This has been me throughout this boot camp, and wanted to help others avoid this!
I don’t know why I am even writing this right now instead of scrambling through the material, as there are weekly topics to cover / quizzes to receive the CE Learning Credits / “Certification of Completion” for the class (yay).
If you can afford it the $800 Cisco Led boot camp, I’d suggest it for CCNP holders
I know, I cringe too just typing that, but if the “Cisco Guided Study Group” continues on sale at $800 it comes with a voucher / enough material and insider info I assume to pass the exam on the first go, and upon complete you get 45 CE Credits which = 1 CCNP exam!
That is why I recommend more for current CCNP’s that are trying to stay certified, I have confirmed this class provides 45 CE Credits if you complete the weekly material on time to earn the certificate of completion and 40 CE credits satisfies 1 Pro level exam required to re-certify that CCNP status – Combined with the $300 DEVASC voucher pays for itself.
I don’t know if the groups are still 50% off but if they are I would jump on it just for that voucher / 45 CE Credits / excellent exam cram style course material / practice exams.
(I fully intend to study more in depth beyond cramming, but for this class, it is a Cisco DevNet GRIND going on for the last few months!)
I bought this class just to kick myself in the butt to start studying again, but with everything that is included I can say it is 100% worth every penny of the $800.
If you don’t know Linux (Ubuntu) very well, take a class before starting this exam
I went through David Bombals Linux class on Udemy 6 months ago, and I could fly through the Bash shell moving files around to different folders and adjusting permissions with ease, and then I didn’t touch Linux again until something broke during this 8 week Boot Camp where you don’t have time to bleed!
I tried to do things in a Hybrid Windows 10 / Hyper-V Ubuntu VM, and though I have successfully studied many topics in Windows, I would just use Ubuntu for everything, I’d definitely encourage to learn how things function in both but you will NEED to know the Linux Ubuntu environment fairly well to go through this course material.
Also a note on Ubuntu VM’s (which I would avoid if you can get a cheap PC and load Ubuntu as the OS), if you have Windows 10 Pro with Hyper-V, I have learned the hard way to use the 18.04 LTS release rather than 20.04.
I’ve rebuilt the VM twice now from failures in 20.04, one was a “Quick Create” where it shows 20.04 without the LTS on it (this should have been a red flag), and also an LTS Distro I downloaded and spun up from a local image – Based on the Quick Create VM option of 18.04 LTS it seems like Hyper-V may perform best on that specific version.
Python 3 is very much all over this exam, so I would advise a Py3 class before it!
I kind of knew Python3 concepts that I wrote about on here, but there I didn’t find a lot of courses that caught my attention until I found this course on Udemy for Python 3:
https://www.udemy.com/course/python-the-complete-python-developer-course
^^ Udemy lists this course at $109, but its on sale almost weekly for $12, so I’d just watch for a sale day and grab it even if you don’t plan on studying for awhile.
I was told by the Instructors of my 8 week course not to bother knowing Python 2 for the purpose of the DEVASC, and you will need to be very familiar with Python Functions / Libraries / Attributes / Parameters / Etc that this class teaches very well.
I always used Postman to play with API’s and thought to myself “Thats it?” Nope!
REST APIs are taught in this class almost entirely in Python, executing scripts to POST / PUT / DELETE items to remote Resources, as well as troubleshooting remote reachability / Authentication / On and on and on.
I was told by many Cisco people not breaking the NDA that there are no labs where you need to write a script (yet), but you will need to identify what script will do what, which script of these examples will execute some function, etc.
There is probably more, but that is what I wish I knew before starting this class
Having VMs melt down, having to review Linux Bash commands, having to spend my “free time” reviewing Python videos – Preparing on these skills will help you big time!
Not that I am struggling to grasp the material or anything, but with weekly quizzes and material to get through, having to rebuild a VM to study a topic while working a full time job during your on-call week and your phone won’t stop ringing really sucks.
Wanted to just quickly post these few points:
- Know and embrace all systems in a Linux Environment, and Windows on the side
- Go through my post of DevNet links to setup a PC and make sure it fully works!
- If a course is not teaching Python 3, it is not worth your time for the DEVASC exam
- Take time to play with and appreciate the material, as it is an amazing set of topics that has brought to light so many amazing technologies! It is fun track to learn!
With those parting words, back to studying, until next time!
The DEVNET GRIND! 