This is going to be more of a fun post since people usually ask how much a CCIE costs or the the time it takes. This post is going to go over the time and money costs of getting my CCIE Data Center. I'm a little OCD about keeping my receipts due to tax purposes so here it goes.
I guess you can say I started in 2013 with collecting the CCIE Data Center reading list and INE rack rental tokens and finally ended with a CCIE at the end of 2015.I was married in 2014 and we skipped the honeymoon. As my spouse can attest, I was probably studying the week after the wedding and just doing nothing but beastmode until my first lab attempt. Here's the breakdown:
12/2013 - NX-OS and Cisco Nexus Switching book purchase - $51.90
12/2013 - CCNA Data Center Book - $35.95
2014 - INE All Access Pass + Workbook Purchase - $1,587
1/2014 - 2/2014 - 2,000 Rack Rental Tokens + Video Sets from INE - $1,749
1/2014 - Cisco UCS Book ($36.55), I/O Consolidation in the Data Center ($28.58), Data Center Fundamentals ($38.51) - $103.64
2/2014 - Data Center Virtualization Fundamentals book - $29.99
2/2014 - Implementing Cisco UCS Solutions - $18.49
12/2014 - Policy Driven Data Center - $57.04
11/2014 - IPExpert IPeverything Pass - $99
7/2014 - Cisco Storage Networking Cookbook (Kitty litter!) - $36.41
12/2014 - 100 Hours of Rack Rentals + IPExpert Bootcamp - $3999
4/2015 - 100 Hours of IPExpert Rack Rentals - $750
4/2015 - 100 Rack Rentals for IPExpert - $750
6/2015 - Cloud Videos and Storage Networking Protocol Fundamentals Book - $118.36
9/2015 - Hotel and food for retake of IPExpert bootcamp (1st time was online) - $942.42
10/2015 - 1st CCIE lab attempt - $1600
11/2015 - Attempt number 2 at the CCIE - $1600
I don't have the original receipts for travel for the lab but from the above, it was totaling about $13,528.20. I believe I lost some CBT Nugget receipts that were around as well but oh well. My jobs that I had over this time helped with some of the costs. Since data center is a costly track to do 100% rack rentals with, I was also able to utilize an internal data center rack and Gold Labs/Salesconnect labs when they were available so that when I did use my rack rentals, I was only focusing on combined technologies instead of trying to learn the smaller technologies one at a time.
The above price also doesn't factor in the hours of labbing, watching videos, and taking notes. Below are some screenshots of the notes I took throughout the experience:
Not to mention the time it took to do meetups and training for other folks looking to learn throughout the process: