My Journey to the Cisco DevNet Specialist – SPAUTO

The beginning

On October 1, 2022, i managed to pass the DEVCOR 350-901 exam, the first of two exams required to obtain the Cisco DevNet Professional certification. My journey to obtain the DEVCOR can be found in a post that I titled My Journey to the Cisco DevNet Specialist – Core. The next exam I decided to prepare for was the Automating and Programming Cisco Service Provider Solutions v1.0 (SPAUTO 300-535). Considering that I have worked for the last 10 years in Internet Service Providers, I knew that this knowledge could be put into practice.

Thanks again to my manager and leader at my workplace, who also got the company to purchase the Implementing Automation for Cisco Service Provider Solutions (SPAUI) v1.0 training, which prepares you for the SPAUTO exam. This training started 3 weeks after taking the DEVCOR exam and was a short course, just 3 days with a certified instructor. Like my experience with the DEVCOR training, the amount of material and practices is a lot for the 3 days. The good thing is that I had access for 6 more months to the theoretical material and the labs.

With this course completed, I didn’t think twice to take advantage of it and prepare to take the Automating and Programming Cisco Service Provider Solutions v1.0 (SPAUTO 300-535) exam.

Thus began my journey to obtain the Cisco Certified DevNet Specialist – Service Provider Automation and Programmability and Cisco Certified Devnet Professional certifications.

Tools and Resources

Resources to learn and practice

By the time I decided to study for the exam, I consider my main guide was:

• The course: Implementing Automation for Cisco Service Provider Solutions (SPAUI) v1.0.

To practice, I used:

• The Sandboxes of Cisco DevNet
• The labs of the course: Implementing Automation for Cisco Service Provider Solutions (SPAUI) v1.0.
• Virtualized environments with VMWare Workstation Pro and Eve-NG.

Another resources:

• The DevNet exercises that are in the Exam Topics are very good
• Other exercises I found by searching in developer.cisco.com.
• I used the material from the DEVASC and DEVCOR exams that is common with SPAUTO.

Study Strategy

My study strategy was the following:

1. My main guide was the SPAUI course. I studied in detail each one of the topics and carried out the related labs. I did this at least twice.
2. After studying all the course material, I spent the next few weeks studying the material on developer.cisco.com related to the exam. And studying the links that appear in the Exam Topics. Unfortunately for this exam there are no official books, so it depended on the course and what I found on developer.cisco.com.
   
   To practice, I used the labs that were set up for us during the course, the Cisco Sandboxes and also virtual environments that I uploaded on my computer.
3. For topics common to other exams, such as Git, REST, APIs, Python, etc., i used the DEVCOR and DEVASC material to reinforce my knowledge.
4. For topics like Ansible and YANG I searched for information in the official documentation.
5. I was repeating this until the day the exam came.

About the exam

My first try

When I finished the course, I immediately made the decision to schedule the exam, so I scheduled it to take it on Saturday, December 3, 2022. One month and one week after the end of the course. I chose the modality to take it from home.

This was the time I defined to study, however I ended up moving the exam to Monday, December 19 because I still didn’t feel ready to take it. You will never feel 100% ready, but it is important to know which issues you still have significant weaknesses in and attack them.

On Monday, December 19, I woke up at 7:00 AM, very anxious as always. My exam was scheduled to start at 9:15 A.M. Because of the many problems I had at home when I took the DevNet Associate exam, I made sure I had a very comfortable and prepared area with backup power supplies, a backup laptop, and backup wireless Internet connectivity.

The time came, the whole Check-In process went smoothly and I was able to take the exam. The result is already known. I passed the exam on my first try! and obtained the Cisco Certified DevNet Specialist – Service Provider Automation and Programmability certification.

And not only that. Since I had already passed the DEVCOR exam, I also got the Cisco Certified DeNet Professional certification! Goal achieved. What happiness!

Opinions about the exam

This exam, although not as long as DEVCOR, was also difficult. Because it has many practical questions, in which you have to analyze codes, commands and configurations.

The exam has around 60 theoretical and practical questions that fully assess the Exam Topics. I consider it a fair test, which evaluates very well the knowledge required to be a Cisco Certified DevNet Specialist – Service Provider Automation and Programmability (SPAUTO).

My recommendations:

• Study very focused on the Exam Topics. Make a Checklist of the topics and make sure before taking the exam that you master each one of them. Do not ignore any topic, no matter how simple you see it, study it well.
• Practice very well and a lot the use of NETCONF, RESTCONF, the YANGs models and above all NSO.
• Look for references and external materials. Official documentation of open sources themes such as Ansible, YANG, NETCONF, etc.
• Be quick completing the questions. From my experience with DEVCOR, I spent less time on each question to make sure I was able to finish the exam on time. I needed every minute of the exam. I finished the last question with seconds left.
• The official Cisco course, whether self-study or instructor-led, is invaluable. At the time I took the exam there were no official Cisco books for this exam.

Conclusion

I think Cisco did an excellent job bringing together key topics in the exam so that we can implement Network Programmability and Automation at a Service Provider. This exam has been another big step in my goal to become a Programmability and Network Automation Professional.

I hope that what is shared in this publication is of benefit and motivation to achieve your goals of becoming a Cisco DevNet Professional certification. The comments and my social networks are open for any questions or doubts you may have.