certifications

its that time of year and i'm renewing my cisco certifications again. I recently passed the cisco foundation express exam and am now looking at the unified communications express exam. In addition its finally time to start working on CCIE via CCNP.

Despite a strong interest in the CCVP i am going to take the routing and switching (R&S) route. I'm planning on taking the new v.4 exam which will be harder, but never mind. I should crack 642-812 pretty quickly as its what i do on a daily basis, and the other CCNP exams don't look too dificult given that i'm using the technology on a daily basis.

The hard part will be the cost of the lab equipment and materials. Basically i can boot-camp, home study the written exam, but will need actual access to equipment for the lab simulations. Here is where it gets really expensive - ipexpert and internet expert seem to be the best options for rack rental - in particular the vrack option.

otherwise i have to buy several expensive bits of kit (3560 switches in particular)... either way i've seen other candidates log hundreds and thousands of hours of rack time - remember the lab exam is 8hrs long including a 2 hr troubleshooting session - there are only ten locations the lab can be undertaken in. I think it will take around 18 months in all, so time to start saving...

if only there was a reliable way of simulating all the kit!