CCIE RSv5 Transition Technologies

CCIEv5 started in June, and since my plan is to have the exam prepared for December, I'll first be getting into the New Topics of the Blueprint v5 Lab Curriculum. As you probably know, CCIEv5 is all about virtual equipment with Fast Initial Configuration Reload. If you're a Cisco employee you might take the advantages of IOU, and if not - you always have the GNS3 option. There's no full L2 support on GNS3, so I recommend you to take a deep dive into the following post by INE about the CCIEv5 Hardware.

Since I lost privileges to my old physical rack (I changed the company a few months ago), I'll have to make up my mind soon. I'll probably go with the Virtual Switch, as INE proposed, and sieze the opportunity to broaden my knowledge on the Network Virtualization. In a few years these concepts form a part of Network Engineers everyday life, and you´ve probably noticed that some of my recent posts have been dedicated exclusively to SDN and Network Virtualization technologies.

The exam has changed, but not too much. Here's how it looks now:
Troubleshooting (2h + 30m of Flexible Time)
DIAG (30m)
Configuration (5h30m)

DIAG is the "new guy", and my assumption is it will feel a lot like the written part of CCIE exam, with a bit more details to analyse. I honestly don't like the addition of this new part, because I feel that knowledge of that type should be tested in the theoretical part of the exam, and I think that it might make the candidates lose a bit of focus from really important lab stuff.

I'll be doing a so called CCIE transition posts chain, that will consist of 5 posts, each one dedicated to one of the 5 new topics added to the CCIE R&S curriculum.

1. DMVPN (single hub)

2. Bidirectional Forwarding Detection (BFD)

3. EIGRP (multi-address) Named Mode

4. EIGRP and OSPF convergence and scalability

5. IPsec with pre-shared key

All of these technologies shall be included in my CCIEv5 Script Update [expected release date - August 2nd 2014].