ExtremeCloud SD-WAN study plan
ExtremeCloud SD-WAN · Give each week a clear focus.
8 weeks · About 6 hours per week
SD-WAN Fundamentals and Solution Architecture
Map the three planes (management, control, data) onto the components you will actually touch: Orchestrator, SD-WAN Controller, and the branch appliance.
Explain in your own words how overlay tunnels are built over underlay transport and why underlay quality still matters.
Differentiate the deployment modes (appliance vs. virtual vs. hosted) and state one trade-off for each.
Sketch a reference topology for a two-branch, dual-WAN site with a data-center hub.
Your checkpoint
One-page architecture diagram of a two-branch dual-WAN topology with every component, plane, and tunnel labeled, plus a 150-word written explanation of the overlay/underlay relationship.
SD-WAN Fundamentals and Solution Architecture
Describe the lifecycle of a device from claim to operational state and name the checkpoints along the way.
Compare the traffic-handling concepts (flow classification, path selection, and policy enforcement order) at a conceptual level.
Identify which functions are centralized in the Orchestrator versus distributed to the edge.
List the licensing and subscription tiers and what capability each unlocks.
Your checkpoint
A lifecycle flow chart from device claim to operational state with at least six checkpoints and the failure symptom visible at each.
Deployment and Provisioning
Walk through onboarding a device end to end, including claim, activation, and configuration push.
Configure underlay interfaces, WAN links, and basic IP reachability on a branch appliance.
Set up site-to-site overlay connectivity between two branches and verify tunnel state.
Document the prerequisites (DNS, NTP, certificates, firewall ports) that commonly block onboarding.
Your checkpoint
A working two-site lab with overlay tunnels up in both directions, plus a prerequisites checklist you validated during setup.
Deployment and Provisioning
Create reusable configuration templates and apply them across at least two sites.
Explain zero-touch provisioning and the conditions under which it fails.
Configure device-level versus network-level settings and predict which wins on conflict.
Capture and interpret the provisioning logs when a push fails.
Your checkpoint
Two sites provisioned from a shared template, with a written conflict-resolution note showing one device-level override and its observed effect.
Routing, Policies, and Traffic Steering
Configure overlay topologies (hub-and-spoke and full mesh) and verify path availability in each.
Build application-aware policies that match on application, user group, and destination.
Implement path selection rules based on link quality (latency, loss, jitter) and confirm failover behavior.
Order policy rules correctly and predict which rule a given flow will hit.
Your checkpoint
A policy rule set of at least six ordered rules with a written trace of three distinct flows showing which rule and path each takes.
Routing, Policies, and Traffic Steering
Configure breakout (local internet and regional) policies and measure the path change.
Set up QoS and bandwidth allocation for a real-time application class.
Test failover and failback under simulated link degradation and record convergence behavior.
Explain how routing adjacencies (static, BGP, OSPF) interact with overlay path selection.
Your checkpoint
A failover test report: one simulated link degradation, timestamps for detection, switch, and failback, plus the QoS class observed in effect.
Operations, Monitoring, and Troubleshooting
Read the Orchestrator dashboards and identify the three most useful health signals for a branch.
Configure and interpret alarms and event notifications for link and tunnel failures.
Pull flow-level and interface-level statistics and correlate them to a reported user complaint.
Use built-in diagnostic tools (ping, traceroute, packet capture) from the management plane.
Your checkpoint
A monitoring runbook: five alarms with their thresholds, meaning, and first-response action, each verified against a lab-triggered event.
Operations, Monitoring, and Troubleshooting & SD-WAN Fundamentals and Solution Architecture
Diagnose three injected faults (tunnel down, policy misorder, underlay loss) using a structured method.
Revisit architecture concepts and connect each to a troubleshooting symptom you observed.
Review weak areas from earlier weeks and close the two lowest-scoring gaps.
Practice timed recall of key terms and component roles.
Your checkpoint
Three written fault cases (symptom, evidence gathered, root cause, fix) plus a one-page personal weak-area summary with a remediation action for each.
Milestones
Week 2: You can draw the reference topology from memory and explain every component's role and plane without notes.
Week 4: Two sites are fully provisioned from a shared template and pass a connectivity test, with the prerequisites checklist validated.
Week 6: A policy set of six or more ordered rules steers three distinct flows correctly and survives a simulated link failure with recorded convergence times.
Week 8: All three injected faults are diagnosed to root cause, and your weak-area summary lists no unresolved gaps in domains 1 through 4.