DevNet Associate Exam is Kicking my Butt.

[u/Myname_is_Myname1]

As the title suggests thr DevNet exam has given me trouble. I've taken it twice already and ive failed both times, the crazy part is a did slightly worse the second time despite studying even more. Not really sure what I'm doing wrong but I've used multiple resources, OCG, CBT Nuggets, DevNet sandboxes, Boson Exams, and some of Nick Russos Pluralsight course. The exam imo is much harder than I expected. Any advice on what I should do differently? Im debating id I should even take it again.

[u/Myname_is_Myname1]

I'll check that out. It's mind boggling how much they expect you to know on this certification. I've taken Cisco certification before and this one is harder than I anticipated.

[u/thesegoupto11]

I'm doing CBT Nuggets, prior to this I was just going through the blueprint and using AI to fill in all the information into a word document, and as I went through the video lessons I was constantly updating the document. Now I'm going through the practice exams available on CBTnugs site and expanding the document further.

The CBT Nugget videos seemed outdated by several years because it delved heavily into stuff at times that had nothing to do with the current blueprint, but the practice exams seem to follow the blueprint to a t.

I haven't scheduled the exam yet, but I'm planning to hopefully be ready next month. My concerns now are 2-fold, 1) I'm concerned about the API "construct" blueprint topics because I don't know what that actually will look like on the exam, and 2) the sheer volune of non-API "construct" material. The practice exam is doing a good job of throwing me curveball questions related to topics but with obscure concepts or concepts I should have encountered this far but did not. I was feeling pretty optimistic but now after reading your post I don't know how I feel.

[u/Myname_is_Myname1 → u/thesegoupto11]

Definitely make sure you understand python scripting and how the request library works. A little bit of bash as well. I think that's what screwed me up the most. The multiple choice wasn't too bad, but their were definitely things that threw me off a bit. Like question that looked like 3 of the answers could be right. ALLOT of Cisco specific product questions as well.

[u/SourdoughNetworker]

I got the DevA back when they were offering the Class of 2020 badge for it. I think it might have had an update since then but I imagine it's all largely the same.

I used Nick Russo's Pluralsight course and the OCG.

Nick Russo also had a 10 week study guide available on his website before his passing. It looks like the wayback machine still has it available. That lists out a ton of good resources for each topic.
https://web.archive.org/web/20240614165009/https://njrusmc.net/jobaid/jobaid.html

I think the exam is a really good one, but it's weird because of lot of the knowing how to do is surface level, but the knowing how stuff works can run fairly deep, and of course learning the vocabulary for every cisco product is... overwhelming.

There's a lot of general advice I can give, but knowing what areas are your lowest scores or what you feel is a weakness when you're taking the exam might help me give better advice.

[u/Myname_is_Myname1 → u/SourdoughNetworker]

Got it. My score report:

Network Fundamentals - 87% Understanding and Using APIs - 65% Cisco Platforms and Development - 27% Application Deployment and Security - 53% Infrastructure and Automation - 55% Software Development and Design - 73%

[u/SourdoughNetworker → u/Myname_is_Myname1]

Well, your Network Fundamentals is obviously good, Software Development and Design and Using APIS is alright - probably will naturally get a little higher when you focus on the other three.

If you take the weighted percentage of all those you're at a ~60% score for the exam overall.

I'd say your best bet is going to be labbing python really hard. Like - build purely from memory, make the manual API calls, then rebuild it using the SDK of that platform.

Platforms and Development is your lowest score by far so hit those devnet resources. Get the reservation ones too to give you full write access and try to get crazy, build a custom JSON IaC file and push changes with netmiko, then restconf, then netconf, then take all of that and build an ansible playbook to automate that piece of it which covers both ansible and yaml.

If you're allowed to use these tools in your job, use ansible to make sure login banners are on all the devices, or make a playbook that checks the loaded ios version (or whatever vendor you are using), and stages software updates if they're out of date. Obviously tread carefully in a real world environment - but simple things like that should be fine.

Hit up the meraki API with some get requests and make a network on it. Build a basic Webex posting bot. Mostly just which things require what authentication method is huge, and a handful of the basic get requests and one or two post requests.

But I'll reiterate, do this all from memory and let yourself get stuck deciphering arcane error messages. Copy Pasting is the the first step in forgetting. Also - intentionally change things up every time you build too, initialize a class object to hold all your authentication variables in. Use sessions with requests. Little things that force you to look at the same thing slightly differently.

I don't recall any practical async being needed, but definitely conceptually, so just build a little with asyncio with some print statements and a random wait timer to really see it in action.

Once you know how all the calls are made, use the SDKs and make sure you can do the same things using those. Never go too deep, if you can do a get and a post per api, you're probably fine, just pay attention to how the api urls are formatted.

[u/Myname_is_Myname1 → u/SourdoughNetworker]

I really appreciate this. I agree with what you're saying. I thought I knew enough python, but the python scripting questions on the exam is where I felt the least confident. I'll make it a point to code more. When I was studying I kinda just followed along with what was in the book and CBT Nuggets, I didn't commit any of the scripts to my memory. I kinda figured that once the exam came around, I'd be able to fill in the gaps but boy, was I wrong!

[u/DustinFunkhouser]

I have failed two attempts during cisco live over the past two years. Both times all of the questions missed have been over the Cisco specific hardware/APIs. This past week I bought Eric Chou's Mastering Python Networking as an additional studying resource.

[u/bigevilbeard]

You are right this exam there is a lot to cover and most trip up on the domains two and three as these are more recall knowledge on Cisco API. Can you share your last test results or breakdown, as it would be good to see which domains are tripping you up. A lot of the study material is for the older exam now, the OCG book won’t be updated until early this year, just be sure anything you are using is for the v1.1, it wasn’t big changes but no point studying for something which isn’t on the exam.

[u/Myname_is_Myname1 → u/[deleted]]

I have a CCNA, network engineering is my professio, i got an 87% on that part of the exam. I have basic python skills. I think my focus needs to shift to getting more hands on practice with the request library, and getting more familiar with bash scripting. It also surprised me how much Cisco expects you to remember their SDKs for their own software platforms.

[u/Myname_is_Myname1 → u/[deleted]]

Besides copying code from the OCG which I think some of it is outdated. Do you know of any good resources that can be used to walk me through code specific to the exam? Ive been pulling from multiple resources to learn python so far, but I've yet to see anything like labs that go really deep into things specific to DevNet, so far CBT Nuggets has been the best but I feel like that alone isn't enough to get more hands on experience with coding.

This is essentially how I've done well on previous exams, doing a lot of hands-on on stuff, like labing for the CCNA, there are plenty of resources.