Introducing Juniper Certifications and Labs

0:00[MUSIC PLAYING] Hello, and welcome to the JNCIA-Junos certification playlist, here on CBT Nuggets. My name is Knox Hutchinson, and I will be your guide throughout this playlist. Now before we actually jump into the exam topics themselves, I wanted to take a moment to actually explain to you how Juniper certification really works. And what can you expect out of this playlist, and what can you expect out of the JNCIA-Junos preparation and examination itself.

0:31Beyond that, I also wanted to talk about ways that you could get hands-on experience with Juniper by building your own lab environments. So this is all going to set you up for success as you begin your journey into Juniper Networks, a vendor that I've been working with for years, and I'm very excited to talk to you about. Get ready, because this skill is going to be all about how you can prepare yourself for what to expect from the JNCIA-Junos, and how you can build your own home lab to practice along with this type of equipment. Let's get going.

0:05Now, there's an OK chance that you may be brand new to Juniper certification. And that's great. Welcome to this new and exciting journey. In order to actually understand what it is that you're preparing for in the exam that you may be thinking about taking, let's take a look at the entire Juniper certification program first of all. And that may help you decide which tracks you want to go down and what content you want to study, what your long-term goal may actually be. Let's take a look at what the Juniper certification offerings are. Now, on the page in front of us, I have Juniper's certification offerings, and more importantly, their certification tracks, listed on the page in front of us.

0:41If you actually Google Juniper certifications, you can very quickly find this exact same page that we're on here. Notice at the bottom is that it actually gives you a little guide as to how you should choose to explore your Juniper journey. And this is what we want to talk about first. There's a lot of overlap from one certification or one track to the next. And Juniper knows that. And that's how they design these actual certification tracks. So your first step is to actually figure out what track you want to go down. If you are here because you're interested in the JNCIA-Junos exam, you're already narrowing it down to three tracks-- Data Center, Enterprise Routing and Switching, and Service Provider Routing and Switching.

1:22How do we know that? Because we can look at the associate level certifications themselves. And we see JNCIA-Junos applies to all three of those tracks. Now, if you're interested more in the security offerings, like the firewalls, the Mist AI, which is also widely used in wireless, the design tracks, the cloud tracks, or the DevOps automation tracks, these have different JNCIA exams associated with them, or in the case of the design, the JNCDA.

1:53They are different exams. But the JNCIA-Junos is the core, the center, of what Juniper certification is really all about. And that's why the three most popular certifications that they have-- Data Center, Enterprise, and Service Provider-- all start with JNCIA-Junos. So another way to put this is by taking the JNCIA-Junos, you're not just limited to one track. The JNCIA-Junos would then entitle you to take the next tier of specialist exams that lead to it.

2:25For instance, the JNCIA-Junos in the service provider world allows you to take the JNCIS Service Provider, an exam I just took two or three weeks ago at the time of this recording. The JNCIA-Junos also allows you to take the JNCIS Enterprise. And very interestingly, the JNCIS Enterprise is applicable also to Data Center. It's not until you get to the professional level that they distinguish Data Center from Enterprise. And of course, there's a JNCIP service provider.

2:55So it starts out like a tree, where JNCIA-Junos is the root. And it exists in three places. Then we have JNCIS Service Provider or JNCIS Enterprise that we could take. And then from there, we can choose to take JNCIP Data Center or JNCIP Enterprise. You need to start thinking about two things at this point. While the cool thing about this is that JNCIA-Junos gives us options as to where we want our certification journey to go and what kind of curriculum we want to study, we also need to keep that in the back of our mind that we should choose which certification track is going to be best for us.

3:34Maybe we're doing this professionally, because we want it to apply to the job that we have and advance further in the job that we have. Or maybe we want to change gears a little bit and do something different one day. Maybe we're in the enterprise world right now, and we want to switch to service provider some day. The JNCIA-Junos is a great starting point, because we have the option to do either. And this is why I wanted to have this conversation first about which certifications you should actually be going for. So know that the JNCIA-Junos is applicable to three different tracks.

4:06That's Service Provider, Data Center, and Enterprise. And then beyond that at the Specialist level, Enterprise applies to both Enterprise and Data Center. It's not until you get to the Professional level that we actually have three different tracks with three different exams. The cool thing, though, is that JNCIA-Junos is the root of our tree that we can span out from as we progress through our journey. So this sets up the certification offerings within Juniper. In the next Nugget, we're going to take a deeper dive into the exam blueprint of the JNCIA-Junos and what is the real spirit of this exam all about.

4:38I hope this has been informative for you. And I'd like to thank you for viewing.

0:00[MUSIC PLAYING] So at this point, you've now decided that you want to go for one of the three tracks that has the JNCIA-Junos as part of it. Those were Data Center, Enterprise, or Service Provider. The JNCIA-Junos is all about where it starts. Now we need to set up expectations of what is the JNCIA-Junos really about. This is going to be a little bit different from other associate-level exams that you may be familiar with. So let's take a look at the exam topics of the JNCIA-Junos, and then really understand what the spirit of the exam is.

0:37So now it's time to talk about the JNCIA-Junos. And I've hinted at this, a few times now, that this exam is really different from other associate-level exams that you may be familiar with, or experienced with, in the past. Because at the heart of the JNCIA-Junos, it's not necessarily about networking. This exam is more about how Juniper approaches networking. That's why the name of this exam isn't JNCIA-Service Provider Networking. It's not JNCIA-Enterprise Networking.

1:08It's JNCIA-Junos. Junos is the operating system that all Juniper devices run. So what the JNCIA-Junos is all about is it's actually about the operating system. That's the spirit of this exam, it's getting familiar with how Juneau's really works and what makes it so different. Because it is wildly different from other networking platforms that you've worked with, at the end of the day. Although it's very fun and exciting. Let's take a look at the JNCIA-Junos exam blueprint. Now I'm going to click on the one that's in the Service Provider Routing and Switching section.

1:41And you see, it does take me into the Service Provider Routing and Switching Certification Track. But JNCIA-Junos tab that we're on, here, would be the exact same if I had clicked on the Data Center or the Enterprise section. All of this content below is the exact same. So don't get thrown off, and think that this is just for Service Provider. It's not. The JNCIA-Junos is the JNCIA-Junos, no matter which reason you're taking it for. So if we scroll down a little bit, we see some interesting info about this. First of all, it is a 90-minute exam that is comprised of 65 multiple choice questions.

2:17Keep that in mind, they are multiple choice questions. So this is what you're going to need to know. You also immediately know whether you've passed or failed, which is also kind of nice. Now let's actually take a look at the exam blueprint itself. If I were to break this down, it's broken down into what I'm going to call six domains. One, two, three, four, five, and six. We have the Operating System Fundamentals, and what they're really talking about here is the architecture of the operating system itself. No, you don't need to be a computer engineer, and actually understand how an operating system works.

2:50What we're really talking about, when we talk about the OS Fundamentals, is how is Junos designed differently. How is it designed to behave differently from its competitors, from its vendors that it competes with. So if I clear the screen a little bit and expand this, you can see it's talking about how does it handle the actual software architecture. And then a major talking point about Junos, a little spoiler, is how it separates completely, physically, the control plane and the forwarding plane. Now we're going to talk so much more about this because it's a major talking point, and a major design advantage to going with Juniper, and what makes these Juniper devices so stinking performant.

3:28So you got to understand, before you've even typed any commands, how does Juniper actually treat traffic. How does it make decisions, and how is it designed under the hood. That's what they want you to learn, right out of the gate. The next thing is User Interfaces. How do you actually use the CLI, and navigate the CLI. And you may be thinking, well, navigating a CLI couldn't be that hard. Why does it deserve its own domain? Again, Juniper does things wildly different from other platforms that you're used to seeing. Now there's a lot of things that are in common with it, and similar to it.

4:00But still, this is one of those things that could be a little bit of a shock if you're coming from a different vendor, and into Juniper for the first time. Don't worry, it's actually really exciting and really fun. And at the end of the day, once you've done it a couple of times you'll go oh, I really like this! It's structured very cleanly, in a way that logically makes sense! And you'll like this a lot, the syntax of Juniper commands and how the CLI is structured. Just trust me, you're going to really enjoy this particular content that's coming up.

4:30Configuration. Now Juniper handles configuration a lot differently from other vendors. And this is one of the cool things about it-- how it actually makes changes to the configuration, and how we can reverse changes in the event that something goes wrong. Throughout this section, we're going to be working through how we can create user accounts, set IP addresses, and actually check what the history of our configurations have been. You'll learn, again, that this is one of the ways that Juniper really sets itself apart-- how the configuration is actually handled, as opposed to the running config.

5:03Then in the Operational Monitoring and Maintenance, this is where Juniper does things wildly different from other vendors and platforms that you've heard about in the past. Why? Here's another little spoiler, Juniper actually runs on top of FreeBSD or Linux variants. It used to be only FreeBSD. Now it's FreeBSD or Linux, depending on which platform you use. But here's the thing, you need to actually understand how Juniper is going to use monitoring and operational tools, and how we could restore, or default config, or recover these devices.

5:34Because it is different from other platforms. It's only once we've gone through this stuff that we actually get into the networking itself. And this is another huge thing that I want to talk about immediately, up front. And set this precedence, up front. We are only going to be focused on routing. I repeat, the JNCIA-Junos is only focused on routing. That's Layer 3 and above. We're not talking Layer 2. There is no VLAN or ethernet configuration at all, as part of the JNCIA-Junos examination.

6:05And this one catches people off guard. The thing is that VLANs and ethernet configuration changes a little bit, whether we go into Enterprise, or Security, or Service Provider. And that's where they save Layer 2 configurations for the JNCIS-level examinations. That doesn't mean I'm not going to talk a little bit about. It if you're going to be working with switching, you should probably know a little bit about how to configure a VLAN on a switch or something like that. But know that it's not on the JNCIA-Junos exam. What they really want you to understand is the fundamentals of routing.

6:35How would a Junos operating system make a routing decision? How would you deploy an interior gateway routing protocol, like OSPF? And then beyond that, it goes into some actually advanced-level topics, with Route Policies and Firewall Filters. With Routing Policies, we are actually talking about things like route redistribution. How do we get static routes shared into an OSPF domain? Or BGP routes shared into an OSPF domain? We use routing policies for this. And this is what kind of throws people off, too.

7:07This is actually an advanced routing topic. This doesn't even show up in other vendors until later in their game, in their advanced routing topics. But it's here in the JNCIA-Junos exam. Again, don't worry. We've got covered. We're going to teach you how all of these things work, and how to configure them on a Junos device. Then the Firewall Filters are, more or less, like ACLs. So we're going to talk about how to configure those, too. And all of the different options that are available. Just know that the spirit of where they're coming from, with Route Policies and Firewall Filters, isn't to teach you about route redistribution.

7:39It's to show you how Junos implements this differently from other vendors. And it's a very logical structure, one more time. The spirit of this entire exam isn't necessarily about networking, so much. It's how to implement networking on a Junos-running device. So the expectation, when you join and start this JNCIA-Junos journey, is that you already have some fundamental networking under your belt. You already know things like the OSI model, and how a router would make a route decision, and why configuring usernames and passwords on switches is the important thing.

8:13You already know what SSH does, and NTP does. Now it's how do you configure them on Junos. This is different from previous versions of the JNCIA-Junos exam. The first time I took the JNCIA-Junos exam was almost five years ago, at this point. And it was very entry-level, assuming that you knew nothing about networking. Now the JNCIA-Junos exam has shifted its focus, and is primarily focused on just Junos itself, assuming, maybe, that you're already coming from a different vendor. Or that you already Network+ level content.

8:44So this sets up the expectation about what the JNCIA-Junos is all about. I can promise you this, if your interest is going into JNCIS or JNCIP you will want to pay close attention to how the Junos operating system really works. Because it will set you up for success when it comes time to actually deploy these networks in the real world. Or even, taking it a step further, automating them if you're interested in the DevOps track. So that's been understanding the spirit of the JNCIA-Junos exam. I hope this has been informative for you, and I'd like to thank you for viewing.

0:00[MUSIC PLAYING] So we're ready to dive into the JNCIA-Junos at this point, and here's the thing. As you progress through your JNCIA journey or all the way up to JNCIS, JNCIP, or maybe even JNCIE, at some point you're going to realize, I need some way to practice these commands. I need some form of a lab. Now, we can do this with hardware, or we can do this with software. There's even a virtual lab offering. In this Nugget, what we're going to talk about is some of the hardware options that you can use to purchase a physical home lab.

0:35For instance, in my very own home lab, I happen to have some Juniper switches as well as a Juniper firewall. Let's talk about the equipment that I recommend you use to build your own physical Juniper home lab. Now that we understand what the JNCIA is all about, we're going to get started talking about how to actually implement and configure Juniper devices with initial configurations and then routing on top of that. When it comes time to do that, it may help if you have a way to follow along or at least networking devices themselves, physical or virtual, so that you can type the commands and really drill that muscle memory into mind.

1:09Let's first start by talking about the hardware options available to you. I'm going to use eBay as my favorite place to purchase used equipment. And one of the devices that I recommend checking out that's both affordable and can give you both layer 2 and layer 3 options is the Juniper EX2200 device. When you see EX, you should know that the EX is for "enterprise switching." This is actually an exam topic itself is understanding the Juniper offerings, the hardware offerings and the different platforms.

1:40And the EX-series devices are the enterprise-grade switches. See this guy right here? This is an EX2200 that I'm going to be using to configure as we go along. But also, sitting to the right of me here, I have a Juniper EX4200, which is a larger, more powerful switch that takes up a lot more space. You can see the EX2200s though come in a couple different form factors. The dash-Cs that you see here are the small form factors. And then you have the regular EX2200s, which are the full-size rack mount switches that are the full-size form factor.

2:15As you can tell, the EX2200 devices are pretty affordable. They range in about the $50 to $60 range. And you can get the 2200-Cs new in box for just over $100, $135, $155. If you wanted something that's not end-of-life though, because the EX2200s are end-of-life, the EX2300s are what is the newer version or the newer models of these, and these are still supported. You can see you can get them new, sealed in box. They, of course, are more expensive, but they are still supported.

2:46You can still get new versions of the operating system, which you'll find out is a pretty big deal, especially when it comes time to create your Juniper account. And then you can practice going through operating system upgrades and things like that. Those are exam topics, and they remain exam topics. Monitoring and maintaining your environment remains on the exam as you progress even through the JNCIS. Now, here are the EX4200s that I'm talking about. These are larger switches. They are louder switches too. But they do provide PoE and overall are what are generally deployed in enterprise environment.

3:19Now, lastly, if you're interested in the firewall offerings, you're going to be looking at the SRX-series line of devices. Again, exam topic-- if you see SRX, you should know that that is for the security products, the firewalls themselves. The SRX300 is what I have in my physical environment. And it does kind of look like this where there's roughly six to eight ports depending on which model you get. There's a console port, and this is primarily used for a small business or branch office environment. Now, fair warning, the configuration, even though it is running Junos, this is a firewall, and we have to deal with security zones and stuff like that.

3:56And those are not JNCIA-Junos topics. You will not see security zones really anywhere in the service provider, data center, or enterprise track. That's why JNCIA security has its own track and its own certification. So if you do end up getting an SRX device, know that some of the configurations, the initial configurations that you need to bring it to life, are going to be a little bit different than what we cover in the JNCIA-Junos exam. Nonetheless, it's good to have one of these because it will help you get familiar with the security offerings.

4:26And beyond that, it can even introduce you to the SD-WAN offerings within Juniper's line of product. So my recommendation, if you're getting started in Juniper devices, I would actually recommend probably picking up something like the EX2200 device. Now, I did warn that the JNCIA itself does not cover VLANs or layer 2. And obviously, if you're buying a switch, that's going to be a big part of it. So know that the initial configuration to get a switch up to life goes just a little bit beyond what JNCIA-Junos brings to the table. But nonetheless, this is the product that I am going to be using in my environment as well as the virtual products, like the software-based products that I'm going to be talking about in the very next Nugget.

5:05So that's been understanding how we could deploy a hardware-based lab environment for our JNCIA studies. I hope this has been informative for you, and I'd like to thank you for viewing.

0:00[MUSIC PLAYING] Now sometimes, physical hardware labs are out of the questions for a lot of people because of space constraints. We don't have the space to put all this equipment, or electricity constraints, or even budgetary constraints. We don't have the money to go out and purchase this physical equipment. And that's OK because Juniper does offer virtual lab images that you can download and run in applications like EVE-NG or GNS3. As long as you have a Juniper account, you can walk through the steps to get entitled to the evaluation images, which you can then use in lab environments like GNS3 and EVE-NG.

0:37In this Nugget, what we're going to do is introduce you to what the images are that you can download and places-- the resources-- that you can go to get them set up in your own environment. Let's get going. Now maybe a much more attractive option to you is going to use a virtualization platform or a QEMU platform, something like GNS3 or EVE-NG. Me personally, I'm going to be using EVE-NG for my virtual demonstrations throughout this playlist and any other Juniper playlists that I work on in the future. I really prefer to work with that platform. And it runs Juniper products great.

1:08So here's how we can get started. From Google you can just search for Juniper downloads. And right there, the very first thing that pops up is downloads for Juniper Support. Let's give it a click, and I'll show you what you need to do. The first thing you need to do, is you need to create a Juniper account. This does have to be a business account. So go up here in the top right corner, click on Account and choose User Registration. You'll type in your email address in the fields here. And then choose what country you want to choose. And then you can see, you've got three different ways that you can create your email.

1:39You have an authorization code. Maybe you've purchased something and they've given you a code that you can type in. You can do that there. If you have a product serial number-- maybe you followed along in the previous Nugget and you actually purchased something off eBay-- you can use that serial number right here to create your account. If you have a Cloud Marketplace or a cloud service provider-- maybe you're doing something like SD-WAN or cloud provider-- you could do something like this. Or lastly, you can just choose Guest User access if that's the best way that you want to create your user account. Now, in my case when I created my account, I had already purchased an EX2200 device off of eBay and I used its serial number to create my own account.

2:17If you haven't purchased something off eBay, you may probably want to go with the Guest User access. So go through the process of creating your user account first, and then you can make your way back to the Downloads page here. Now, here's the next thing I want to draw your attention to. Kind of by my head right down here at the bottom right corner of the screen, you see this Get Support? Chances are you're going to be clicking on that next. But here's how we'll make sure. We'll start out by typing vSRX. Now a quiz question-- what was the SRX line of products for, after all?

2:47It was for the firewall products. Those were our security products. And you see, when I type in vSRX, there is a vSRX evaluation. If you give that a click, it shows you what the download options are for you, and this is where you can actually download the images needed to run Juniper devices. Right here, the KVM appliance, this qcow2 file, this is what is going to be needed at least in EVE-NG's environment to run the vSRX appliance. So if you click this, you'll find out pretty quickly if you have the privileges or the rights to actually download this.

3:20And nine times out of ten you'll find out that you don't. And that's when you need to initiate the Get Support session right here. Now the support session, itself, is going to start up by being driven by an automated bot. What you should do is, you should try and tell this automated bot that you are trying to get entitled to evaluation software. And after a few back-and-forths with the bot, it will ask you if you want to speak to a customer service representative. You say yes to that, and you tell that person you're just trying to get access to the evaluation products.

3:50And these evaluation products, you want to specifically tell them you want the vSRX, which again is for security products. You want the vMX. These are routers. When you see the MX Series devices, these are routers and these are largely used in the service provider world, though they can be used in the enterprise world. And you want the vQFX. These are Data Center switches. You want to tell the support chat that you want the evaluation entitlements to vSRX, vMX, and vQFX.

4:26You want all three. So that way, when the time comes, you can search for vMX. And you see, there's vMX Evaluation. You can give that a click. And then there's the KVM options right here. You may notice now though that this wasn't a qcow2 file. This is actually a tgz, which is kind of like a zip file. And that's because the vMX and the vQFX actually contains two appliances in it. Why does it contain two appliances? Well, that's kind of spoiling the entire point of the operating system architecture.

4:58And that's what we're going to talk about in the next skill. Just know that the vSRX is going to be one image whereas the vMX and the vQFX is going to contain two images and two appliances. And yes, you do have to have both in order to get them set up. Now, if you're going to be doing this in EVE-NG, which is what I'm using, you can go to EVENG-- or EVE hyphen NG dot net. Click on Documentation at the very top of the screen and then under HowTo's click the HowTo's dropdown and scroll on down until you get to the Juniper section.

5:30You'll see there's vMX, vQFX, and vSRX-NG. That's the ones that you're going to want to be working with is vMX, vQFX, and vSRX-NG if you're downloading the latest versions from their website, which I recommend. When you click on Juniper vMX here, it does walk you through step-by-step how you go about adding these images into your environment. You do need to go through all of these steps-- every single one of them-- in order to get this fully up and running. But that is the instructions on how you can go about freely and legally acquiring the Juniper images for your own virtual lab.

6:07And then if you're using EVE-NG, how you can actually get them set up in your environment. It does really help to have the physical hardware already to have a serial number entitling you to Juniper equipment and creating a Juniper account. So if you did pick up a switch on the previous Nugget when you went through the eBay phase and you bought something off eBay, try and create that Juniper account using the serial number. And in the worst-case scenario, create an account with Guest Access and speak to customer support in order to get serial numbers applied to your account or to get the entitlements to the evaluation images.

6:40Then you can follow along with EVE-NG documentation on how to actually get those evaluation images up and running in your environment. So that's been understanding how you can get a virtual lab of Juniper hardware up and running. I hope this has been informative for you. And I'd like to thank you for viewing.

0:00[INTRO SOUND PLAYING] Our last option for getting acquainted or familiarized with Juniper hardware or equipment is actually to use their virtual labs. They offer lab scenarios online for free to access as long as, again, you have a Juniper account. So what we're going to do in this particular Nugget is introduce you to Juniper vLabs. A little warning though, this is for some more advanced studying. This is going to be more towards your JNCIP and JNCIE levels because these are going to be pre-built labs for scenarios.

0:33Nonetheless, it's a great way for you to get hands on a command line and actually type some commands to see what they do. Let's explore Juniper's vLab's option. The last thing that we should talk about is Juniper's online lab option, which is known as Juniper vLabs. If I actually just Google Juniper vLabs, it's the first thing that pops up just like it says. Now, like I said before, there's a little bit of a fair warning that this is really used case specific. This isn't going to be just a sandbox environment where you can tinker around and do whatever you want. But it is a great way to actually jump into devices and just poke around and see what all these devices can do.

1:08You can see right here it's kind of small text, test drive vMX, vSRX or some of their other offerings like the NorthStar Controller or the Contrail Enterprise Multicloud. These are SD-WAN or enterprise grade SD in solutions. So when you sign in with your Juniper account, just like I'm doing right now and I'm getting signed into Juniper's vLabs, we can see right here, here's a standalone vMX information. I can click Launch right there and it launches the Juniper vLabs. I see that there is a vMX device here.

1:40This is what the topology layout would look like, and if I click on the instructions in the top left, you can see it pops out this little screen. And it actually shows you how to use this sandbox environment so that you could follow along and perform some actions on this vMX router. This is a great way just to jump in and type some commands to keep this thing up and running. Now, fair warning, there are some limitations onto how or what you can actually do on this network device. Otherwise, there may be people in there trying to break this device and we would lose connectivity to it. But you should know that this is another option for you that you should explore if you're trying to get hands on with Juniper devices.

2:16They have virtual labs for a bunch of different platforms and for a bunch of different scenarios that you can use right now for free as long as you have a Juniper account. So that introduces the Juniper vLabs option. I hope this has been informative for you, and I'd like to thank you for viewing.

0:00[MUSIC PLAYING] If you're here because you're considering going for your JNCIA-Junos certification, or if you're just interested in learning more about the Juniper platform in general, then guess what-- you're in luck, because you're already in one of the best places that you could be when it comes to learning Juniper. Right here, at CBT Nuggets, watching this playlist all about the JNCIA-Junos. But here's the other kicker for you. You may seek other resources for learning, and you may find out pretty quickly there's not a whole lot out there.

0:31What I want to show you, in this particular Nugget, is that there are other resources out there that can really benefit you in your long run as you study and learn more about the Juniper platform, and all of the products and services in the architecture of the OS, and everything else that comes with it. But beyond that, there's some even more additional items that would really help you out. Things like a voucher for taking the certification exam. That's what we're going to cover in this Nugget, some of the other learning resources that will really help you in your Juniper journey. And things that you'll want to get acclimated to using, as part of your certification or your actual professional career development.

1:04Let's keep going talking about the other Juniper learning resources that could help you, as you learn throughout the Juniper Certification Playlist. I think this is really one of the coolest things about Juniper is that they want to lower their barrier to entry. And that's why they created a particular resource that really helps people get started learning with Juniper, and going for their certifications. In fact, they created this resource that enables people to more affordably take their JNCIA certifications. Now, as you've already seen, they offer multiple JNCIAs.

1:34So here's a way that we could actually get acclimated to the Juniper certification journey, as well as receive an exam voucher that significantly reduces the cost for the JNCIA certifications. Let me introduce you to the Junos Genius. From Google, I'll search for Junos Genius. I'll type in Junos Genius, and right here the very first thing that pops up-- you see, we've got this cloud.contentraven.com. I've been told that they're considering changing to a different platform, but that's not official. We don't really know for sure if that's really going to happen.

2:06For now, at the time of this recording, Junos Genius is hosted on this cloud.contentraven.com. Just give that a click, the first thing that pops up. And you'll be greeted with this login page, right here. Now, if you don't have an account, go ahead and create one. It's free to create this account. And I've already got an account, as you can see here on this page, with my username and password prepopulated for me here. Notice also that they have a Junos Genius app that's on iTunes, or the App Store, as well as Google Play. So you can also access this type of content from your cell phone, when you're on the go.

2:37So I'll click login, and it will take me into Junos Genius. And across the top, you can see, here is where we break down the different categories of resource learning items that we have here. Notice these things right here, these practice tests. You've got the Associate Level practice test, Specialist Level practice test, Professional Level practice test-- that's right, there's practice tests here in this certification, or this Junos Genius Content Raven, website. Now, I'm going to get into these practice tests a little bit more in just a moment. But the first thing I wanted to show you is the very first line, right here.

3:08This Get Started for Free section. You see these Certification Tracks, Certification Tracks, Certification Tracks. That's exactly what these are. These are Certification Tracks that are designed to help you go from one end to the other. Now think about this for one moment. If you've been following along on this particular skill, what were the certifications that use the JNCIA-Junos? This is your little pop quiz in the middle of this Nugget. What were those certifications that had the JNCIA-Junos as their root tier? There were three Certification Tracks that had the JNCIA-Junos as the root tier.

3:41That was the Enterprise Track, the Data Center Track, and the Service Provider Track. So here we go. We can see that we've got a Data Center Track, we've got an Enterprise Track, and-- if I scroll over, with this little arrow right here on the right hand side of the screen, I now see there's also the Service Provider Track down here, towards the end. If I give any of these a click, like the Enterprise Track here, we see now it's broken down into the three certifications that make this up. Worth pointing out that the JNCIE, the expert-level content, is not available on Junos Genius.

4:12But every other exam that they have-- JNCIA, JNCIS, or JNCIP-- will have some content here that's available to you. So from within here, if I click on the JNCIA-Junos, it does take me into the JNCIA-Junos Track. The first thing is there is a Terms and Conditions Read Me that you have to go through. And then there is some video content, that's right here. Now if I scroll down just a hair, we see that there are two practice exams for the JNCIA-Junos. And then there is the Voucher Assessment Test.

4:44So in order to take the Voucher Assessment Test, you do have to go through all of the preceding content. You do have to go through the Read Me, you do have to go through the video content, and you have to take the Practice Tests. You do have to pass the Practice Tests, or at least attempt them. It is worth pointing out that-- it might be a glitch in the videos, or something-- that if you merely click on one of these videos, and let it start running, once you actually exit out of it, it does mark the entire video series as completed. So here, you can see, I'm letting this one run, right here. If I click close, it would then show that this is completed. So you could actually just click on all of these, and just blast right through them.

5:18But you'd be missing out on some good content, too. So once you go through the video content, and you take these practice exams, you can then take this Voucher Assessment, right here. And if you pass the Voucher Assessment, you will get emailed a little voucher code that you can use to redeem your JNCIA-Junos. Now the time of this recording, it's a 75% off discount, or it equates to be about a $25 exam fee. The Specialist Exams are a little bit more expensive, and there is no Voucher Assessment for Specialist or Professional. The voucher is really for the JNCIAs, but it's not just the JNCIA-Junos.

5:53Like I said, it's the JNCIA-DevOps, it's the JNCIA-MistAI, it's the JNCDA for the Design Certification. So if I click back, and then I click back one more time, you should know that from the top layer right here, you can get to the Voucher Assessments for each one of the tracks. So whether it's Security, Enterprise, Automation, whatever you want to go for. That JNCIA-- if you start with that root JNCIA, you can get the voucher assessment right there. And that's a really, really incredible offer that I really encourage you to go for, if you're considering getting your certification with Juniper.

6:27But beyond that, once you get past the JNCIA and you want to get into the JNCIS, they've got a certification track for the JNCIS. Now, a little bit of my advice, here. It's not necessarily a warning, or a bad thing. Just for me, personally, I found that these were out of order. In fact, these e-learning courses are basically sorted alphabetically, and it's not necessarily the best way to learn them. And I've blogged about the preferred way that you could learn some of this content, like in the JNCIS Service Provider-- a better way that you could do about those things on dataknox.dev.

6:58But nonetheless it is content that can help you prepare for your JNCIA, JNCIS, or JNCIP certifications. Now let's scroll down, just a hair, and move into the Practice Tests. If you don't want to go through those certification videos, or you don't care about the Voucher Assessment, and you just want to go straight into Practice Tests, you can find additional Practice Tests broken down by their level-- Associate, Specialist, or Professional level. And then, again, you can see exactly which Practice Tests you're taking. So here's JNCIA-DevOps.

7:28They have a Practice Test One, and a Practice Test Two. That way you could take these Practice Tests really any time that you want. You've got unlimited tries on these Practice Tests, here. So you can just take these over, and over, and over again, if that's what you want to do. And really drill down into these. One of the cool things that I like about these Practice Tests is that it tells you exactly why the questions were-- the answers were right, or why the questions were-- or the answers were wrong. So if I just click on something here, I didn't really, like, read this question or anything, but then I say "Show answer." It tells you why these were the correct answers, and why the wrong answers were the wrong answers.

8:01And this becomes less about just gauging your readiness for the certification, and more of an additional learning resource, that I really recommend that you take advantage of when you're going for the JNCIA, JNCIS, or JNCIP. So I'll exit out of this certification, and then I'll exit out of this one more time. And again, I can't stress this enough, you'll find Associate-Level, Specialist-Level, and-- if I scroll down a little bit more-- Professional-Level Practice Tests here for you. And there's multiple Practice Tests. So you could get exposed to over 100 different Practice-Test-style questions that could really prepare you well for the actual certification exams themselves.

8:39So ultimately, my recommendation for you is, if you're serious about Juniper certification exams and Juniper certification prep, you really want to take advantage of that Associate-Level voucher, as well as these practice exams. I have found that they made a critical difference in my readiness for taking the actual exam itself. These practice exams, they really either bolstered my confidence, or they made me check myself and assess where I was weakest at. So that way, I could go back and learn more about these particular items. There are, lots of times, things that often catch me off guard, when I'm, like, oh wait a minute, I didn't think about this, or that specific scenario.

9:14And these practice exams help fill in those gaps that are going to be wildly helpful for your success. Now scrolling down a little bit more, there's some other things that I want to draw your attention to that I think are going to be useful in your professional career. Not necessarily for the certification journey itself, but when you actually start working with Juniper gear. The first one is the hardware-specific content and Deployment Courses. You can see things like the QFX, data-center style, switches. The ACX, this is a Service-Provider-style router.

9:45The PTX is also a Service Provider super-core router. These are some complex machines that we're talking about, at this point. Rather than just 1U or 2U little units, we're talking about these giant units that take up whole rooms because they're doing nothing but massive-scale routing, switching, and all these other types of data-center-style services. So these are the books and learning resources that-- if you were to actually dive into a Data Center, or a Service Provider, or actually get hands-on with some of the massive-scale equipment the Juniper's really known for-- these are the things where you're like, OK well that's great, I know the core about Junos.

10:19And I understand how routing really works and everything. But what is it that makes that platform so unique, or so different? And how would the deployment actually work in those types of items? How do you even cart the thing into the room, because it's so big? This is where these hardware-specific guides are going to come in handy for you. And you can start to learn what makes Junos, and their different platforms, so special or so unique. In the next skill, when we talk about the Junos architecture, we're going to talk about the releases themselves, and the actual versioning of Junos. And you'll learn pretty quickly that while every single Juniper device runs Junos, they offer some different specialties, or some different roles, or some different features that other platforms don't offer.

11:00For instance, it kind of makes obvious sense to say things like a firewall doesn't offer the same services that a switch does, but they both run Junos, at the end of the day. They just don't offer the exact same commands. Because they don't offer the exact same services. And that's where this hardware deployment guide is really going to come in handy for you. Now the Day One Books are absolutely outstanding. This is one of the best features that come with the Junos Genius, the ability to read the Day One Books. The Day One Books live up to the name. They're for what do I do on day one, when it comes to this specific technology?

11:34Sure you're seeing things like "Segment Routing," and "Deploying vSRX on KVM," and "MACsec Up and Running," and you're thinking, wait a minute-- I'm just here for the JNCIA-Junos. I don't really see much use, for me, as a Day One Book. But if you scroll all the way on over to the right-- aw, keep going-- you'll see this View All button. Give that a click. And then, if you scroll all the way to the bottom, you can bring up a bunch of different books that you may actually find very useful. I love "Exploring the Junos CLI." I love "EX Series Up and Running," because this is a very common deployment in enterprises, to deploy EX series routers.

12:09I love "Exploring IPv6." There's nothing too advanced, when it comes to deploying routing within IPv6. And this is a book that would help you get up and running with these, on day one. If I scroll up just a little bit more, you'll also find a couple books that I really love. Especially if you're coming from the Cisco IOS world. You've got "Junos for IOS Engineers," and also some other things like "Junos QoS for IOS Engineers." They know that they're up against Cisco, and all of these other IOS engineers, and learners typically start out in these Cisco or Cisco-like environments before they dive right into Junos.

12:46So they've created these types of readings to compare what commands you would type in Cisco, and then what those correlated commands would be in Junos. So that way you could actually learn-- if I'm coming from a Cisco environment, here's the related command in Junos. So that wraps up Junos Genius, and I highly recommend this as a learning resource in general, whether you're going for certification prep or not. But if you are going for certification prep, know that I highly recommend it for the voucher, as well as the practice exams. Now the other things that you're going to want to get used to in the Juniper world, when you start working with Juniper devices, is the Juniper TechLibrary.

13:21If you search for Juniper TechLibrary, you'll find it at juniper.net/documentation. It's right here, highlighted on my screen. Yeah, you want to get used to this place, because you're going to be reading lots of documentation throughout your journey. Just about anything that you Google, if you see that there is a Juniper TechLibrary document on it, that's probably where you want to be. That's probably what you want to be reading. So if you look at the Juniper TechLibrary, they've got the platform-specific items, or the routing-specific items, switching-specific items. And all of these different platforms can get you down to the command that are applicable to your specific platform, or your specific use case.

13:54So get used to reading documentation from the Juniper TechLibrary. And if you Google things, and you see that /documentation, that's a great place to start. Now lastly, you may be thinking about physical textbooks. What physical textbooks do I recommend? Well, this is the old textbook, from like 20 years ago. And it's really, really robust. It's, like, gigantic. It's, like, this thick. And I don't know that this textbook, necessarily, is going to be the best way to get you prepared for today's JNCIA, but there is a lot of good information in it. I have this book, I've read it.

14:26And it does help prepare you for the JNCIA, to an extent. You just have to know-- you have to be familiar enough with the exam blueprint to know when the textbook goes beyond what you need to know, and decide whether or not you want to continue going. Just know that this textbook was for a much "more-bigger" version of the JNCIA, and that's not really what you're up against these days anymore. But it does have relevant content in it. More applicable-- I really, really like the Juniper O'Reilly books. There's a lot of good O'Reilly books. When you start getting into things like Data Center, or Service Provider, or Enterprise you'll find even more, specific, O'Reilly textbooks for the type of use case you're using.

15:02In fact, this is the Junos Enterprise Routing textbook. And this is really good, especially for the JNCIS or JNCIP, Enterprise Routing guides. But it also does have some information that's definitely applicable to your JNCIA. I also loved the book "MPLS in the SDN Era." This is what I read when I was going for my JNCIS Service Provider. Now this book went way beyond what was needed for the JNCIA Service Provider, but very cool nonetheless, because it did go deep into the inner workings of MPLS.

15:34As well as, not only how to deploy these types of technologies in Junos, but also Cisco technologies. So nearly every example in the "MPLS in the SDN Era" had not only Junos, but also IOS XR. And it was primarily written with a multivendor environment, which, let's be realistic, that's what we go up against these days. Just about every environment that we work in is multivendor. So these are the resources that I recommend when you're going for your Juniper JNCIA, JNCIS, or JNCIP certification exams.

16:04Or if you're just getting started within Juniper platforms, and you're working with the hardware, and you need some additional resources. I highly recommend checking out all of these items, as that will bolster your skills and boost you up to the next level. I hope this has been informative for you, and I'd like to thank you for viewing.

0:00[MUSIC PLAYING] So that introduces you to the Juniper certification track, as well as the spirit of the JNCIA-Junos examination itself. We now understand that this exam is less about networking, even though networking is a big part of it, and more about introducing you to how Junos does networking differently. This is what sets you up for success when it's time to explore Enterprise or Service Provider or Data Center because now you're acquainted with the way that Juniper is going to be doing things.

0:34Beyond that, we've introduced some ways that you can follow along with some hardware or some software images. I hope this has been informative for you. And I'd like to thank you for viewing.