Cisco CCNP ENCOR and ENARSI Labs

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Hi,

I am studying for the Cisco CCNP ENCOR exam, and after that I want to proceed with the ENARSI exam. Do I need to purchase the Cisco VIRL annual subscription for the labs practice ? Or the labs that are provided here with the courses are enough to practice all the contents ?

Thanks,
Abraham

@Abraham-Oz,

Currently, our lab provider partner doesn't have labs ready for Cisco CCNP. So we cannot provide any guided lab in that sense. I believe that what is attached currently are labs from the previous CCNP iteration of ROUTE, SWITCH and TSHOOT but they will not match up directly to ENCOR or ENARSI lineup of objectives even though many of the same topics are covered.

Anthony and I both used the Cisco VIRL and Cisco CML (successor to VIRL) during our shoot. "VIRL" is no longer considered "acceptable" terminology since the pandemic. Personally, at home I use the GNS3 with an older 7200 image that I have. Many people use EVE-NG. Cisco CML is the only one that as an upfront cost associated because they provide images, whereas the others do not.

We do not have a formal recommendation but if you're planning on studying CCNP and even moving on to CCIE studies, the Cisco CML is a worthwhile investment in the very fact that you can purchase and have a lab ready to use within 20 minutes after downloading.

Thanks for the reply Ronnie. I was reading about GNS3, but I don't have any Cisco images to provide, therefore I consider CML. It cost 199 US dollars for 365 days access. I hope CML has all the labs necessary to practice and master for CCNP, CCIE-- (R&S and Security).

Do I need a virtual machine for the CML ? Or is it running on the cloud ?

@Abraham-Oz,

The CML is a "sandbox" environment. This means you will build your own labs. But with ENCOR and ENARSI shows, we included in the course downloads, the labs that can be imported into CML.

there will be ramp up time for you to learn the technology... We have a hands-on course here at ITProTV to help you get started with this.

The latest CML2 personal edition can run in a virtual environment on your laptop or desktop if it meets the minimum requirements. Also, you can do a bare-metal install of the new CML2. So you have options. You also can run it in the cloud too. This is all up to you and your workflow and ability to get started.

Thanks for the response, I will check out the CML course.

Abraham

@Ronnie-Wong
What do you mean by import to CML labs ?
Can you please be a bit more specific about this ?
And point to the labs I can import to CML.

Regards,
Abraham

@Abraham-Oz,

Within the courses, we used both VIRL and CML labs. The lab topologies we used, if there any, are included in the course files download. You can take those topology files and import them into your CML to bring up the topology. for you to configure the lab without having to start with a blank topology canvas.

@Ronnie-Wong
Ahhh now I got ya :)
I saw on the Infrastructure section episodes Anthony shows the network topology for explanation.

Regards,
Abraham

@Ronnie-Wong

Hi Ronnie,

I downloaded the course materials from the CCNP SCOR course, and I noticed there are only 2 CML labs.
Is this OK ? Or is there more CML labs available for download ?

I attached a screen shot of the labs that is available when downloaded the course notes.

Thanks,
Abraham

@Abraham-Oz,

If I remember correctly, those are the episodes that I created the labs for. The rest of them were simple 2 router configurations. So I don't believe we included any additional CML yaml files for them.