Get Ready For CCIE Voice Lab Exam

The CCIE Voice lab experience begins the day you pass the written exam. It cannot be quantified in an 8-hour day. You really have to look at the whole journey to truly appreciate the experience once you arrive at the testing center. By the time you actually sit the lab, you should have hours and hours of time studying and labbing completed in order to prepare for probably one of the most historic days of your career as a Cisco Voice Engineer. Whether you are successful or not you are a better engineer for being there and arriving at that point in your journey.
The CCIE voice lab exam is an eight-hour, hands-on exam that requires you to configure a voice solution over an IP network. Although some of the basic network connectivity and system integrations are pre-configured for you, there will be detailed requirements to complete successfully. You will be expected to configure and troubleshoot important parameters of a voice network, such as QOS, device registration, VLANs, gateways and gatekeepers.
It is recommended the night before the lab to go to sleep early and allow yourself to get a good amount of sleep. You don't want anything to destroy your focus by not being well rested. You have put in a lot of time and preparation for this day and last minute cramming will not enable you to pass the exam. Your preparation over the past few months is what you will rely on for exam success.
Upon arrival at the testing facility, once greeted by the proctor, you will be asked to provide proper identification. You are then taken back to the lab where you will surrender any possessions prior to being shown your seat for the day. At your seat, there will be a white binder (soon to be PDF) that will hold your challenge for the day. You will be provided a PC to access the network for your pod along with 8 phones, 1 PSTN phone and 7 site-specific phones as outlined in the exam guide. On the desktop you will have access to documents such as the QOS and CUCM 7.0 SRND, CUCME Administration Guide and the Cisco Product Documentation Website.
The proctor will let you know when you are allowed to begin as well as state what time lunch is and when your exam will end. During the exam you are permitted to have a drink, however, don't drink too much as you don't want to waste precious time going back and forth to the restroom.
When you begin, it is recommended, while initial reading through the exam, to create a checklist that contains the question numbers and their point value. During the exam, when you have completed and verified a question, you can mark those points as completed. This checklist will be a great way to assess where you are at in the exam later in the day, so that if you are dealing with time issues, you can focus on questions you can achieve in order to reach 80 points for a pass.
In the first half of the day, concentrate on completing the tasks you know very well and save the tasks that are more intricate and complicated to tackle once you are nearing completion. You will get 30-45 minutes for lunch. During this time, think about what you have completed and a strategy for the remainder of the day. Go over in you head during this time how to complete some of the more complicated tasks and use your time wisely.
At the end of the day, the proctor will give you verbal warnings to let you know your time is about to expire. It is good at this time to save your configurations and verify any questions you were completing. Once your time is up, you will be asked to leave. The grading will occur the following business day and you will receive word of your success at that time.
For a Cisco Voice Engineer, there is nothing I can think of that measures up to the CCIE Voice Lab Experience. It is a journey that requires discipline, dedicated preparation and balance. The outcome is success in not only achieving a prestigious certification but also the reward of becoming a stronger and more efficient voice engineer.