JNCIA JUNOS review

Today I passed the Juniper Networks JNCIA JUNOS exam. I am quite elated to be honest. My roots as a network engineer have come from the Cisco Network academy and I have climbed part of their certification tree. Upon acquisition of the SRX110-H-VA I have been playing. I am broadening my base skill set. My mentality is that if I want to get to the dizzying heights of networking, I require a broad base.  With my current background in networking my mindset was focused on learning the Juniper orientated caveats of the platform. I used the Juniper Networks Fast Track program. This is designed to engage already other vendor-certified or practicing network engineers in the industry to Certify with Juniper. A pre assessment online gives 50% discount on the cost of an exam. This is a great way to entice new users to their program, especially those who self fund like I did with this exam.

Preparation and Materials

Juniper have provided a sound practical and theoretical base to their certification program. This varies from Partner education courses, Day One and This Week mini books right through to Student Guides. The JNCIA information which is available really gives people who are new to networking and/or Juniper a real taste of the platform.
The resources I used were the following

• Day One: Deploying SRX series Service Gateways A great little Day One book with what you need to know to deploy a device in a branch today. Good theory and practical examples are provided within
• Juniper JNCIA Student Guide Part 1 and 2 – This had the meat of the exam topics. All the information that is on the blueprint is expanded on in this book.
• Jeff Fry’s blog posts  – Jeff has provided a great little hands on series of blogs for a IOS guy learning JUNOS. Amazing stuff there.
• Chris Jones’s post – This helped me with Routing Instances early on. Great information – check it out.

Exam

This is the standard exam format provided by Pearson Vue for all their exams. It was Multi-Choice Single Answer, and Multi-Choice Multi-Answer. I had 65 questions and 90 minutes. I felt the questions were fair and reflective of the blueprint. They are indicative of the level of the certification and felt they tested a great array of topics. I had one issue where I received the same question twice. In my case I scored 95% so it didn’t affect the outcome but I fear that with such a large pool more than one duplicate could appear?

Thoughts

The JNCIA JUNOS exam is a great certification which I believe for anyone should be added to their skill set. It provides a baptism by fire in JUNOS and allows engineers old and new to gain the required insight into Juniper products. The SRX family provided me with a platform to use for learning. If you have a sound background in networking get your hands on a Juniper device and sit this exam.

I would like to personally thank a couple of people here.

Ashton Bothman – Your enthusiasm and passion for the company you work for shows just what type of company a candidate is investing in. I cannot speak highly enough of your assistance.
Francois Prowse – Thanks for advice, support, and my trial licences for features on my SRX.
Kurt Bales  – You aren’t a Juniper champion for nothing. Thanks for being the sounding board for my IOS to JUNOS knowledge conversion.
Jeff Fry – Your resource is outstanding and your knowledge for the Junos converts is spot on. Thank you for the preview of your book/blogs