You’ll find less excuses to put off becoming a Cisco Certified Design Expert (CCDE), if it has been on your bucket list for a while. Cisco recently announced that the CCDE practical exam will soon be available at all PCCs (Pearson Professional Centers) around the world, starting 20 February 2014. This means that you won’t have to travel far to take on this exam challenge. It is a huge time- and money-saver!
Cisco is committed to making your CCDE exam experience more flexible by increasing the number 8 to 275 exam locations (and counting). You can register up to one day prior to the test date by choosing your location. Cisco recommends that candidates register at least 45-days in advance to ensure that the exam site you require is open for the required nine hours.
CCDE Practical Exam Topics
1.0 Analyze Design Requirements 36%
1.1 Analyze business needs, conflicts, constraints
1.1.a OPEX, CAPEX
1.1.b Goals of the Project
1.1.c Lifecycle, return on investment (ROI),
1.1.d Business environment
1.1.e Compliance with policy
1.2 Analyze technical constraints, conflicts, and requirements
1.2.a Requirements for application
1.2.b Policy and compliance
1.3 Analyze your physical requirements
1.3.a Topology implications
1.3.b Operations requirements
1.3.c Analyze technical and business risks
1.4 Analyze existing networks
1.4.a Network documentation
1.4.b Network infrastructure, and its effect on network design
2.0 Develop Network Designs – 39%
2.1 Identify the technology needed to solve a particular design problem
2.1.a Specifications functional
2.1.b Network designs
2.1.c Operational considerations
2.2 Analyze the impact on the existing network of services
2.2.a Specifications functional
2.2.b Network designs
2.2.c Operational considerations
2.3 Use best practices in network design
2.3.a Avoidance over-engineering
2.3.b The network should have a consistent and modularized solution set.
2.3.c Industry best practice
2.4 Incorporate business needs into the network design
2.4.a OPEX, CAPEX
2.4.b Lifecycle, return on investment (ROI), and 2.4.b
2.4.c Compliance with policy
3.0 Implement Network Design – 13%
3.1 Analyze the implementation options
3.1.a Effect on design
3.1.b Impact on performance, availability, network management
3.1.c Business Effect
3.1.d Risks and consequences for a given implementation program
3.2 Create a plan for implementation
3.2.a Interdependencies among services, failure domains, or other architectural elements
3.2.b Timeline and steps for implementation
3.2.c Contingency plans for network restoration
4.0 Validate and Optimize Network Designs – 12%
4.1 Analyze design choices on the basis of specifications
4.1.a The effect of making changes to the original design
4.1.b The effect of different design solutions created new drivers
4.2 Validate design
4.2.a Test strategy
4.2.b Performance metrics, baselines
4.3 Optimize design
4.3.a KPI
Baselines 4.3.b
9 HOURS?? ?
The Cisco CCDE Practical Exam takes 8 hours. This exam is scenario-based and aims to assess candidates’ ability to analyze design requirements and develop network designs. It also aims to justify design decisions and validate and optimize a network that is based upon best practices. Your ability to apply your knowledge to current business problems in technical network design will be assessed. However, the exam does not test for product-specific knowledge, such as version of code, implementation, and operations concepts (assuming that you already have this knowledge if you have reached that level in your Cisco certification).
Each section has 25 to 35 questions and each section focuses on a different scenario. The exam can take up to nine hours, if you include the lunch break. Candi