No posts since some time now, I have been busy working for the CCIE Written Datacenter and then the HP0-Y32 exam which is the first step to HP MASE certification.

A quick review on the CCIE DC Written : It’s a very strange exam where there is some very easy question for somebody who already has experience on Cisco devices and some very difficult question on very specific capabilities of the Cisco DC products. Overall It’s a very interesting certification that allows to review (and to me sometimes correct misconceptions) about NX-OS family products from pure networking to computing systems like the UCS.

Next step now is the lab and this is where it become complicated… I booked the lab for the 26th november which is also my birthday ! I will begin the study by a global review of all the topics and then practice/practice based on the topic of the blueprint.

I also passed HP0-Y32 on the second try. It’s a shame because we had a 5 days training on HP product because of a project that is coming but this training didn’t talk at all about interoperability (which is an important part of the exam) or E-series. I tried to rush the exam by going to the test center immediately after the training without any review and scored 63% for a passing mark which is 67%. On the second try, everything was much clearer as I bought the official exam guide and I score 76%.

My opinion is that exam is no really well designed, at least when you are used to Cisco exams (which I think are pretty clear on what they expect, the question formulation…). There is some questions where I was forced to re-read the question multiple time to understand the point.

The exam guide is well written (done by CCIEs of course ) and goes on some topics that I personally haven’t dealt that much like STP interoperability.

Next exam will be the HP0-Y37 to complete the HP MASE and this time I already have the exam guide !!