I passed the “Implementing Cisco IP Switched Network”exam successfully couple of days back.  Now I am one step closer to achieving mp CCNP. My approach was simple and straight forward, I read the Cisco Press title CCNP SWITCH 642-813 Official Certification Guide. Thanks to Cisco Press and Jamie Adams for providing me a copy of CCNP Study guides. The exam was pretty easy but be careful there are few ambiguous questions which really needs your experience and expert knowledge on the topic.

I have following piece of advice for the CCNP aspirers

• 1) Set the date for exam before starting your preparations (Goal Setting).
• 2) Read Cisco Press title CCNP SWITCH 642-813 Official Certification Guide.
• 3) Practice the Boson questions came with the title CCNP SWITCH 642-813 Official Certification Guide.
• 4) Watch CBT nuggets if needed as they are really cool videos to watch.
• 5) Practice labs, (create your own scenarios on STP, HRSP, VTP, VRRP, GLBP etc.) If you can afford get three Cisco 3550 Series Switches from eBay.
• 6) A week before exam review all the topics and practice few labs and boson practice test.

(My CCNP Switch Lab)

If you follow the above with dedication and determination nothing can stop you from achieving CCNP.

The  CCNP Switch 642-813 Official certification guide is an amazing title, which can trust for Switch # 642-813 Exam. The author David Hucaby CCIE 4594 carries an honor of writing many titles for Cisco Press especially when it come to switching he is master.

The  CCNP Switch 642-813 Official certification guide comes with seventeen chapters covering wide range of topics

The first chapter emphasizes on the importance of planning for CCNP Switch# 642-813 Exam. In this chapter Cisco Systems have made very clear what they are anticipating for the CCNP Switching and Routing professional and what skill he/she should possess to be CCNP R & S.

In this chapter the author talks about Cisco’s approach to the life cycle of the Network, it is PPDIOO

Prepare - organizational requirements, strategy, financial justification

Plan - network requirements, gap analysis with existing network infrastructure, project plan

Design- design specification created (used for implement phase)

Implement – network is built, additional components added

Operate – maintaining network health, day-to-day operations

Optimize – proactive management, potential to spir network redesign

Tips for the implementation plan

The implementation plan consists of several phases ( for eg : installation of hardware, IOS check, configurations,-over to production, etc.).  It is important to remember the following steps for each phase:

Description of the step

Reference to design documents

Detailed implementation guidelines

Detailed rollback guidelines in case of failure

Estimated time needed for implementation

When it comes to CCNP Routing and Switch Certification I personally prefer to start with Switch# 642-813 Exam. As switching exam should not be a hard exam for CCNA certified Network Engineer.  The Switch # 642-813 exam tests your skills on following topics.

ü  Network design, implementation, and verification plans

ü  Switch operation and port configuration

ü  VLANs, trunks, and VLAN Trunking Protocol (VTP)

ü  Aggregating switch links

ü  Spanning Tree Protocol (STP)

ü  Multilayer switching

ü  Enterprise campus network design

ü  Router and supervisor redundancy

ü  IP telephony

ü  Wireless LANs

ü  Switched network security

Now come the main question what resources you should use to pass the Cisco Switch#642-813 Exam, lot of resources are available, but when it come to self study guides Cisco Press is the leader and they come with pretty helpful titles.

To begin with you can start preparing with CCNP Switch 642-813 Official certification guide which can be easily ordered from Cisco Press watch out for eBook of day deal too who knows you can own the book for just 9.95 dollars.  For non US residents no worries as Cisco Press ships world wide at very competitive shipping cost, seems that they have some deal with FEDEX as for the last four times when I ordered Cisco press titles they charged me 9 dollars for International shipping thru FedEx and it took 4 days to reach me. In upcoming posts I will try to review the CCNP Switch 642-813 Official certification guide in detail so that you folks can get benefited.

All CCNP Certification aspirers, who ever have purchased CCNP SWITCH 642-813 Official Certification Guide new supplement content is available to cover up the additions made to the Cisco Switching Exam 642-813 after the above mentioned title was mentioned. You can directly download the additional contents from the Cisco Press page -look on the catalog page under “Updates”.

I went through the supplement content “How to prepare for the Planning Topics on the Exam”. The new supplement replaces the current content in the page 13 of the title CCNP SWITCH 642-813 Official Certification Guide. It deals with how to prepare for the planning topics on the exam, when compared to the book I could notice some changes, Cisco is emphasizing on the CCNP certified professionals to know more about planning and documentation ,though the exam might not directly test you to create a plan.  But the supplement does guide you to come up with an implementation plan, it deals with the business requirements, business constraints and technical requirements.

Cisco expects you to be aware of creating plans for implementing a network, and you may get a scenario, based on the scenario you are supposed to figure out what specific features you’ll need, what steps you’ll need to configure for each feature, which switch you’ll have to visit to type in configuration commands, and so on.

Even as you work through a scenario on the exam, you should spend time creating a verification plan so you can test and make sure each feature you have configured actually works as it should. Otherwise, whatever you typed into the switch emulators might not be correct and might not earn you valuable points.

Do download these additional supplements which are quite useful for the CCNP aspirers.

I am always a great fan of David Hucaby; he comes up with pretty good titles, which can be easily used for achieving Cisco Certifications by self-study. His latest addition to the world of Cisco Certification is CCNP SWITCH 642-813 Official Certification Guide.  Thanks to Cisco Press and David to release this title so soon.

Thanks to Cisco Press and Jamie in especial for making this happen. I don’t believe that I have a CCNP SWITCH 642-813 title with me. As we all know Cisco came up with a new version of CCNP Certification which requires only three exams to pass compared to four in the prevision version of CCNP.

The current CCNP SWITCH 642-813 book is much lighter compared to the CCNP Switch 642-812 book.  It’s divided into 6 parts. I liked the way topics are distributed. This book is written in an easy way it covers all the exam topics and also provides some good troubleshooting steps especially I liked the VTP troubleshooting part.

Pic Courtesy: Cicso Press

A chapter dealing with Securing Switch access is amazing I liked the best practices used for securing Switches. The Author David Hucaby did a commendable job. The CCNP Switch 642-812 title come with 100 practice questions for the CCNP 642-813 exam developed by Cisco Press and delivered by Boson. The CCNP SWITCH 642-813 title is up to date and most of the info referred deals with the latest IOS versions.

Overall this entire book is an excellent source for preparing for Cisco CCNP 642-813 exams, my advice is to buy this book along with CCNP Routing and Switching Quick Reference  book. With these two, you should have everything you need! Best of luck to you all CCNP Certification aspirers.