Even if you know how to setup every technology on the CCIE Collaboration Lab, you can still fail if you don’t troubleshoot effectively. Not only will you need to troubleshoot any configuration mistakes you might make, you’ll need to troubleshoot issues Cisco injected into the lab before you ever set foot in the room. 

To help you overcome those troubleshooting obstacles, this video points out some common troubleshooting issues and shows you how to fix them.

Kevin Wallace, CCIEx2 (Collab. & R/S) #7945

If you enjoyed this article, you might also want to subscribe to my podcast:

iTunes: http://kwtrain.com/podcast

RSS: http://kwtrain.com/rss

Walt Disney is one of my personal heroes, and the following quote from him beautifully sets the stage for this blog post’s topic, curiosity:

We keep moving forward, opening new doors, and doing new things, because we’re curious, and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths. 

– Walt Disney

Curiosity about how something works spurs on mastery of that topic. It motivates us to want to learn more. This blog post examines some of the benefits of having a healthy curiosity, steps to further develop your curiosity, and another tale from the trenches that illustrates how curiosity led to the development of one of my most popular Cisco training videos.

The Benefits of Curiosity

Albert Einstein said, “The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.” Are you curious how curiosity can help us in our Cisco careers? Let’s consider just a few benefits of curiosity.

• Motivation: Becoming...

Are you preparing for the CCIE Collaboration Lab? If so, this new video can dramatically improve your odds of passing the lab. 

Kevin Wallace, CCIEx2 (Collab. & R/S) #7945

If you enjoyed this video, you might also want to subscribe to my podcast:

iTunes: http://kwtrain.com/podcast

RSS: http://kwtrain.com/rss

Cisco recently retired their CCNA Voice and CCNP Voice tracks, and have replaced those telephony-centric tracks with the new CCNA Collaboration and CCNP Collaboration tracks. While these tracks do cover traditional IP telephony concepts, the big difference is video.

The name Collaboration stems from how people can more effectively collaborate with one another if they interact using both voice and video, and depending on your budget, this collaboration experience can be extremely immersive (e.g. Cisco’s TelePresence solution).

Early next year, I’ll be releasing a series of CCNA Collaboration training videos. However, if this track interests you, this blog post will get you started.

The first bit of interesting news is that there are no prerequisites! Yep, you read that right. You do not have to have a CCNA in Routing and Switching to earn your CCNA in Collaboration. However, you do have to pass two exams:

• Exam #1: 210-060 (CICD: Implementing Cisco...

In a previous blog post we considered how to effectively set our goals to reach our “destination address.” However, no matter how well we plan, it seems that occasionally, life gets in the way. That’s the focus of this blog post, how to keep moving forward against the current of life.

When Life Gets in the Way

Your goals are set, and you’re cruising down that metaphorical road to success when all of a sudden you notice a detour sign, because the road ahead is closed. That’s what seems to happen all too often in our careers. Things are going well, and then some life event happens forcing us to take a detour from our intended path.

Staying with our metaphor of driving down the road of success, let’s imagine that your car has a navigation system. When you veer off your planned route, the navigation system dutifully recomputes your route and tells you how you can still get to your destination, even from the back road you now find yourself on. (As a...

This video shows you how the Enhanced Locations feature of CUCM operates, and is one of the many bonus videos included as part of the upcoming CCIE Collaboration Lab Walkthrough video series from Kevin Wallace Training.

The video series walks you through a complete CCIE Collaboration mock lab, just as you would attack it on your lab day. The video series also contains several bonus videos (like this one), and a 300+ page PDF document that walks you step-by-step through the entire mock lab.

You can check out more information about the CCIE Collaboration Lab Walkthrough video series HERE.

Kevin Wallace, CCIEx2 (Collab. & R/S) #7945

When you see an advertisement for Disney Parks, and they show their tag line, The Place Where Dreams Come True, you might conjure up images of children meeting their favorite pirate or princess (by the way, my favorite is Belle). In fact, the title of this blog post, Dreams Come True, might sound a bit trite at this point. However, I invite you to explore with me how we can truly make our dreams come true. That dream might be earning your CCNA R/S certification, or perhaps your CCIE in Collaboration. Maybe it’s getting that dream job, or starting your own IT consulting business. Well, princesses and pirates aside, I’ve learned much about realizing my dreams from Disney.

Walt’s Dream

In a previous blog posting in the “Lessons I’ve Learned from Disney” series, we learned about how Walt Disney overcame the adversity of losing Oswald the Lucky Rabbit and came up with the idea for Mickey Mouse. But let’s fast...

About three years ago, I wrote a little e-book entitled Your Route to Cisco Career Success. Although it’s available in Kindle format from Amazon, you can download a free PDF of the bookHERE. Since the feedback from this book has been so positive, I thought it would be a good idea to share the main lessons from the book in a series of blog posts, along with some updated content.

In this blog post, let’s consider the first lesson the book teaches. It’s all about goal setting.

Goals, Your Destination Address

If you get into your car and drive for a couple of hours, making the occasional turn, and taking the occasional detour, you will end up somewhere. However, the destination at which you find yourself might not be where you want to be.

What if, instead, you predetermined your destination, planned your route, and maybe even entered your desired destination into your car’s navigation system? At the end of two hours, you would either have already...

The thought of attaining a CCIE in Collaboration might seem like a daunting task. After passing the CCIE Voice Lab (the predecessor to the CCIE Collaboration Lab), I remember making the statement that it was the hardest thing I had done in my professional career.

If you’re on the journey to your CCIE Collaboration certification, I want you to know two facts:

1. It’s crazy hard.
2. It’s possible.

This posting is the third in my CCIE Collaboration Lab Lessons series. If you missed the first two, you can get them here:

• CCIE Collaboration Lab Lessons – Part 1: Registering a Cisco 9971 IP Phone with CUCME
• CCIE Collaboration Lab Lessons – Part 2: Saving Time with the Modified Device-Based Approach

To be successful in your lab, you need to be both strategic and tactical. While the first two lessons I shared with you were very tactical, this one is strategic.

The CCIE Collaboration Lab Success Framework

To make your CCIE Collaboration Lab studies more manageable,...

Storage Area Networks (SANs) allow devices (e.g. PCs or servers) to store and retrieve data from hard drives that are attached somewhere on a network, as opposed to being directly attached to the device itself.

This video introduces you to the exciting world of SAN technologies.

This video is a sample from my newly released CompTIA Network+ (N10-006) Complete Video Course, available HERE.

Also, be sure to check out my other Complete Video Courses:

CCNA Complete Video Course

CCNP R/S 2.0 Complete Video Course Library

ROUTE (300-101) Complete Video Course

SWITCH (300-115) Complete Video Course

TSHOOT (300-135) Complete Video Course

Enjoy your studies!

Kevin Wallace, CCIEx2 (R/S and Collaboration) #7945, CCSI 20061