CCDE Reading List

CCDE Reading List

One of the most common questions I get from CCDE candidates is: “What should I read?” and “Where should I start?”
This post is the CCDE reading list I actually used to pass the CCDE written (400-007) and practical exams. I have organized everything into my O’Reilly playlist, publicly accessible, so you can follow it directly if you have an O’Reilly subscription.

This list includes full books, individual chapters, and video courses. Some chapters were selected for their specific content, while the video courses provide a complementary perspective on subjects covered in the books.

CCDE Tips

CCDE Practical Exam — Tips and Tricks for Exam Day

I recently passed the CCDE practical exam at Cisco Live. I am now CCDE #2026::37. During my preparation, I gathered insights from fellow candidates, seasoned CCDEs, and instructors, including Zig Zsiga, Russ White, Orhan Ergun, Mark Holm, and others. I combined them with my own experience on exam day: it took me three attempts to pass, so I have some experience. This post is my attempt to distill all of that into a practical guide for anyone sitting for the CCDE lab.

Scale-up, Scale-out, Scale-across

Understanding Scale-Out, Scale-Up, and Scale-Across Networking

Modern AI and HPC workloads place extraordinary demands on the underlying network infrastructure. And as network engineers, we are often pulled into conversations about GPU clusters, maybe without a clear map of the terrain.

Three terms come up constantly: scale-out, scale-up, and scale-across networking.

They describe fundamentally different network constraints and requirements. Here is a brief and simple explanation of each.

Cisco vPC and ESI A-A Multi-homing

VXLAN EVPN ESI multi-homing on Nexus 9000

For years, multi-homing in VXLAN BGP/EVPN fabrics with Cisco Nexus switches meant one thing: vPC.  It works very well; two-switch redundancy, familiar operational model, no need to deeply understand EVPN’s native multi-homing details. At the same time, vPC has always carried operational overhead: peer-links, keepalive link, the potential peer-link bandwidth limitation, and the hard ceiling of two switches. With NX-OS 10.6(1), Cisco finally brings full native VXLAN EVPN ESI multi-homing on Nexus 9000!

This post digs into what that means and how it works.

Cisco Live

Cisco Live means human connectivity

Why You Should Attend Cisco Live — and Actually Talk to People

Back in 2022, I wrote a post covering everything Cisco Live has to offer: the technical sessions, the labs, the World of Solutions, and the various events. I ended it with a small remark: “Above all, interact with people, make new contacts, and participate in discussions”. I still think it’s the most underrated piece of advice I could give. This year will be my 13th Cisco Live, and if anything, I believe it more firmly now than ever.

400Gb Over Multimode Fiber: BiDi Changes the Game

400Gb Over Multimode Fiber: BiDi Changes the Game

For anyone who has managed a data center fiber plant over the past decade, the arrival of 400 Gigabit Ethernet came with a painful side effect: singlemode fiber. If your DC was built in the era of 10G or 40/100G BiDi, chances are your structured cabling was entirely multimode, a perfectly reasonable choice at the time. Then, 400G arrived, and all the dominant transceiver options (DR4, FR4, LR4) required singlemode. Overnight, that existing multimode plant became a liability for anyone planning to upgrade.

That situation is now changing, thanks to a transceiver Cisco quietly added to its QSFP-DD portfolio in the last few months: the QDD-400G-BD.

Operations vs Projects Balance in IT infrastructure teams

Operations vs Projects Balance in IT infrastructure teams

For the past two years, I have been managing a team responsible for the data center infrastructure. It is a medium-sized team in charge of the HPC clusters, bare-metal servers, storage, network, and virtualization and container platforms.
This team has a dual mandate: keep daily operations running smoothly and carry out innovative and challenging engineering projects. As the person responsible for resource management and keeping the team’s project schedule on track, one important challenge is to find the right balance between these two responsibilities. This requires a strategic approach to resource allocation and time management.  Let me give you my take on the operations vs projects balance in IT infrastructure teams.

Cisco Live 2024 Wrap-Up – Cisco Nexus HyperFabric, Disaggregated Scheduled Fabric (DSF) and SONiC

Cisco Live 2024 Wrap-Up – Cisco Nexus HyperFabric, Disaggregated Scheduled Fabric (DSF) and SONiC

Last week, I attended my 11th Cisco Live in person, in the fabulous Las Vegas. This post is my Cisco Live 2024 Wrap-up.

I can already tell you that the next edition of Cisco Live US will be held June 8-12, 2025 in San Diego, California. If my company agrees to send me there, I’m already looking forward to it, because San Diego is a wonderful city.