Again, when configuring the tasks you will not (or should not) feel any difference in the handling and operation of the devices. You can also clearly see that the lab consists of a combination of physical devices and virtual devices. The versions are even that old that most of them are not available anymore to download from the Juniper website.
They are still up to date as I’m not aware of any annoucement of an update to the blueprint or the versions in the lab. Regarding features or maybe configuration that may have changed between these versions.Īt time of this writing in 2020, the Junos versions running in the lab are quite old. They do run a different version of Junos, so that could be a thing to be aware of. The lab exam consists of a number of the following devices:įeature wise there should not be much difference between the MX80 and vMX devices as the Packet Forwarding Engine (PFE) is also virtualized in the vMX. Let’s first take a look at the blueprint of the JNCIE-DC lab exam to know what topics are covered and what type of devices are used when you take the exam.Īn important prerequisite is that you need a valid JNCIP-DC certificate to be able to schedule a lab date with Juniper. The lab topology used in that self-study workbook is used in my topology as well, so you are able to do all labs in that workbook on this topology as the same virtual appliances are used.
This self study workbook contains a number of chapters with in-depth tasks on a certain topic of the lab blueprint and also contains 2 full labs that are very similar in complexity to the real JNCIE-DC lab test.Īt the time I’m writing this, there are (as far as I know) no options to rent a rack of physical hardware to prepare for the exam, because the self-study workbook offered by Juniper Education Services also uses a virtual lab topology based on the vMX and vQFX products.
Juniper offers a very good self-study product for the JNCIE-DC. Some (or a lot of) experience with actual Juniper QFX and MX products is very useful in your preparation for the JNCIE-DC. Unfortunately not the entire blueprint can be tested with virtual appliances, but we can get a very long way. As I’m (slowly) preparing for the JNCIE-DC certification I wanted to share the topology that I’m using.Īs the hardware required to study for the JNCIE-DC is quite significant, it makes a lot of sense to try and virtualise most of these resources. As explained in my previous post on my home servers, I have a bare metal system deployed with EVE-NG Pro installed.