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So for INE, you would create an account, which is free.
You don't have to provide anything for that.
So members.ine.com.
Let me log out.
So when you go to members.ine.com, you'll be required to put in a
username and password.
If you don't already have one, you can just sign up, and you can see here it doesn't
require any kind of credit card or anything like that.
Just put in some basic information.
And then once you sign up, you will have access to this.
So there you go.
And from here, you'll want to click on the left where it says rack rentals.
Now we've got a whole variety of racks.
You can see, if you scroll down, CCIE routing and switching v5
full-scale troubleshooting.
I've been primarily concentrating on the CCNA/CCNP rack.
And all these require tokens, and these are the amount of tokens you
need to spend per hour of rental.
So for example, cost 3 tokens to rent an hour on the CCNA/CCNP rack,
cost 8 tokens to rent time on the full-scale troubleshooting CCIE rack.
Where do you get these tokens and how much are they?
Well, up here you can click on purchase tokens.
Let me see if I can make this a bit larger for you.
There you go.
So just so if you do it from here, you can see a 100 tokens is a $100,
500 tokens is $500.
But a lot of times if you just navigate around our site,
a lot of times we'll have promotions on rack rental tokens.
Where you can get like 200 tokens for a $100 or if you buy a CCNP bundle for
$50 you get 200 tokens along with that.
You might just want to do a little bit of searching to see if we have any
current deals on the tokens.
So you buy the tokens up front, and you look and you say, okay.
Let me just reduce this a little bit.
Now I said, I said, don't ever put any money on anything
until you can see what the topology looks like.
Let's take a look at the CCNA, CCNP first of all.
It'll be my bad if we don't have one in here.
Let's take a look at a rack rental guide.
Sure enough, right here, in the rack rental guide,
which is free for anybody to look it, it shows you some topology diagrams of
what you have available to you.
It talks about what do you need from a software perspective.
I say well let see, what else?
Maybe I want to try, maybe I'm willing to do 5 tokens an hour?
What about the CCIE v5?
Do we have a topology diagram somewhere in here?
We have a listing of how many devices it has, it talks about how to schedule it,
walks us through the scheduling, canceling a session, but I did see something.
If I go back here - I think it was in this page - there was a resources button.
If I click on that, hardware configuration, reference configurations.
I don't see anything in here showing Let me just keep going all the way to the end.
Canceling a session, loading your configuration.
Okay, well here.
Now if I was looking at this though, I'd be wondering,
Okay, is this the actual topology or is this just an example?
I'm not entirely sure.
Saving your configuration.
Here we go.
All right, we had to go a few pages into it, but now we see it.
Physical LAN cabling.
Remember, like I said, all this is-- the routers are all virtual connected
to physical switches.
Interface connections all right well from this I could probably build a
topology diagram.
This is just talking about how to use the control panel.
Once again, I'm not sure if this is the actual topology diagram for this particular
rack or not.
Telnet talked about how to work the menu.
Once again using the control panel, I'm hearing a busy line, is there--
For me personally, if I was considering renting time on this rack,
I haven't seen other than that one physical topology diagram that showed
me how the server hosting the virtual routers has physically connected
to the switches, I haven't seen anything else.
This is the closest that it got, but I know that this thing has more than just--
okay, I can sort of build this.
It looks like every single router has a single Gig interface into a virtual switch.
But I don't see any mention here of any serial interfaces or anything else,
so I might want to send an email to INE saying, do you have any other lab topology
diagrams that go with this particular rack?
So that's an example of what I was talking about.
Before renting time on a rack, you want to make sure you're very
clear on what the topology diagram looks like of that rack.
Let's say you've looked at the CCNA, CCNP, and you say, okay, this looks good.
I've looked here at this topology diagram.
I should be able to do whatever I want with it.
Okay, I've decided to use that.
You purchased, I don't know, a 100 tokens to start out with.
Then you click on schedule.
Now at this point I'm not using any tokens yet.
I'm just getting to the schedule page, and I can do a search.
First of all, let's see what calendar view shows me.
This looks pretty good, I would say.
It looks like it is wide open.
For the next several days, it's completely available.
I'm not going to have any fears that if I use this when I want to use it,
it's going to be unavailable.
Let's take a look at one of the other ones, how about the V5 schedule?
Calendar view.
This is also looking pretty good.
Yeah, so that also looks great.
What about-- let's see here, I know that our data center racks are
in very high demand.
Let's choose one of those.
Data center, calendar view.
Yeah, so here, okay.
So if I want to get on the CCIE data center rack, that might be kind of a challenge.
Fully booked, available.
So that was one of the other things I mentioned.
Make sure you can understand how busy these racks are before you spend time on them.
So I say, Okay, I'm going to go with the CCNA.
I've already looked at the schedule.
It's wide open.
And looking at this, it looks like you've got a choice.
This is kind of cool because I mentioned the CCNA, CCNP rack was 3 tokens per hour.
But here, you can rent it looks like a three-hour duration.
If I want to do it right now from 2:30 to 5:30 today, I can get 3 hours for 8 tokens.
So that's going to save me 1 token.
Otherwise, I can just reserve a session in the future.
Now when you actually get into the rack, let me show you what's it going to
look like.
Now you have a choice of getting into these racks.
When you schedule something, it will tell you what your username
and password is for this.
And I just scrolled past it really fast.
I hope you guys didn't see mine.
But you'll have a choice.
You can either just telnet directly to it just let me bring up secureCRT here.
So if you choose to do this you can just telnet directly to racks.ine.com
and then type in that username and password that you saw.
I'll show you my username.
And then when you telnet in-- let's see here, I misspelled it.
Here we go, and now you've got access to the main menu - the console menu.
And so for example, if I want to go into Switch 1 I just
hit 1 and now I'm in Switch 1.
If I want to go back to that menu I just type control shift 6 X.
A common escape character for Cisco routers and switches,
control shift 6 let go hit X and now I'm back to the menu.
In fact, I can go back and forth between them this way, or alternatively,
what I could do-- I think this is the best way to get
into them - to get into the command line - is just by telneting directly,
to racks.INE.com.
But another thing you can do is-- hold on a second,
I don't want you guys to see this.
Doing too much, you'll see my password.
There will be a little button up there that says Control Panel.
And when you click on the control panel-- my gosh, it's showing me my password.
Let me just scroll down a little bit.
All right.
So when you get in there-- come on.
I'm going to try to do this really fast.
Okay, good.
So when you get into the control panel, you'll see something that looks like this.
It'll show you a topology diagram.
You can click on these.
It'll open up a little window so you can access them.
Personally, I like accessing them via SecureCRT or Putty or something.
The benefit of this is if you're working from a workbook,
you can select a pre-existing configuration for a task or if you say
well I'm not going to work from a workbook I just want to do my own thing.
Well I would just do erase all configs, and then load that, and just like it sounds,
it will erase the configs, and then everything will start out with a fresh config.
When you do this, like it says down here at the bottom,
it will take you about six minutes to go through this process which is
probably about the same amount of time you would spend anyway if you were to
log into each device individually and type write erase and reload.
Now somebody asked if there was a way to selectively power cycle just a
single device.
Via like some remote power rack or something.
Our lab techs do have the ability to do that.
But it doesn't look like you have the ability to do that.
And you're probably asking because you're probably wondering,
well if I'm in a device, and all of a sudden I crash it.
Or I've got some sort of debug, which has frozen the device, and I can't access the
command line anymore.
And the only option is to re-power the device, you know, reload it.
If that's your situation, if you're locked out of a router or switch in our
environment right here, and you can't do it.
You will have to contact one of our techs.
I can't scroll up, because it'll show you my password.
But if you scroll up, there's a button you can click that says emergency ticket.
And you can just type in there, hey, I'm on Rack number 1.
I need a reload of Router 2 and these guys are pretty quick.
Usually within like an hour or two at the most, they will certainly be able to reload
something for you.
So you don't have the ability yourself, but you can do it from here.
I mean, with them, with their help.
All right, I think that's all I really have to say about our equipment.
Good question, Mary.
So Mary is asking a question.
Let's see here about a reload possibility.
Let's see here.
Let me get into my stuff.
Let's go into a particular router.
Oh, well, yeah, I see that the whole idea here is that
if I was locked out of this router, if this router was perpetually on a
debug output or something, or a traceback and I couldn't get into it.
So Mary, this command you're talking about, I'm not sure where you would do it.
If I was locked-- for example, if Router 1 I was locked out of that,
I can't do it here from the main menu.
There's nothing in here in the menu for me to reload something.
Let's see.
Let me go and clear lines.
Is there-- no.
I can clear lines and stuff, but there's nothing for me to reload a device.
So yeah, if you want a power cycle device-- and this is probably a lot of remote
vendors have this.
You have to just contact the tech to do it for you.
Oh, you can use that command when you have the possibility of a lockout.
Well, that's true.
If you say, You know what?
I want to try a debug message or something, and I'm not sure if it's going to
cause me a problem.
Yeah, you could do that.
Type in that command and then force the thing to reload.
Let's see, are there any other questions?
Mary asks, how does she get the CCNP workbook,
and are there diagrams in the workbook?
Yes, there are definitely diagrams in the workbook.
I believe that there are two ways to get access to that workbook.
If you purchase the CCNP Bundle-- let me take a look at that.
Just one second here.
If you go to INE.com, and you go to Course Library Cisco
Training - let me expand this a little bit - CCNP routing and switching.
So a $199 bundle gets you access to our practice exams.
It also gets you access to the workbooks, so that's one way to do it.
I think also-- it doesn't mention it in here, but if you are an all-access
pass member, I think you can contact our sales
department and purchase the workbook as a standalone product.
So I think those are your two options.
Either you get the bundle, which has the two workbooks included,
or if you're already an access-pass member, I think our sales department can sell
you these workbooks individually.
Someone's asking if the tokens have an expiration.
That is a good question.
I have never wondered about that.
So. And Mary, yes, the workbooks are for the newer series,
they were just developed within the last couple of months.
Elizabeth says no, the tokens don't expire - she's had some for two years.
Good, good to know.
John asks, when you login to the rack, what exactly are we logging into - he
likes that interface.
That menu I showed you back here, this is actually a menu on a router,
using IOS command line, a menu was developed.
I can actually show you what that looks like just briefly.
I'm not going to spend a great deal of time with this,
but this is the access server itself.
Somewhere in here-- here we go, here is just a little snippet of how
that menu was developed in there.
It's the menu command, and all sorts of stuff so Trevor is
asking if there's a lab exercise that would enable you to get into ROMmon mode.
Well certainly, in a router, by changing the configuration revision
or-- configuration revision.
I'm thinking of the wrong thing.
The word is escaping my tongue here.
Let's see here.
What I'm talking about is the, where is it?
The configuration register, that's what I was thinking of.
You can tweak the configuration register to a non-default value so that
when you reload the device it will come up in ROMmon mode,
so that's one way you can force it to come up in ROMmon mode.
That's pretty much the only way I can think of, since you don't have access to
reloading these, I should say, to power cycling them yourself,
that would probably be the best way to do it.
There might also be a way-- Let's just try this out here for a second.
Because if I actually had a real console-- Let's see, connection to this,
and I reload it as it's coming up.
If I hit the break sequence, like control shift 6X or control escape,
it should go into ROMmon.
Right now I'm going through an access server.
I'm not sure if it will carry those commands.
I'm just hitting, ah, yeah, control escape is just doing something
weird on my keyboard, control shift 6, control shift 6, control shift 6, control C,
control C, control C.
Yeah, I'm not able to break into ROMmon from here.
So changing the configure register would probably be the only way to do that.
Is there a way to keep track of your token balance?
Yeah, certainly.
When you log in to the member's dashboard, it will say right here.
It'll give you your token balance, so it'll show you that how many you've got left.
And yes, Dean, exactly.
For the CCNA and CCNP racks, that's 3 tokens per hour.
So when you go into rack rentals, all these numbers you see here -
5 tokens, 8 tokens - that is per hour.
So basically, the way you can look at this is, right now,
at full retail price of 100 tokens equals $100,
this particular rack is $3 per hour if 1 token equals $1.
But like I said, we have a lot of discounts frequently
where you can purchase two-for-one for tokens and things, so look around for that.
So someone's mentioned that on one of the other racks, the CCIE security rack,
there actually is a way to reload a device remotely.
Okay, that's good to know.
So apparently, the CCNP rack does not provide that,
but the some of the other racks might.
I don't think SSH is available.
Right now you can only telnet into these racks, but to confirm that what I would
suggest doing, is I would suggest going to a particular rack you're interested in--
let's just go back here to the rack rental guide for CCNA,
and it should say somewhere in here-- yeah, I think just telnet connections
currently is supported.
Mary, you asked, you purchased the IE version 5 workbook a while back but you had to
stop your studies for a while.
You're getting back into it now, should you just use the IE or get the NP.
If you were pursuing your IE-- let's just pick a random number,
let's say three years ago you were pursuing your CCIE,
so back at that point in time you already had an NA,
NP equivalent knowledge and you were starting to learn on your CCIE.
And then it's been three years, you have to stop for some reason.
And now, you're getting back into it again.
You can lose a lot in that amount of time.
From my own personal experience, I worked with Cisco for 17 years as an
employee there.
I left Cisco and I knew routing and switching really,
really well before I left Cisco.
I left Cisco and I went to work for a WiFi company.
I didn't do anything with routing and switching for a whole year while I just
learned WiFi.
And it was amazing after just one year of being away from Cisco,
how much routing and switching stuff I've forgotten, even some of the basic stuff.
So if that sort of describes you, this is what I would recommend.
If you still got access to the IE workbook, what I'd say is if you are an
all-access pass member, go to the NP videos, and go through the NP videos and
create your own labs.
You don't necessarily need the NP workbook, just watch the NP videos,
create labs as you're going through it to refresh yourself on stuff.
Then once you've gone through the whole NP video series and you've just
done a bunch of labs that you came up with off the top of your head for like,
OSPF, and BGP, and Private VLANs, and stuff like this,
then I think you can go back to your IE workbook, and resume with where you left off.
That should be sufficient I would think.
In the future, if you have any other questions about building a lab--
I know a lot of you guys from the beginning had questions about using
virtual equipment like the VIRL from Cisco, or using VMware - stuff like that.
Let me show you one other thing that you have available to you as well to
get questions like that answered.
If you go to our member's dashboard, you'll see here our INE online community.
Once again, this is all free.
You didn't have to put in any credit card or anything for this.
Go to the INE online community, and CCIE forums.
Now even if you're not at the CCIE level, if you're practicing for the CCNA or
the CCNP, you can still click on this.
You'll see there's a lot of discussion forums in here, a lot of CCIE related stuff.
If you scroll down, actually there's even some rack rental stuff,
this would be a good place to type in your questions about, hey if I purchase
the datacenter rack, can I reload something myself?
Can I power cycle something?
This would be a good place to type in those types of questions.
Does your rack support SSH?
You could type it in here.
Also, we have, scrolling down below, CCNP, and CCNA forums.
These are great.
I've actually seen people put questions in here about rack stuff,
about hey I'm building a rack, and I need to know how much memory do
I need for my ESXI workstation, or whatever?
You will get answers to that.
I would recommend using either a CCNP, or CCIE forum for that kind of thing,
as far as detailed questions about building racks and how do I get access to VIRL,
and how do I tweak it, and stuff like that.
If you put your question here, in probably less than 24 hours,
somebody will get back to you with an answer.
You'll probably get multiple answers.
This is a great, also free, resource for you.
All you need is a free INE member's account to get access to these discussion forums.
All right everybody, thank you for logging in today.
I hope that this was beneficial and useful for you.
I will see you guys in the future.
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