R75 CCSE is ready, CCSA to come the next quarter

I have got today my official Instructor Manual for CCSE R75 training.

Thank you, Check Point for listing my name the first of contributors. I can even forgive you misspelling my company name for that.

For the rest of us this means something quite important: CCSE R75 is out there.

I am still looking into the context, but it is very likely Dimension Data ATC will be able to provide  these courses to you already in October.


CCSA R75 materials are on the way as well and will be available on Q3.

R75 Blade training, clarification

Hi all!

I have been contacted by nice Check Point people correcting my post about R75 training.

Let me just quote the email concerning R75 Streaming Blades trainings:

The will come in two modes: Self-Study, or ATC Delivered.

The Self-Study course will have some very basic hands-on GUI based practice exercises. While the ATC delivered course will have more in-depth hands on labs. The idea is that ATCs can delivery a CCSA or CCSE course in 3 days, and offer one or two of the one-day blade/streaming courses to fill in the week's instruction schedule.




Thanks to Mark Hoefle for this clarification

R71.40 - Plugin pain is back

If you have ever tried to use advanced upgrade path within  R65.X family, you might remember, that in many cases MGMT migration with export/import scripts was sometimes failing due to plug-ins mismatch between the source and target installations.

I was quite happy when Check Point introduced R7X migration tools. It seemed to cure the issue completely.

Apparently this is not true. My customer has just tried to import R71.20 MGMT DB into R71.40

Here is the output he gets:

[20 Jul 16:01:32] [ReadFwsetFile] Going to read file '/opt/CPsuite-R71/fw1/bin/upgrade_tools/plugin_pack.conf'
[20 Jul 16:01:32] [ReadFwsetFile] Succeeded to read file
[20 Jul 16:01:32] ..<-- ReadFwsetFile
[20 Jul 16:01:32] [PluginPackCompatibilityChecker::GetPluginPackId] Plugin pack id is: 'R71.40'
[20 Jul 16:01:32] .<-- PluginPackCompatibilityChecker::GetPluginPackId
[20 Jul 16:01:32] [PluginPackCompatibilityChecker::exec] ERR: Failed to get plugin pack ids for source/destination machines
[20 Jul 16:01:32] <-- PluginPackCompatibilityChecker::exec
[20 Jul 16:01:32] [ActivitiesManager::exec] ERR: Activity 'PluginPackCompatibilityChecker' failed
[20 Jul 16:01:32] [ActivitiesManager::exec] WRN: Activities execution finished with errors
[20 Jul 16:01:32] [ActivitiesManager::exec] WRN: Activities 'PluginPackCompatibilityChecker' have failed
[20 Jul 16:01:32] [ActivitiesManager::exec] Designated exit code is 1

 R71.40 migration tool was used on the source. Nevertheless there is a new plugin error, and the import fails.

Hello, Check Point, do you do QA these days?
 

Check Point starts reselling ATC's courses

There is an interesting turn of events in Check Point training and certification system.

Apparently, Check Point starts to resell ATC courses on its site. If you go to the "About us/Events and Training" link on companies Web site, you can see there a list of standard courses provided in several locations in USA and Europe.

The navigation to this new engine is not yet obvious, and I doubt there will be many people using it at the beginning.

But this means a lot for the whole training and certification structure of Check Point educations. The revolution is already started. Being centralized, is it good or bad for ATCs' business?

What do you think?

Dimension Data is sponsoring CPUG conference in Switzerland

Have you seen already that CPUG 2011 registration is already open?

I am proud to mention that my company, Dimension Data, is sponsoring the even, as usual.

Come alone, guys, let's have some talks and fun in September!

R75 training and certification to be launched this quarter

It has been brought to my attention that CCSA and CCSE R75 are about to be released very soon.

The courses and exams will be quite different from what we have known before. Please mind the information bellow is not yet confirmed by official sources.

The whole training train is now built on two standard trainings for CCSA and CCSE and some online modules for advanced topics.

CCSA is dedicated to general management subjects, such as basic architecture, management and control principles.

CCSE, on the other hand, will have in depth review of VPN-1 under the hood as well as troubleshooting techniques, CLI and debugging of different products.

All the blades are to be pushed to the additional streaming modules. IPSO and Dynamic Routing are expected to be there as well.

Exams will be held in mixed mode. CCSA and CCSE will remain with PearsonVue. Streaming module exams are expected to be held directly by Check Point and to be provided online.

The most interesting rumor is that to maintain your certification you will have to take one or two streaming modules every year without necessity to do CCSA/E, accelerated or not.

I am looking forward to have this information confirmed officially. We do not have to wait for too long now.

If all this is true, we face yet another Check Point training revolution, affecting both certified professionals and ATCs.

I bet not every ATC will be happy to have Check Point taking business from them with streaming modules.

Will see it very soon, guys.