CCNP TSHOOT

Cisco CCNP TSHOOT – Exam Experience

I did it, passed the TSHOOT exam, which means I’m now CCNP Certified. Woop!!!

CISCO-CCNP-RS

So the TSHOOT exam itself,

  • 3 mutliple answer questions
  • 1 Drag and Drop
  • 15 support tickets to answer within a simulator

In the simulator itself, on each ticket you are asked to answer the following;

  • Which device is the issue on
  • Which technology is at fault
  • What are the commands to recitify the issue.

The topology of the lab is available online for review and for you to create on your home lab or partially in packet tracer here.

You can also try out a demo of how the simulator works here.

I recomment that if your sitting the TSHOOT exam, you check them out and build a lab around it.

Exam Experience

So personally I found the exam pretty easy, the ticket questions I did in order, so they started off with issues at the client level and moved further and further up the network topology as to why you cannot ping the web server.

The issues are easy to spot when looking and comparing configurations between routers, and so long as you answer the ticket questions in the right order, you should come to an easy conclusion to lead you to the fix in the third question for each question.

Note: When tackling your tickets, write down the ticket number, and answers, then abort the ticket, as when you click done, you can't go back and edit it. By aborting, you can check out all the faults first and then answer them all at the end.

I’m pretty sure I would have scored 100% on the exam, however on one of my tickets, I found the fault, however selecting the device where the fault lies and then answers available for the command line fix did not match up. I play around with the answer selection on the ticket and found that by clicking a different device at fault, then the correct technology, the correct command line fix was available for selection.

I did write this in my exam comments, and I will contact Cisco further about this.

Will they do anything? Probably not as the 642 series of exams are finished on 29th Janurary.

Summary

So, I have to recertify my CCNP and lower exams on 24th December 2017, yay. I’ll probably do it earlier, and not cram everything in last minute. Famous last words.

To recert the CCNP, you only have to pass one of the three exams. Which is good for me, but I’m not sure its the right strategy by Cisco. Maybe asking you to do all three is taking it too far, however 2 out of the three is not to much of a stretch.

I’ve enjoyed taking the exams and learning the course materials. And proud to be CCNP Certified.

CCIE next up? I hope so, but not for a year or to.

Regards

Dean

One thought on “Cisco CCNP TSHOOT – Exam Experience

  1. To “extend” your CCNP Routing & Switching certification, you only need to pass ANY 642-xxx or 300-xxx Professional level exam. It does not need to be from the CCNP track. So any new cert you work on at the Professional level will recertify your CCNP. So if you move on to another specialty like DC, Voice, Design, etc, you may never have to take another CCNP R&S specific exam again, and still maintain your CCNP R&S qualification while earning additional certifications. And any written from the CCIE tracks. CCDE & CCAr parts also suffice. Hence I say extend, since I don’t believe the term “recertify” is the best way to describe the process. Funny enough, written exams from the CCIE tracks only extend your equivalent (CCIE) and lower level certs for 2 years, but a less challenging Professional level exam extends your equivalent (Professional) and lower level (Associate and Entry level – CCENT,CCNA and CCNA Specializations) certs for 3 years ?! All the specifics are on the applicable Cisco website cert pages. I think Cisco should allow CCIE Written exams to extend your Professional and below certifications for 3 years as well, even if they only extend a full CCIE for 2 years. They should also consider extending the CCIE recertification and validation period to 3 years as well, since those are hard exams and constantly studying for exams and the Cisco answer gets to be quite tedious. Just because you’re not out taking every Cisco exam in the book doesn’t mean you’re not learning or progressing. You could be busy at work or continuing your formal education. You could be studying for VMware, Microsoft, Linux, NetApp or Juniper certification ? You could have a life and a family. But that’s probably not important to the Cisco bottom line…

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