Friday, November 30, 2012

CCIE-V "I Shoulda' Checked That" Tip #1: Network Clocks

This blog series is inspired by a forum thread I found where a fellow CCIE-V candidate was really fired up about a recent exam attempt. He had finished the exam in around 6 hours and had 2 hours to double and triple check everything. He was very confident about this sitting and was sure everything was operating as expected. Unfortunately, the grade came back "Fail". Obviously, he wasn't too happy about that and was convinced that everything was working when he left the testing facility.

I heard this story more than once and it got me thinking about a couple of things. The first thought revolves around how the IE voice exam is graded. For the IE voice it is a hybrid method of running automated scripts and proctor review. Since a portion of the grading is automated, you have to ensure you are very specific. If you overlook or miss any aspect of a question, no matter how small the miss, you will get zero points.

Another thought was about the relationship between requirements in the lab. While the lab is made up of individual questions, it is supposed to act as a seamless solution once you complete all tasks. This means that when you work on one question, you have to ensure it does not violate the requirements of another question.

Enough of my pondering, let's get to the point. While I believe it is remotely possible that an exam is unfairly or inaccurately graded, I believe it is more likely that small oversights will derail your efforts. The first "I shoulda' checked that" tip of the series: Checking Network Clocks.

Tuesday, November 6, 2012

Provisioning Cisco Jabber for iPad on the VCS Starter Pack

Cisco Jabber Brand
Cisco just released VCS release X7.2.1, which contains some third-party software updates and a handful of bug fixes. That's great but hardly noteworthy. What is noteworthy is that X7.2.1 adds support for the Cisco Jabber for iPad client on the VCS Starter Pack Express.

A few months ago, I posted a write up on provisioning the Cisco Jabber for iPad client with CUPS/CUCM and another one covering provisioning the client for hosted services like WebEx Connect. I guess the next logical step would have been to discuss provisioning with the VCS+TMS. I'll have to come back to that one. For this blog post, I am going to focus on provisioning the Jabber client with the Cisco VCS Starter Pack Express.