to get too into that in this video but um your mindset's very important and what i was saying is i remember times when i have a dream board and i used to photoshop my name on the ccna certificate i found somebody's picture of somebody's ccna online i went cut their name out and put my own on it no i wasn't trying to fake my exam no i never showed that to anybody don't come after me for that but i wanted to see what i would see when i really got my exam so it feels really surreal to come from you know photoshopping my name on ccna certificates to hold in the real deal ccnp and you can go through the same thing if you just put your mind to it tcie is still a goal of mine but for now i'm going to be really focused on some data center stuff uh nx os uh as i mentioned earlier that's the team that i'm on for my current role so um the enterprise track is so enterprise specific that i kind of want to start building my foundation on the nexus platform so i'll be focused on that for a while you still count on enterprise type videos to come from me as well as maybe some nexus ones just you know make sure you're subscribed to the channel because good stuff's coming either way i'm also going to be shifting a focus into some cloud stuff and some python because um nobody wants to be a a one trick pony got to be real deep something to be an expert but also i'm just trying to stay abreast of what's going on in the industry so you build up my python and my cloud skills and uh as a as a final note i'll say i do have some affiliate links in the description for some of the books i used uh if if this video has helped you if the channel has helped you i would appreciate it if you buy through those links i'll get a small kickback and it doesn't cost you any extra so consider that if you'd like and as a final closing note i will say exams are great certifications are great but study for your life study for your career i said it once in this video i'll say it again when the customer is on the phone asking you questions you're troubleshooting your own network or somebody else's network that's down there is no pool of correct answers there's only the knowledge that you have inside and the ability you have to analyze a problem and know what to search for to find the answer so names are great certs are great but they in a way don't really mean anything so don't be too focused on just passing the exam but at the same time focus on passing the exam i know that's kind of contradictory but i hope you understand what i'm getting at and um in conclusion i hope this video was helpful and i'll see you in the next one bye guys [Music]

Channel: AGray Tech

Views: 3,782

Keywords: 300-410 cisco exam, Cisco Certification, Cisco Exam advice, Cisco Networking, ENARSI Labs, ENARSI exam review, ccnp enterprise, ccnp enterprise training, ccnp study, ccnp training, cisco certifications, enarsi, enarsi exam topics, enarsi lab, enarsi practice test, enarsi training, encor, encor 350-401, how to get ccnp, how to pass CCNP, how to pass ENARSI, enarsi exam review, ccnp advanced routing, IP networking exam, enarsi 300-410, ccnp interview questions and answers

Id: hzWYz_JT7TI

Length: 25min 33sec (1533 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 15 2020