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The New 200-150 DCICN Exam for CCNA Data

Center
FEBRUARY 26, 2017 AT 2:58 AM

Overview of DCICN
The CCNA Data Center has finally revised! This certification has lunged from version 1 to
version 6. The CCNA Data Center is still made up of two exams you must pass. These
exams have no prerequisites. This post focuses on the new Introducing Cisco Data Center
Networking (DCICN) exam.

The Old DCICN Exam


Are you interested in squeaking out the old DCICN exam? Its number is 640-911 and your
last day to test is April 11, 2017. If you are interested in my training course for this exam, it
can be found here at CBT Nuggets until it retirement.

This old exam featured these major sections and exam percentages:

1.0 Describe How a Network Works (15%)


2.0 Configure, Verify and Troubleshoot a Switch with VLANs and Interswitch
Communications Using Nexus (21%)
3.0 Implement an IP Addressing Scheme and IP Services to Meet Network Requirements in
a Medium-Size Enterprise Branch Office Network Using Nexus (12%)
4.0 Configure, Verify, and Troubleshoot Basic Router Operation and Routing on Cisco
Devices Using Nexus (52%)

The New DCICN Exam


The new exam features these major sections and exam percentages:

1.0 Data Center Physical Infrastructure (15%)


2.0 Basic Data Center Networking Concepts (23%)
3.0 Advanced Data Center Networking Concepts (23%)
4.0 Basic Data Center Storage (19%)
5.0 Advanced Data Center Storage (20%)

What was removed from the old exam to the new and what was added? Here are the
biggest areas:

Removed:
Removed product-specific elements, such as Nexus, and instead increased the
focus on skills and technologies

Removed Ethernet low-level functionality and added operational roles of data


center devices; for example, use cases to deploy various types of physical devices

Removed Cisco IOS router topics

Removed specifications of platform components as in boot process procedures,


passwords, and diagnostics

Added or Changed:

Increased breadth of data center networking concepts including First Hop


Redundancy Protocols (FHRP), data center networking architectures such as spine-and-
leaf designs, unicast and multicast, and authentication, authorization, and accounting
(AAA) concepts and filtering

Additional focus on high-availability switching concepts, port channel, virtual Port


Channel (vPC), and control plane and data plane separation

Increased data center storage concepts including Fiber Channel operations and
design, IP storage protocols, and moved storage topics from DCICT into DCICN

Added basic understanding of Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE)

In the next post I will provide you with the complete topic list for this new DCICN exam!

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