How to Get Prepared for Implementing Cisco Enterprise Network Core Technologies (350-401 ENCOR) Exam

Before writing on this topic you should know 350-401 ENCOR exam is associated with 4 new Cisco certifications as given below:

• CCNP Enterprise
• CCIE Enterprise Infrastructure
• CCIE Enterprise Wireless
• Cisco Certified Specialist - Enterprise Core

This fact will help you to know the value of this certification exam. Now let's move forward.

The ENCOR exam is very new and covers enterprise infrastructure fundamentals, including dual stack architecture (IPv4 and IPv6), virtualization, infrastructure, network assurance, security, and automation.

Implementing Cisco Enterprise Network Core Technologies v1.0 (ENCOR 350-401) is a 120 minutes long exam that will test your knowledge in exam topics. There are mainly six topics to be covered in this exam as given below:

1. Architecture
2. Virtualization
3. Infrastructure
4. Network Assurance
5. Security
6. Automation

#1 Architecture:

This topic will cover 15% of your ENCOR 350-401 exam. You will learn about different design principles used in enterprise network in this topic. Let's see what topics will cover:

• Tier 2, Tier 3 types of network designs in enterprise level
• High availability techniques you will learn including redundancy
• You will learn how to deploy WLAN with wired and wireless network
• What is on premises and cloud infrastructure deployments
• How Cisco SD-WAN solutions works
• What is the concepts of wired and wireless QoS
• Brief description on hardware and software switching mechanism

#2 Virtualization

This topic will cover 10% of the exam. Let's start from the topics what we have to learn here:

• Virtualization technologies
• How to configure data path virtualization technologies with verification
• Explain concepts of network virtualization in detail

#3 Infrastructure

This topic will cover 30% of your exam, so that you can assume the importance of this topic. See the all topics below:

• In Layer 2, troubleshoot static and dynamic trunking protocol and Ethernet channels
• Learn how to configure and verify common Spanning Tree Protocols in Layer 2
• Differentiate routing concepts of EIGRP and OSPF in Layer 3
• How to configure and verify OSPF environments
• Learn how to configure and verify eBGP between directly connected neighbors in Layer 3
• Describe Layer 1 wireless concepts
• Describe AP modes and antenna types, access point discovery and join process, for Layer 2 and Layer 3 roaming what is the main principles and use cases
• How to troubleshoot WLAN configuration and client connectivity issues in wireless
• Detailed overview of IP services including NAT/PAT, NTP

#4 Network Assurance

This topic will cover 10% out of total in this exam.

• Fix network issues with tools such as debugs, conditional debugs, trace route, ping, SNMP, and syslog
• How to configure and verify device monitoring, NetFlow and Flexible NetFlow, SPAN, IPSLA, NETCONF and RESTCONF
• Apply network configuration, monitoring, and management with Cisco DNA Center workflows

#5 Security

This is another most important topic of this exam covering 20% out of 100.

• Configure and verify device access control with lines and password protection, authentication and authorization
• Configure and verify infrastructure security features with ACLs and CoPP
• Describe REST API security
• Configure and verify wireless security features with EAP, WebAuth, PSK
• Describe the components of network security design including threat defense, endpoint security, next-generation firewall, trustSec, MACsec

#6 Automation

This is the last topic you will have to cover in this exam syllabus with 15% participation in overall exam.

• Learn fundamental Python components and scripts
• Learn how to construct valid JSON encoded file
• Explain the principles and benefits of a data modeling language, such as YANG
• Learn about APIs for Cisco DNA Center and vManage
• Learn to interpret REST API response codes and results in payload using Cisco DNA Center and RESTCONF
• Learn how to construct EEM applet to automate configuration, troubleshoot, or data collection

These are the actual exam topics will come into the Cisco ENCOR 350-401 exam. So, start preparation and pass this one of the most valuable Cisco exam. Best of luck!