Cisco has updated the Cisco Certified Design Expert Written 400-007 and practical exams to the new and improved 3.1 version on 7 February 2025. With all the hoopla lately around the growth of AI, it comes as no surprise that Cisco has added AL/ML to this exam. Cisco had chosen to add AI to all the new certification refreshes. Cisco has announced that the reason behind this decision is to promote the safe, respectful, and responsible use of AI.
The CCDE v3.1 release notes provide a great chart of side-to-side chart of all the changes to the exam topics. At first glance this list of topics seems to add substantial additional material, but with a closer look I find that the Exam Team has given us a more detailed list of topics to focus our studies on. I have taken this exam twice and was very close to passing the last time. I am hoping that my studies to date are still valid for my next attempt.
The big question I had as I read the new exam topic list was: Where will I find the necessary AI/ML training to pass this exam. Thankfully Cisco has released a new course on Cisco U that covers AI/ML. The Cisco U offering has been released as the new Rev up to Recert offering, AI Solutions on Cisco Infrastructure Essentials. This course is free until 24 March 2025 and offers 34 CE credits. The course has 28 courses, 6 labs and 10 Assessments, and according to Cisco this is about 34 hours of study time. I have a feeling that this will take longer for me to absorb all the new information. I am currently working on this course, and the material is put together well and easy to follow. The course is broken out into 5 sections, AI Basics, AI Infrastructure Requirements & Compliance, AI Network Architectures, AI Data Considerations and AI Hardware Resources. Each section has an exam to test your understanding of the topics covered.
The CCDE v3.1 written 400-007 exam is 90- 110 questions with 240 minutes to complete. The test is multiple-choice questions and focuses on Enterprise network architecture and technologies. My current plan to move forward is to complete the Cisco U course on AI/ML, brush off my notes and reread Zig’s book to prep for my next attempt. The CCDE v3.1 written covers a wide range of topics and requires a good understanding of how all the topics work together. The topics on business use cases and Service Provider networks are the topics that I struggle with the most.
Links to important documents
CCDE v3.1 Unified Exam Topics
https://learningnetwork.cisco.com/s/ccde-v3-1-unified-exam-topics
CCDE v3.1 Announcement by Mark Holm
CCDE v3.1 Release notes
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