CCIE Data Center study plan
CCIE Data Center · Give each week a clear focus.
8 weeks · About 8 hours per week
Switching, routing, and multicast diagnosis
Draw topology and failure domains; validate VLANs, bundles, STP, gateway, and return paths.
Interpret OSPF, IS-IS, BGP, multicast, and next-hop evidence without overclaiming session success.
Your checkpoint
A working authorized switching/routing lab with a written evidence checklist.
ACI objects, access relationships, and policy
Build tenant, VRF, bridge-domain, EPG, and complete access-policy relationships.
Diagnose classification, contracts, endpoint movement, and fault/audit evidence.
Your checkpoint
A correctly classified application pair with deliberately narrow service permission.
EVPN overlays and external fabric connectivity
Trace underlay, EVPN route type/import, VNI, gateway, and tunnel forwarding.
Compare L3Out policy with routes and distinguish supported inter-fabric architectures.
Your checkpoint
A tested overlay/external path with separate control and data evidence.
UCS, compute identity, and service dependencies
Inspect profile pools, inheritance, management mode, maintenance state, and compatibility.
Reconstruct Ethernet, SAN boot, host teaming, and multipath dependencies.
Your checkpoint
A profile-to-service dependency map and a controlled recovery exercise.
SAN access and converged storage transport
Follow login, name server, active zones, target, LUN, and host paths.
Examine credits, VSAN trunks, RDMA classification, PFC, ECN, and representative queue behavior.
Your checkpoint
A storage access and resilience worksheet with documented measurement assumptions.
Security, visibility, and traffic services
Validate ACL order, AAA roles, first-hop trust, stateful return paths, and service dependencies.
Interpret mirror direction, clocks, microbursts, and traffic-management evidence.
Your checkpoint
A narrow policy test plan and a correctly interpreted diagnostic capture.
Programmability and controlled infrastructure workflows
Practice structured parsing, object targeting, API result checks, pagination, and task tracking.
Review state ownership, bounded retries, uncertain writes, previews, secrets, and recovery.
Your checkpoint
An idempotent authorized lab workflow with per-target results and functional checks.
Programmability and controlled infrastructure workflows
Complete a mixed blind question set and independently reproduce calculation results.
Execute an authorized multi-domain practical scenario and compare remaining gaps with current Cisco guidance.
Your checkpoint
A reviewed error log plus a practical readiness gap list, separate from the bank score.
Milestones
Week 4: Diagnose a multi-domain path using explicit attachment, policy, route, transport, identity, and activation evidence.
Week 8: Complete an authorized integrated practical exercise and review remaining gaps against current Cisco scope, separately from the multiple-choice result.