This year it has already been 3 years since the last recertification. All Career certifications from Huawei are valid for 3 years until they have to be recertified again with the written exam.
Although my certifications would not have expired until the end of the year, I took the HCIE Datacom Written exam this month. The disadvantage of this is that the expiry date is three years from the date of passing the exam, rather than being added on at the end. This means that I have 'given away' a few months, but I now have the summer off and no longer have to worry about recertification.
Preparation
I started preparing at the beginning of the year by working through the official HCIE Datacom Training Material PDF from Huawei. This PDF has almost 2900 pages and is very extensive, as in addition to the PPT slides there are also a lot of notes written below. I divided it up so that I read a few pages of this PDF every morning and instead of writing down notes, I created HCIE Datacom quiz questions based on the information. This helped me at the very end as I was able to take the HCIE Datacom quiz several times and I was able to choose 60 questions from the large pool of questions, just like on the real exam. As a Netcamp member, you can also take the HCIE Datacom quiz an unlimited number of times and different questions will always be put together for you. We are still working on creating more questions based on screenshots and tasks from practical labs. In addition to a few weekends of extra studying, I registered for the exam after 3 months and got an appointment a month later. This gave me some time to study everything in more depth.
Written exam
I took the exam in a PearsonVue test center and not online. I had 90 minutes to complete the 60 questions, with 600 out of a possible 1000 points required to pass the exam. In contrast to other manufacturers, the Huawei exam allows you to go back at any time or mark questions for later review. There is also a digital calculator, but without the conversion function BIN/DEC/HEX, etc. The time is displayed at the top right and runs back from 90 minutes, with a message 15 minutes before the end that the exam will end in 15 minutes.
I had questions from different areas, sometimes several questions on the same topic (MPLS labels). The type of questions was mixed - true/false, only one answer choice, several answer options and even free text input (e.g. entering a port number). There are no labs, which is why there is plenty of time.
Immediately after completing the exam, you are informed whether you have passed or failed the exam and with what score (the score is not relevant, the only thing that counts is a “pass”). In addition, the “Knowledge Points” are listed with the respective “Correct rate”. These are the same five subject areas that are also included in the official training material: Advanced Routing and Switching Technology, Campus Network Planning and Deployment, WAN Interconnection Network Planning and Deployment, Bearer WAN Planning and Deployment, Network Automation.
Conclusion
My conclusion from the recertification is that I now don't have to take the exam for another 3 years.
The official training material is very extensive with almost 2900 pages, which is why a lot of time is needed for preparation. In addition, for me personally there are some topics that I do not encounter in my daily work or have never worked with before. I therefore lack practical experience and have to rely completely on theoretical knowledge.
To be fair, however, it has to be said that the answers to the exam questions are all included in the official training material. In any case, I never came across a question on a topic that I hadn't seen in the material. Unfortunately, however, ports of certain Huawei products and protocols are still asked, which I think is unnecessary. If I need this, I look it up in the Configuration Guide and don't memorize these things. However, with a passing score of only 600 points, these questions are ultimately not decisive.
The next time I recertify, it will have been 10 years since I completed my HCIE certification. In contrast to the Cisco CCIE, I am not aware of any HCIE Emeritus at Huawei. I am trying to see if I can find out from Huawei whether this is also planned.
Used training material
I used the official HCIE documentation from Huawei as well as my own HCIE Datacom quiz.
