Extreme Fabric (Fabric Connect) study plan

Extreme Fabric (Fabric Connect) · Give each week a clear focus.

8 weeks · About 7 hours per week

Week 1

Fabric design and deployment

Map the Extreme Fabric (Fabric Connect) architecture layers-fabric nodes, control plane, data plane, and management plane-into a one-page diagram you draw from memory.
Define the roles of the key fabric components and explain in your own words how a packet traverses the fabric from ingress to egress.
Compare underlay and overlay design options and write down the tradeoffs that drive each choice (scale, convergence, simplicity).
Draft a list of the design inputs you would collect from a customer before proposing a fabric topology.

A one-page hand-drawn fabric architecture diagram plus a 300-word design-inputs checklist.

Week 2

Design a reference two-tier fabric topology on paper for a stated scale (number of racks, endpoints, and expected east-west traffic).
Size the control plane and addressing plan, including loopback and point-to-point ranges, and justify each choice.
Identify single points of failure in your design and propose redundancy at the node and link level.
Write a short design review document that states assumptions, constraints, and rejected alternatives.

A complete written fabric design document with topology diagram, addressing plan, and redundancy rationale.

Week 3

Configure a lab fabric's base settings-hostnames, management access, and time synchronization-and verify each with a show command.
Bring up fabric links and confirm neighbor adjacency and topology discovery without errors.
Configure the overlay/tenant constructs needed to stretch a test subnet across two fabric nodes.
Capture the exact command sequence you used into a reusable configuration runbook.

A working two-node lab fabric with a stretched test subnet and a documented command runbook.

Week 4

Configure and verify policy constructs (filters, segmentation, and endpoint attachment) and prove traffic is permitted and denied as intended.
Build a troubleshooting toolkit: list the ten most useful verification commands and what each one tells you.
Inject three deliberate faults (wrong VLAN mapping, missing route, mismatched policy) and diagnose each from symptoms alone.
Write up each fault as symptom → hypothesis → evidence → fix.

A fault-injection log covering three faults with root cause and resolution for each.

Week 5

Trace an end-to-end flow through the fabric using counters and tables, and document where each hop's evidence lives.
Practice isolating a fabric-wide convergence event and describe the sequence of state changes you observe.
Compare expected versus actual behavior for a control-plane adjacency failure and list the diagnostic steps in order.
Build a one-page escalation checklist for issues you cannot resolve at first-line support.

A flow-trace walkthrough document showing evidence collected at every hop for one test flow.

Week 6

Define the fabric's trust boundaries and identify where authentication, authorization, and encryption apply.
Configure role-based management access and verify that a low-privilege account is actually restricted.
Design a segmentation scheme that isolates a sensitive workload and prove the isolation with a test.
Draft a resilience plan covering node failure, link failure, and control-plane failure, with expected recovery behavior for each.

A security and resilience plan with a tested segmentation proof and a failure-recovery matrix.

Week 7

Automate fabric configuration with a script or template so that a repeatable change is applied identically to two nodes.
Implement idempotent configuration and verify a second run produces no unintended changes.
Set up basic health and inventory collection and export it to a file or dashboard.
Document a change-management workflow that includes validation and rollback steps.

A working automation script/template plus a run log showing idempotent re-execution and a rollback test.

Week 8

Re-run the full lab build from scratch in under three hours using only your own runbooks.
Complete a timed mixed-domain practice set and log every missed question with the underlying concept.
Close knowledge gaps by re-reading only the notes tied to missed concepts.
Write a one-page exam-day summary of the highest-risk topics and your verification habits.

A clean rebuild completed within the time limit plus a gap-closure log with every weak concept resolved or flagged.

Week 2: You can draw the fabric architecture and defend a topology choice without notes.

Week 4: Lab fabric is functional and you have diagnosed three injected faults from symptoms alone.

Week 6: Security controls are configured and tested, and the failure-recovery matrix is complete.

Week 8: Full lab rebuild finishes within the time limit and all logged weak concepts are resolved or explicitly flagged.