Setting up a practice lab environment for DevNet Expert held back my exam preparation back in 2022.
Sure, Cisco provides a VM image for the CWS (Candidate Workstation) that you can use as a starting point. That's great :-) But what about all the rest?
You also need a Kubernetes cluster, some network devices, secret management engines, telemetry stacks, Cisco NSO, Cisco ACI, CI/CD runners, a Source-of-Truth, observability agents and a bunch of other software.
Finding available CPU and RAM capacity for running all of that isn't always easy.
And then you have to put in all the hours for installing, integrating and maintaining all of that software infrastructure.
This can prevent you from focusing on your goal: learning about NetDevOps.
When I studied for CCDevE back in 2022, nobody provided a rack rental service for DevNet Expert.
I had previously used rack rental services my other 3 CCIEs (R/S, SP and DC). This had saved me a lot of time and money.
So after passing the exam, I decided to create my own DevNet Expert rack rental service.
It's cloud based, scales to "infinity" and can be placed at your nearest GCP region!
You can all get a free trial if you want to check it out. Just let me know in the comments below if you are interested.