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Bernd Überbacher, CCIE #48558 (SP, R&S)
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This presentation is going to be (somehow) motivational, not technical!
I hope it helps my three colleagues at work at least a little bit on their wayto becoming a CCIE (Service Provider, R&S and Security). Actually there arefive people at our office going for the CCIE, but two of them are taking theCCIE Wireless track, which doesn’t count for me :-p
It represents my personal experience/preparation/opinion and what worked for me ONLY!
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There is more text on the slides than there should be on a regular presentation. I’m aware of that. This is just because so that anybody reading
it later on knows what I was talking about (roughly).
@Harald: Thanks for deciding that your brother’s wedding is more important than my presentation :-p
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To be honest, this presentation is just a bunch of quotes with a little bit of useful information.
Questions? Feel free to get in touch!
BTW: One day before my presentation, I decided to add some sarcasm, starting at slide #89.
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Bernd ÜberbacherCCIE #48558 (SP, R&S)[email protected]
More info at http://www.uebi.net/cv-eng.htmLinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/bernd-ueberbacher/Xing - https://www.xing.com/profile/Bernd_UeberbacherFacebook - https://www.facebook.com/bernd.ueberbacher
Feel free to visit cciemap.com as well :-)
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From CCENT to CCNA to CCNP (SP, R&S) to
CCIE Service Provider in 2015Preparation mostly FastLane, INE and iPexpert
CCIE Routing & Switching in 2017Preparation mostly Micronics, Cisco 360, INE and networklessons.com
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A few words about the CCIE (aka Topgun) and the Cisco Certification program…
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Tools used:
• GNS3 (HEAVILY)• Cisco VIRL (twice, then decided to use the images in GNS3)• Cisco 360 (best real lab-like experience, EXTREMELY RECOMMENDED!)• Real Gear (for stuff like Private VLAN etc)
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Recommended Cisco Live! Session
BRKCCIE-3000 - CCIE R&S (2017 Melbourne) - 90 Mins
Best info regarding exam delivery, scoring, types of questions, …
https://www.ciscolive.com/online/connect/sessionDetail.ww?SESSION_ID=94732&backBtn=true
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• The challenge itself in the first place• To become the second Dual CCIE in western Austria
Thomas Fritz will follow ;-)
• Mahatma Gandhi‘s famous quote “Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.”
• To even better support my customers ;-)
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And Christoph Strasser. If somebody can cross the United States on a bike in 7 days, I have to be able to pass this damn CCIE Lab as well!
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Conchita told me (at Cisco Live!) that onlythe first CCIE is tough…
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Conchita told me (at Cisco Live!) that onlythe first CCIE is tough… She was wrong :-D
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And maybe the pressure by my team leader, as well as the boastfulness of our Vice President (Dual CCIE #5356)…
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General tips and tricks:
• Tell your wife that you won‘t be available for the next few monthsand make it up afterwards!
• Also tell here that you might be listening more to Brian McGahan than to her
• Pause all your hobbies (at least during the last months before the lab)
• Use every available minute!
• Motivate yourself!
• Visualize your victory again and again and again!
• Never give up, never ever give up!
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General tips and tricks:
• Tell your wife that you won‘t be available for the next few monthsand make it up afterwards!
• Also tell here that you might be listening more to Brian McGahan than to her
• Pause all your hobbies (at least during the last months before the lab)
• Use every available minute!
• Motivate yourself!
• Visualize your victory again and again and again!
• Never give up, never ever give up!
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Micronics 10 Day END-TO-END “NO EXCUSES” Bootcamp
https://micronicstraining.com/event/end-to-end-no-excuses/A little taste of this great bootcamp: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cM3OI_ZyRuQ
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Micronics 10 Day END-TO-END “NO EXCUSES” Bootcamp
https://micronicstraining.com/event/end-to-end-no-excuses/A little taste of this great bootcamp: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cM3OI_ZyRuQ
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Micronics 10 Day END-TO-END “NO EXCUSES” Bootcamp
https://micronicstraining.com/event/end-to-end-no-excuses/A little taste of this great bootcamp: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cM3OI_ZyRuQ
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117 pages of “notes”!
Micronics 10 Day END-TO-END “NO EXCUSES” Bootcamp – Pretty tough…
https://micronicstraining.com/event/end-to-end-no-excuses/A little taste of this great bootcamp: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cM3OI_ZyRuQ
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22:30
19:47
00:38The later it gets the less people…
INE CCIE R&S 5.0 ATC
https://ine.com/collections/ccie-routing-switching-training/products/ccie-routing-switching-v5-advanced-technologies
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Cisco 360
https://learningnetwork.cisco.com/community/learning_center/expert-level-training/ccie-routing-switching
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Cisco 360
https://learningnetwork.cisco.com/community/learning_center/expert-level-training/ccie-routing-switching
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Cisco 360
https://learningnetwork.cisco.com/community/learning_center/expert-level-training/ccie-routing-switching
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Cisco 360
https://learningnetwork.cisco.com/community/learning_center/expert-level-training/ccie-routing-switching
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Cisco 360
https://learningnetwork.cisco.com/community/learning_center/expert-level-training/ccie-routing-switching
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Cisco 360
https://learningnetwork.cisco.com/community/learning_center/expert-level-training/ccie-routing-switching
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Additionally, I also attended the Cisco Live! CCIE R&S Session with legends like Bruce, Yusuf, Bruno and Kurt.
BTW: The session needs to be paid extra.
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Lots of PuTTY Logs created…
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Feeling down?
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Change the wallpaper!
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Feeling down again?
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No prob, you will have to change your wallpaper pretty often during the next months…
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No prob, you will have to change your wallpaper pretty often during the next months…
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No prob, you will have to change your wallpaper pretty often during the next months…
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Feeling angry?
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Don‘t blame the keyboard!
(as it was Multicast‘s fault!)
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I said DON’T BLAME THE
KEYBOARD!
(This time it was DMVPN/IPsec)
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And maybe change the wallpaper
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Finally the most important thing:
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Start NOW!
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By Start NOW I mean to:
• Evaluate your strengths and weaknesses
• Create your timeline (studies, bootcamp, lab date, …)
• Book the lab (considering you already passed the written)
• If you can’t push yourself enough, find a study partner (I prefer studying alone)
The lab itself is $ 1.600,- so unless you are a billionaire, this should be some kind of motivation for your ongoing studies, too!
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BTW: Booking the lab looks like this
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My timeline was:
• Start January 2016
• Tried Written February 2016 – too early, barely failed
• Tried Written again April 2016 – passed (barely, too :-)
• Not the focus I wanted during summer, but did all the Micronics Foundation Labs etc
• Bootcamp in October and idea to book the lab for December 13th – too early
• January 2017 – Let‘s start over. Full throttle! Lab Booking deadline set to March 13th
• March 13th, 2017 – DEADLINE – In shape? If yes, book the Lab! – LAB BOOKED
• April 13th, 2017 – LAB DAY
• April 14 th,2017 – Passed? If yes, Emeritus and retirement!
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2017 was intense!
Monday through Friday just my job and labbing.
Saturday and Sunday family-time.
Try to use every minute. I didn‘t listen to music while driving, but to Brian. I made my own voice notes of certain topics and listened to them when going to bed until I fell asleep. Waiting at the doctors? Read something related on your phone…
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March 13th to April 13th was at least 6 hours labbing per day. In case of no appointments it has been up to 12 hours labbing per day.
You need more sleep?
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March 13th to April 13th was at least 6 hours labbing per day. In case of no appointments it has been up to 12 hours labbing per day.
You need more sleep?
Do what Arnold Schwarzenegger recommends:
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March 13th to April 13th was at least 6 hours labbing per day. In case of no appointments it has been up to 12 hours labbing per day.
You need more sleep?
Do what Arnold Schwarzenegger recommends: Sleep faster!
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Your personal life and your relationship will suffer!
In my case, my wife even started to sleep with another man…
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Your personal life and your relationship will suffer!
In my case, my wife even started to sleep with another man…
Since I was going to bed every day after midnight, I slept in a different
room from January to April.
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• Arrive early (in Brussels) – In my case it was even one full day before the lab
• Go to bed early
• Do everything YOU need so that you are feeling comfortable before the lab
• Don‘t forget your ID!
• Show up at Pegasus Park @ 0815 (or better a little bit earlier)NH Hotels Brussels Airport to the Lab location is exactly 5 min (walking)
• Bring something to drink
• Listen to the proctor (Jan or Istvan) and better be very friendly with him :-)
My very own opinion: Istvan had a beard if I remember correctly and Jan is the one who looks like Arjen Robben :-)
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Everybody loves pictures…
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The day before. Cisco is really close to NH Hotels Brussels Airport. From my room:
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Oops, sorry!
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The Lab will be this way:
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Just leave the hotel, turn right, turn right again, …
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Turn left and pass the beautiful park…
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Keeping going…
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And here we are!
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And here we are!
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Before the lab!
And here we are!
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Before the lab!
Herpes. Too much stress before the lab…
A few more steps…
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First challenge solved!
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Let the games begin!
• The proctor will tell you where to store your belongings and where you have to sit for the next hours
• He will write the start, lunch break and finish times on the white board
• Time is short, but read the guidelines! READ THEM! General guidelines and per Ticket/Question guidelines!
• It is NOT a best practice exam! (One more reason to read the guidelines!)
• Don‘t eat too much during the lunch break.I never saw anyone doing this anyway, just wanted to mention it.
You will be too nervous to enjoy lunch ;-)
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Technical stuff
• You will have two screens
• You will have a US keyboard (Dell or Logitech) with the small enter key!
• You will have to use PuTTY (which I love)
By default, the right click pops up a menu, but you can change it to „Paste“
This has to be done for every single PuTTY window, though and the settings are lost if you close it.
• You will feel some lag when typing!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
• The DocCD is slow!
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Enjoy the following 8 hours of pain, stress, anger, hate, happiness, …
BTW: I had to use the full extra 30 mins for TS (they will be subtracted from the Config section).
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Enjoy the following 8 hours of pain, stress, anger, hate, happiness, …
Fight until the end!
BTW: I had to use the full extra 30 mins for TS (they will be subtracted from the Config section).
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Finished. Happy to be going home again.
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Feeling?
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Feeling? Baaaaaaaaaaad :-(
Before the lab I was most afraid of the Diag section. I just don’t like the feeling aboutscrewing the whole lab because of a 30 min session (per section cut score).
AFTER the lab I was pretty confident about the Diag and Config section, but I had avery bad feeling about troubleshooting! I was unable to solve one of the big tickets,wasted a lot of time, did the other tickets, came back, took the full 30 mins (youdon’t need to take the FULL 30 min if you don’t want/have to), but my output stilldidn’t match the output from the question. Felt bad afterwards, because of notusing more time to verify the rest, but screwing around with this stupid ticket…
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Feeling tired (and down), but happy to be heading home. Bye, bye Brussels.
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Another hard part is yet to come…
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Waiting for the result!
Too tensed to sleep, but
at least properly dressed!
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OMG, no service, maybe they just sent me the report and I can‘t receive it!
BTW: 02:00
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Nope, they didn‘t. Good sign, bad sign? Anyway, had to enable roaming a couple of times to update my mails…
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After an endless night of refreshing my inbox, I just had to sleep at noon the following day (this time hopefully for more than 30 mins), but still with no feedback received from Cisco…
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Approximately 3 hours later I did something unusual (for the last months) and took my son out for a walk.
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After getting back at 17:45 I saw that Cisco sent me an email (at 17:31):
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And after logging in and looking at the screen with one eye closed and one eye half opened I saw the magic line:
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Verify it just to be sure:
Looks good! :-)
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So you got your number… Does this make you a better engineer? NO! It shows that you set yourself goals and won‘t quit until the job is done. Of course the CCIE proves a certain (HIGH) level of knowledge, but the only thing in life that makes you a better engineer is
daily practice and experience.
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In other words:
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In other words:
The journey doesn‘t end here, it has only just begun!
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Things didn’t went well and you failed?
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According to Eman you need 2.3 attempts (on average ) to pass the lab…
But certifications (in general) are worth all the hustle! Or not?
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But certifications (in general) are worth all the hustle! Or not?
Let’s see…
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But certifications (in general) are worth all the hustle! Or not?
Let’s see…
WARNING: Now I will kill all the motivation I did so far…
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My life before any certification:
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Life was easy. Learning/doing just what I want(ed), not what was written on a blueprint…
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Some relaxed hacking @ CCCamp 1999 Not working too hard in the office
Work was easy…
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The reward after all this:
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The reward after all this:
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The reward after all this:
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Cisco NetRiders @ Cisco Vienna
Is this…
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Is this…
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DC Innsbruck 2014 @ 00:47ASR 1k memory upgrade
DC Vienna 2014 @ 02:19ASR 1k deployment
Is this…
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05:50 @ Customer’s siteCatalyst 4500 installation
05:23 @ Customer’s siteCat 6500 to Cat 6800 migration
04:24 driving to a customerASR 1k to ASR 9k migration
Is this…
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Heavy lifting…
Loneliness…
Dirt…
Schizophrenia…
And what for?
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And what for?
Money for nothing, chicks for free?
No, but...
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And what for?
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A piece of paper
And what for?
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A piece of paper or a free T-Shirt (HE IPv6 Sages)
And what for?
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A piece of paper or a free T-Shirt (HE IPv6 Sages) and occasionally a party (with my colleague Hubsi, CCIE #3063 @ CLEUR)
In other words:
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In other words:
TOTALLY WORTH IT!
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It has been intense - again. After my first CCIE I decided to go for the second, as bothSP 3.0 and R&S 5.0 included my most favorite topics. There is no other track I’minterested in so there won’t be a third CCIE! Russ White even recommends just one.In the near future I will try to learn a bit more about Nexus/NX-OS and a lot moreabout design topics.
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Maybe at times when my son (currently 18 months old) is doinghis first CCIE I will take this journey with him – still about 14years to go, though ;-)
@my son: Don’t you dare to go for the Wireless track! (unless there is a CCIE Meraki someday ;-)
In the meantime I will find other challenges…
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Maybe at times when my son (currently 18 months old) is doinghis first CCIE I will take this journey with him – still about 14years to go, though ;-)
@my son: Don’t you dare to go for the Wireless track! (unless there is a CCIE Meraki someday ;-)
In the meantime I will find other challenges…
@my wife: This doesn’t mean a second baby!
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To all my colleagues currently preparing for the lab (even the Wireless people):
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You have to want your number (or whatever your goal is) really badly!
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If times get rough, hold on to my favorite quote:
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One last thing to remember for your ongoing job-life as a network engineer:
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Pay attention, it is something important!
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It is never the network! It is always the storage!
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It is never the network! It is always the storage!
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• Christoph Strasser photos are copyright by Christoph Strasser - www.christophstrasser.at
• Spongebob is copyright by nickelodeon - www.nickelodeon.at
• The quote wallpapers are copyright by quotefancy – www.quotefancy.com
• The Cisco Love logo is copyright by Cisco Love – www.ciscolove.com
• The picture of the map is copyright by Google Maps – www.google.com
• The Cisco Certification pyramid and CCIE time table is copyright by Cisco – www.cisco.com
• The photos of Stuart Biggs and Terry Slattery are copyright by Brad Reese – www.bradreese.com
• Other pictures are copyright by their respective owner(s), for example but not limited to www.memecrunch.com, www.9gag.com and www.blamethenetwork.com
• Everything else should be copyright by me
• If I’ve forgotten something, please forgive and don’t sue me!
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