To earn your elite CCIE Data Center certification and move up from CCNP status, you must pass challenging real-world CCIE Data Center labs. Straight from Cisco, The CCIE Data Center Hand-on Lab Guide presents realistic lab exercises and tasks covering all five topic areas addressed in the CCIE Data Center exam: Network , including data center routing/switching environments with Nexus switches; multicast and overlay technologies; data center fabrics with VXLAN/VXLAN-EVPN or ACI, and more Compute , including managing compute infrastructure with Cisco UCS Series switches, and leveraging UCS Series blade and rack servers to connect virtual hosts and SAN environments Storage , including Fibre Channel (FC), Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE), and connectivity Automation , including essential configuration and monitoring tasks Security , including hardening device security in a data center environment, using Nexus switches, ACI fabrics, or storage devices such as MDS 9000 series switches Every lab exercise and task is crafted to help build you understanding of key concepts and features, link theory to practice, and apply your knowledge on exam day and in your professional work. Questions, exercises, and note pages appear in print, and companion online components present correct lab outputs and implementation, explaining feature choices and showing configuration and verification examples. These print and online components work together seamlessly, helping candidates understand both how to implement features, and why.