How to PASS the Cisco DevNet Associate in 2020

Alexa how many days until February 24th [Music] it is the day after Christmas and as you just heard there are 60 days until February 24th and cert pocalypse is over the new Cisco certifications are going to be here that includes the Cisco dev net which I'm definitely going to take but here's the thing there's no textbook out there report right now is there there's no practice exams so you're kind of on your own to figure out how you're gonna study for this thing so here's my method of studying for this exam that will hopefully lead to my success I believe it will step one is I have to motivate myself I have to inspire myself and Eric Thomas is a motivational speaker who has one speech in particular that really fires me up I always listen to it before I start any exam because it's what helps me commit and I'll link to that video is gonna be below so step number one is committing how bad do you want to pass this exam how bad do you only kind of want to pass this exam or you want to pass it bad if you want to pass it bad you're maybe willing to give something up in order to get it think about that if you hit five o'clock knew mentally check out at five o'clock and you go home and you watch TV and play games and then you go to bed right but if you really really want to pass it especially without an official textbook or practice exams you're really gonna have to commit to passing this exam so staying committed staying motivated through the process is going to be critical because if you want to be successful you want to get that cert if you want to get that acronym after your name you're gonna have to want it back so I'm committed I want to get a bad I'm gonna do what it takes in order to get this certification I'm gonna grind I'm gonna hustle I've got 60 days let's go step two I know this one kind of seems obvious for me but that's gonna be watched the CBT Nuggets my exam passing method is always start by watching videos learn the basics learn the core fundamentals fill in the gaps later and for me watching video training CBT Nuggets has always been my method long before I work there now I did try other competitors wasn't for me nothing against them but CBT Nuggets is where I felt I needed to do my video training let's check out the course on CBT Nuggets so I'm logged into CBT Nuggets right now and right at the top I'm gonna search for Deb net the results come up and right there on the top is the playlist for the cisco dev net associate here's the thing y'all this playlist is meant to be in order you need to understand what api's are before we interact with api's you need to understand how a rest api call actually exists and how it works how Python programming control flow works how JSON is structure you need to understand those things before you jump to the parts that you really care about so the way this works this course was designed as it follows the exam blueprint Ben Finkel takes you through the software development fundamentals he shows you how to work with JSON how to work with XML how to work with Yammer he shows you what an API really means and how you actually work with it it's gonna be critical to understand that before you try and interact with a nexuses REST API for instance and once you've gone through those portions you'll see right around here Network program billion automation foundations that's when my stuff takes over and we're now talking about what even network automation means why does it matter it goes into how you can prepare your lab environment which is going to be a critical step we're gonna talk about that after the CBT Nuggets portion and how you can follow along with the stuff that I'm doing now yang is really important when it comes to net confident rest comp you can't go into those without understanding what a yang data model is but after that after rest called yang models kind of get abandoned because what really ends up happening is these network services like Nexus Meraki ACI they have their own api's they don't use any industry standard stuff which then would use you know the data model so it goes through all of the different Cisco platforms let me throw this disclaimer out there - I took it a step further than necessary to prepare for the Cisco dev net associate example for instance the Cisco definite Associate exam talks about just being familiar with the Cisco collaboration platform the actual bullet point is describe the Cisco collaboration platform and its programmability capabilities it doesn't actually tell you that you need to understand or write a Python script to connect to those devices and interact with them programmatically they just want you to know about the platform at a very high level I didn't feel like that was justified I wanted to actually demo what an interaction with these devices would be one so when you see a nugget like Cisco collaboration platform in the modern era that's that describe bullet point but then it goes into automating see you see em and UDS and then it takes it a step further and there's an entire skill on just automating WebEx teams which is part of that collaboration platform so if I actually bring up the exam blueprint you can see what I'm talking about here under point three Cisco platforms and development if I expand this down all of these are described the capabilities describe the capabilities describe the capabilities only a couple of these are construct code or construct a Python script and those are involving Meraki DNA ac is the winner NSO there's also WebEx teams you notice there wasn't anything in there about cesium or firepower or UCS and I do demo how to interact with those devices they also want you to understand the concepts of yang rest company comp and describe the api's of iOS Xen nx-os and I spend a lot of time actually programming against those devices so just to reiterate expect that when you go through the CBT Nuggets course a lot of that stuff is going to go above and beyond this exam blueprint just because I felt it was important that you actually see what Network automation in action against these devices would actually be like now if we continue down past bullet point 3 it goes into DevOps and CI CD practices as well as understanding things like how to interact with bash and Linux and again another example of where we went a little bit beyond was understand the basics of docker I felt it was really important that you actually see docker in action what a container really is so we take a flask API just pre-built code and turn it into a docker container and then publish it to the docker hub that way you can see how easy it is to take an application like an API and make it portable and docker that's the entire point of docker after all so if we look at the exam blueprint they're telling you things like just interpret the contents of a docker file and utilize docker images in a local doctor environment I took it a step further than that actually showed you how we can use docker to containerize our own applications in one skill infrastructure and automation is where we're gonna introduce ansible a huge parts of the CI CD pipeline and actually making sure that our entire network meets its desired state and then we end the course with keith Barker's network fundamentals what better person to learn network fundamentals from than Keith Barker he's who I learned mine at work funded in this book so yeah I mean this is a really big course there's a whole lot of content in it and it does go a little bit beyond the exam blueprint because I felt it was really important to see this stuff in action so that it drills those concepts home but are watching videos simply enough to pass the dev an exam definitely not the next thing I would say that you should probably consider doing is filling in gaps by reading books here's the books that I read when I was getting prepared for Learning Network automation in general first up automate the boring stuff with Python second edition second edition just came out in November of 2019 so it's brand spankin new and it's all about Python 3 which I thought agree is really fancy and great I definitely recommend if you're totally new to Python this is the starting point for you because it's practical uses of Python it's not what I'm gonna say is pretentious you should as a Python they just want to show you how to make code that works it's not necessarily the prettiest code that work and here's the thing guys at the end of the day no consumer ever bought an app because the code underneath the hood was pretty as long as it works that's all people care about so automate the boring stuff with Python as go you are going to go from point A to point B I have a video here on YouTube called how much Python do you we need to know in order to prepare for the Devyn associate I'd recommend watching that but gist of it is is by Chapter six or so you're probably ready to rock and roll next up I loved this book for understanding why network automation is even a thing network program ability and automation first edition here this book was great it really sets the base level Foundation as well as introduces skills with Bosch and Python and its bender neutral shows you how to work with JSON and XML great book for getting started if you want to read about Network automation from there I think it makes sense to move into mastering Python networking again vendor-neutral this book provides examples of Cisco Juno's Arista and even shows you other platforms for say building visualizations or building your own API this definitely takes it up a notch it's beyond the beginner level but I would say it's solidly intermediate if you've gone through the CBT Nuggets course and you've read a book or two you'll be able to handle this book just fine at that point then the Cisco specific stuff now this is specific to data center in campus this is going to be highly focused on Nexus ACI and a p.m. and it is very very technical but it's written by names of people that you might recognize like Jason Cooley and I definitely feel like it was helping me understand the data center components of what's going to be on the Devon ed exam now lastly there is a book on Yang it's a very large and very technical book on yang I think this would go way beyond what you need in the definite associate exam honestly if you read like chapter one and two you're probably fine but I did buy this book I did skim through it and thought it was pretty interesting but really the book said I would say is make sure you understand Python make sure you understand why Network automation matters and the basics to get started with it and there are some cool tidbits that you could pull out of mastering Python networking and the Cisco specific Network automation textbook so at this point you're committed you've bought in you've committed to taking this test you've committed to passing this test we've gone through a lot of CBT Nuggets to understand the fundamentals of everything that's going to be on the exam we've got some textbooks covered under our belt what do you do next you lab having is the most important thing to studying guys just lab as much as you can and get real-world experience because this test is going to throw things at you that you're going to have to have problem-solving abilities things that you've learned along the way by only laughing it's the only way that you can learn how to solve these kinds of problems is by labbing this stuff so how do you lab well I actually have a skill in the dev net about this back on the CBT Nuggets page will scroll Boyan up here let's keep going going going down go in right here prepare a definite study environment there's a bunch of different ways that you can build your lab viral is one of them if you've got an environment or a computer or a server that can support an environment but it is very complicated to get viral working for Debnath viral by itself is great for something like CCNA CCNP or CCIE but when you get into dev net now we're making things a little bit more complicated making a developer machine access these virtual machines and that's why I created a nugget an 11-minute nugget on how to set up viral but the definite sandbox is really going to be where you spend your time cisco because they know that Nexus devices and a CI and catalase devices they're expensive for the individual to learn this they created these always-on devices these always-on sandboxes where you can create your scripts on your local machine and hit these over the public Internet again the skill and CBT novice covers how to interact with a definite sandbox and almost all of these skills that come after this like a CI like DNA center like Meraki all of those things were accessing this over the definit sandbox so when you're following along with the Nuggets you can actually leverage this definite sandbox he's always on sandboxes and build your own labs where this really comes into play if you click on the Cisco DNA Center for example here in the definite sandbox you can scroll down and build your own scripts to test things out in your own environment but further you can always click on this learn more and it will take you to further learning labs and use cases where you can follow along and push your skills a little bit further so some this thing up you've got committing to doing this right we're going to devote free time and energy to studying for passing this exam and that goes for any exam we're not taking no for an answer here we want it bad we want to win we want to get that certification so we're committed we're in the next step is watch the CBT Nuggets we're gonna learn these stuff step by step with Ben Keith and myself get those core fundamentals down make sure that we really understand how api's work and how cisco and each of their different platforms handle their own api connectivities and interfaces we've got a list of textbooks where we can fill in gaps make sure we really understand somebody else's perspective on how network automation is changing the landscape and how we can interact with different kinds of devices and then lastly lab lab this thing up build as many scripts as you can possibly build it's the definite sandbox you can't break it if you do break it you can just tweet at Cisco Devon and ask them to reset it or post in the forums hey I broke the sandbox somehow can you please reset it they will periodically reset these devices and get them back up and running for you and they're always expanding the sandbox too to make it even better or you buy your own network equipment and viral and use those in your own environment too if you break something viral you just tear it down and rebuild it so those are the steps that you can take to pass the Cisco definite exam in 2020 all right thanks for stopping by Al I'll see you in the next one

Channel: Data Knox

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Keywords: Technology, Networking, Cisco, PowerBI, Training, Certification, Engineer, Network, tips, troubleshoot, Azure, cisco certifications, cisco devnet, cisco devnet associate, cisco devnet associate certification, cisco devnet associate book, cisco devnet exam breakdown, cisco devnet associate exam breakdown, cbt nuggets, ccna training, devasc 200-901, netdevops certification, python certification, cisco python certification

Id: D9V-ZewxfFY

Length: 14min 35sec (875 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 02 2020