CCIE Wireless v2

I had made 5 attempts and spent 2 years studying for CCIE Wireless v1.  On November 17, 2011 Cisco retired this version of the lab and moved on to v2.

I needed a break to determine where I was, both on a personal and professional level.  It's very disappointing to have spent 4+ hours a day in study and not bear the fruit of that effort.  A lot in my life has changed since I began this journey and I was not quite sure that I was ready to put myself through all of the challenges again.  Things are starting to come together again for me though, and I sense an attempt at CCIE Wireless v2 in the future.

Here's a list of things I have done to help myself prepare for a possible shot at the new test:

First, I wanted to gather some training material.  I had used material from both Fast Lane and IP Expert in studying for v1.  They both are excellent sources of what to study for the exam, but I like the pedagogical approach from Fast Lane better so I started with purchasing their program for v2 (I plan to buy IP Expert as well when $ permits):

CCIEW-MENT
CCIEW-WBP1

For more information on either of these, visit the Fast Lane website:

 www.fastlaneus.com

With the new workbook in hand, I started building out my lab.  At this point, my lab consists mainly of my equipment from v1 - although I have a new PC for running ACS 5.2.  I spent literally 50% of my time studying for v1 troubleshooting my virtual ACS (running in VMWare Server on a Win 2000 box) so I am hoping to have better luck this time around...  Having an independent computer shouldn't hurt.

So here's my current setup for the ACS 5.2 box:

Dell Latitude E6400 running Ubuntu 11.10, VMWare Player v 4.0.2

Installing VMWare Player was a bit onerous - the following website provided the instructions I couldn't find elsewhere:

http://askubuntu.com/questions/101139/how-to-install-vmware-player-4-0-2

Next, I used this blog as a guideline for installing ACS 5.2:

http://blog.sudonetworks.com/2010/10/installing-cisco-acs-52-on-a-laptop.html

That's it for now - I'm off to upgrade the IOS on all my equipment.