Lukas Beeler’s IT Blog

A few days ago i posted that I will attend the 70-647 and 70-646 betas.

But luckily i was able to shuffle the 70-647 date back into this year - so i attended the 70-647 (Windows Server 2008, Enterprise Administrator) this morning.

I’m currently not in Horgen, so i attended the exam at a different Prometric testing center - this time at Alpha Solutions - the room was well lit, an older 15″ TFT at 1024×768, and a PC with acceptable performance. I was even provided a free drink.

So, what was in the exam?

This was an exam in the Pro-Series, so there were very few directly technical questions which required a direct answers - almost all questions focused on design or which tool to use.

• I’ve had many questions related to the usage of RODC, on their placement and which “parent” domain controllers they need, etc.
• A lot of question centered around applications and how they can be deployed - the answers usually involved GPO deployment, Softgrid Application Virtualization and of course Terminal Servers
• NAP was of course extensively covered, plus placement of remote access servers and NAP servers in a network
• Remote access and all of its possibilities (L2TP, PPTP, SSTP, TS Gateway, RPC over HTTP)
• The usual Active Directory design questions, which have gotten a bit more complex (Three functional levels: 2000, 2003, 2008)

There were no simulations, but i encountered a single Drag&Drop question. There were a lot more exhibits than in the TS exams, a few questions were worded awkwardly, but I didn’t find a question which I thought i answered wrong. I’m a lot more confident that I passed this exam than 70-649.

I’ll see the results in three months. If you want to do the beta exams too, check this posting on Trika’s most excellent certification blog.

Last week i took exam 70-431, the SQL Server 2005 TS Exam. I had a few vouchers left that had to be used anyway, and i wanted to try taking an exam about a topic which don’t know much about (just to see whether i’d pass).

As my preparation was nonexistent, and i didn’t eve give a close look to the preparation guide, i expected to fail - in the end, i never did much with SQL Server 2005, just the usual stuff with the Express versions used with SPS, WSUS, et. al.

When i started the exam, i was greeted with around 40 multiple choice questions, and about an hours of time. There were no questions related to hardware design/sizing, and nothing to feature licensing by edition - lots of Transact SQL questions though. After i was through with the 40 questions, i thought i was damned lucky for not having to deal with a single simulation - even though i thought i was only able to around 50% of the questions without guessing.

Turns out i was wrong - after closing the first part, a second part with 12 simulations opened. I solved them by first clicking on any element visible and looking at which ones where working. That way, i thought to be able to solve every one of them.

In the end i passed - with just 735 points. The result sheet listed the achieved score on both the multiple choice questions and the simulations seperately - 90% of the simulations were correct, but only 60% of the multiple choice questions.

For me, this was an interesting lesson - the Microsoft exams really *are* that easy.

On Trika’s Blog you can find the Promo Codes to register for the beta exams (free! double the questions! no broken simulations!) of the two newest Windows 2008 exams.

I was lucky enough to register for both exams, and i was also crazy enough to do both at the same day: