I already did 70-270 (Windows XP) and 70-620 (Windows Vista) two years ago, and the Vista exam was far too easy for my taste. It took me about 20 minutes, and i walked out with a score about 900. That’s not good – too easy questions will just devalue the certification.

With this in mind, i expected 70-680 to get Microsoft back on track, and they did. The exam has much better and much more difficult questions than 70-620. Not questions which require you to memorize stuff, but questions which require you to understand the subject matter.

As usual for beta exams, there were no simulations, VM tasks or anything else except multiple choice questions. I can understand why that’s the case (they probably want to use the final version for that), but i’m still not entirely with this as it is.

One thing that was new in this exam is that you get a questionary that asks you to judge your knowledge levels on Windows 7 for yourself. Several fields are presented, in which you have to choose between very high, high, mediocre, low and very low skills – another questions asks how much experience you already had with Windows 7 (with options such as “Over a year”).

I think that’s a good idea – most exam betas are open now, which means that many less-skilled people will also attend them. As long as those are truthful, this can actually help to improve the exam.

Unfortunately, i had very much difficulty finding what’s my personal baseline. I opted to choose either High or Mediocre for most answers, but was that correct? What does high mean? What does mediocre mean? What’s my knowledge level?

It might make sense to ask questions which are more task oriented – if you already did a task X and if you think if you’re proficient at doing task X.

The exam content was pretty much what was in the official docs – there’s a lot more focus on using group policies (local ones in this case), and also a few more detailed networking questions regarding Subnetting, in both IPv4 and IPv6.

General list of things i’ve seen:

• New features: BranchCache, DirectAccess and VPN (not overly technical – if you got it to work once, you can answer these)
• Bitlocker – not overly many questions
• Setup – the USB stick install gets featured more
• USMT gets a lot more focus and also Windows EasyTransfer
• Imaging, Deployment, VHDs

I’ll see if i passed the exam in officially 8 weeks, so probably in about 4 real moths ;)

With just a bit of work, this has worked out (the number of sales we made also played into that).

If you’re wondering how we got 120 points with us being a rather small company, it’s quite easy:

• Get two competencies – for this you’ll need:
  • Two MCPs with relevant certs
  • The Information Worker & Network Infrastructure competencies are the easiest
  • Three customer references per competency minimum – 10 customer references total to get full points
• A total of 10 customer references – you’ll need only 6 if you have 18 points for Sales Performance
• Microsoft Small Business Specialist for 5 extra Points – for this you’ll need 70-282 and an online exam.
• A minimum of 7 points through MCPs – two MCITP/MCSE and one MCP will give you that
• A minimum of 10 points of Sales Performance

This should give you a total of 122 points – more than enough for a Gold Certified Partner!

As a side note, my current employer Acommit AG also has a job opening in a Systems Engineer position. If you have strong Windows, Exchange and IBM i skills and thinking of working for a company near Lake Zurich, apply now!

In General, my impression was that the exam was pretty solid but certainly “Enterprise Heavy” in focus. There were a lot of questions regarding appropriate configurations for failover clustering, and also several pieces of SCVMM 2008 (the latter though were never hard – anyone who has toyed with SCVMM and browsed through the main functionality should be able to answer them).

I’ve seen a few questions that weren’t worded 100% precisely, but that can always happen – the quality was generally high.

Other areas that were featured heavily:

• Clusters (as mentioned above)
• Snapshots – especially pay close attention on how Snapshots can be reverted, reused, etc. Snapshots can also be used in deployment scenarios
• Integration between SCOM and SCVMM
• Disk configuration – the available options for VHD files, their advantages and disadvantages, the usage of physical disks from the host and of course the use of iSCSI disks that are directly attached in the VM
• Hardware requirements and configuration requirements when setting up Hyper-V – pay close attention on how you configure the Windows Bootloader, and what necessary steps need to be taken when enabling hardware assisted virtualization in the BIOS
• Proper VM hardware configuration – remember which controllers in Hyper-V are bootable and which are not. Also, think about very old legacy applications that might have problems with newer CPU features available on modern CPUs and about the implications of running an OS that does not support synthetic hardware
• Network configuration – pay close attention to bigger scenarios involving the cluster heartbeat link, iSCSI connections from the host, iSCSI connections from the VMs themselves, Quorum disks in cluster scenarios. Also, remember the difference between internal and private network interfaces

Did i pass? I’m not sure. There were many cluster questions, and i never had much contact with those since i primarily work with Small Business customers.

So if you intend to go at this exam, make sure you’ve toyed around with SCVMM (SCOM knowledge not necessary, just look up on how these two can be integrated). Also, make sure you’ve setup a Hyper-V cluster at least once. You can emulate an iSCSI SAN by using an open source appliance like FreeNAS that can export disks using iSCSI. None of the questions i’ve seen seemed “hard” to me, but i was guessing at a few because i didn’t know about the topic.

Good luck!

I have to remedy that – when i checked my email this morning, i already got notice from Prometric asking for my MCP and Testing ID – i replied quickly, and got a an answer back in just a few minutes. This is good!

I’ll be going this Friday and see how it was.

You are invited to take beta exam 70-652: TS: Windows Server Virtualization, Configuring. You were specifically chosen to participate in this beta because of your current Microsoft Certification status or previous participation with Microsoft Learning. If you pass the beta exam, the exam credit will be added to your transcript and you will not need to take the exam in its released form. The 71-xxx identifier is used for registering for beta versions of MCP exams, when the exam is released in its final form the 70-xxx identifier is used for registration.

By participating in beta exams, you have the opportunity to provide the Microsoft Certification program with feedback about exam content, which is integral to development of exams in their released version. We depend on the contributions of experienced IT professionals and developers as we continually improve exam content and maintain the value of Microsoft certifications.

70-652: TS: Windows Server Virtualization, Configuring counts as credit towards the following certification(s).
• TS: Windows Server Virtualization, Configuration

So i tried to sign up for the exam. But i wasn’t even able to logon to my Prometric account.

Got the following error message:

Duplicate emails. Please call customer service.

So, i tried calling customer services. It’s a toll free Swiss number in a call center located at some other part of the earth. Unfortunately, i wasn’t even able to place a call

The number you’re calling is currently unavailable. Please check the number and dial again

So i mailed Prometric support and i’m hoping for an answer now.

If Prometric won’t fix it, at least i can ask Helmer what was in the exam. If you have a working Prometric account, you can get the invite code for the exam from Trika’s Blog

Update: Prometric fixed the problem quickly

Well, at least i got my picture and story published on the Microsoft Learning Website.

(Still happy, still not better than you)

Thanks to Trika and her Microsoft Learning Team.

UPDATE:

The Microsoft transcript has already been updated, and you can order your Welcome Kits and downloads the logos:

One of the really good parts about it was that you could hook up with other people that also have A LOT of knowledge about and enthusiasm about their work.

Especially when talking about Microsoft technologies, nobody at my company wants to argue with me. This was different here, and i really enjoyed that.

It’s also great to see that Microsoft exams are a lot of hard work and a huge investment by Microsoft in order to provide up to date and accurate tests.

Keep in mind that when you make a Comment at a Beta Exam / Exam that they’ll be read by real people – they DO make a difference. So whenever you do not like a question for any reason, make a comment. It counts.

So, what now? It’s 1500 here right now, so i’ll try to find a few fun things to do before going to sleep. The same goes for tomorrow morning, my flight leaves at tomorrow 1600. And i’ll be back in Switzerland on Sunday 1200.

So, now i’ve spent a day at the Microsoft Campus and have worked on one of the exams. Unfortunately, i can’t tell write about the juicy details, but one thing is clear:

Microsoft Learning really makes a big effort in order to ensure that the quality of the exams is as high as possible. Much care is being taken to ensure that exam content is accurate, up to date and clear.

There were seven other people there with me, most of them know a lot more about this stuff than I do (which, I think, is rather good for my Ego).

So, if you ever sit in front of and Exam and think that a question is stupid and can’t be answered, it’s probably a good idea to think again – it probably makes sense, and you missed something (read carefully!).

So, what else to say?

• I’ve got a really nice rental car
• The hotel room is nice, big, comfortable bathroom, etc. everything you could ever wish for
• Americans have really strange ideas what “Breakfast” is – not that i don’t like it, it is just strange
• Transatlantic flights suck if you’re obese
• ZRH-SEA jetlag isn’t that bad. The other way around will probably be a lot worse
• My spoken English isn’t as bad as i thought
• Microsoft still uses CRTs
• AVIS in Seattle still has System i Twinax Screens in operation
• Cups and dishes made from Polystyrene (essentially Styrofoam) are popular here(?)
• Burger King has french fries boxy-thingies that fit into a cars cup holder
• There is such a thing as a Microsoft Dining Services eCoupon

It’s certainly interesting here. Hope the next two days turn out as well.

I’m now trying to plan a trip to Redmond, but it seems difficult within the allocated expense budget.

I don’t have a lot of experience planning international trips, but so far it is looking nicely. And yes, i have to sign an NDA, which means i won’t be able to blog a lot about this, which is sad but understandable.

I’ve also submitted all my biometric identification, so i should have a nice biometric passport by next thursday. Which is also cool :)

But hey, i’m really looking forward to this!

Microsoft will be conducting a three day focus group meeting from February 27, 2008 through February 29, 2008 to establish a fair passing score and identify the most relevant content for the LIVE exams:

[ Edited for NDA purposes ]

I am contacting you because you performed well on the betas for these exams.

If you choose to participate, you will be providing a key role in determining the final live exam content in addition to “setting the bar” that determines the standard required to gain certification for these exams.

I am inquiring as to your interest and availability for these sessions.

Well, urm, i was pretty shocked when i read this and at first thought that this was a scam. Thanks to the friendly help of Helmer i was advised that this is, in fact, the real deal.

Okay, so first things first: It looks like i passed both 70-646 and 70-647, which i didn’t really expect.

Microsoft is offering me a three day stay in Redmond, all expenses paid. I just hope i get my passport and visa covered until then. Looks like this is really going to get interesting!

My biggest worry was if Microsoft was able to really create distinguishing exams between the Enterprise Administrator and the Server Administrator part – and i think it worked out really well.

I attended this exam at BCD Sintrag, which isn’t my usual testing location either. Service was okay, no free drinks though.

The shift in focus on the Server Administrator exam is quite visible:

• There was a lot regarding to storage design and configuration – RAID levels, iSCSI, VDS, IO MultiPathing, iSCSI, FibreChannel
• Permissions, permissions, more permissions – Active Directory delegation and delegation of administrative privileges on servers
• The usual Terminal Server questions, and also several RAS questions (VPN, PPTP, SSTP, L2TP, TS Gateway, etc.)
• PKI questions till you puke – make sure to know about the PKI changes in Vista SP1 and how to administrate bigger PKI environments
• No design questions!
• A few firewall / IP configuration questions
• DHCP and a few basic subnetting questions

With this, i’ve got the two new MCITP exams done. Yay.

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.

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.

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.

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

Finally, Microsoft posted the results – and i passed. This is great :)

As you might know, i’ve played with OCS 2007 in the past few days, and i’ve got a few leftover exam vouchers anyway. So yesterday, i decided to sign up for 70-638, and do the test this Saturday morning. This was possible because my favorite testing center (Digicomp in Zurich) is now offering Saturday testing.

I didn’t really expect to pass this exam, but i did (with more than 800 points). Okay, so what did happen at this exam?

First, the hard facts:

• 1.5 hours of time (didn’t even need half of that)
• 40 questions
• Only multiple choice questions, no PBT, no drag and drop, no nothing

What did i do to prepare myself for this exam? Not much, really. I’ve deployed OCS 2007 internally in the past few days, and crossread a few deployment guides.

First off, the exam was structured completely different than what i expected after taking the 70-236 Exchange 2007 MCTS. The exam varied widely from installing, to configuring and design. As such, it was a more classical approach, covering all topics of OCS 2007 use.

The questions were well written, and a few of them were more or less exact duplication of content from the available deployment guides, with even the same names and everything.

There also were several design questions, for which you need to understand the general architecture behind OCS 2007 – that isn’t as difficult as it might sound, because OCS 2007 is rather well structured, and the infrastructure design is easy to learn.

No talk about hardware requirements, some questions about upgrading from LCS 2005, etc.

This exam is easy – not as easy as 70-620, but also less difficult than the Exchange 2007 MCTS/MCITP exams.

When first looking at the specs for this exams, i found the required passing score to be very low: 59%. HP’s exam had a passing score of 71%. As such, i expected a very difficult the exam, but that wasn’t the case.

This exam focused on three points:

• Normal, hardware neutral Windows/Networking Knowledge
• IBM Director Knowledge
• IBM System x hardware knowledge (especially of bigger products like the System x3850)

I’ve passed this exam with an okay score, but was guessing at almost all the IBM Director and the System x hardware knowledge. The problem here is that neither IBM Director nor 4 socket machines are being used in the small businesses i work for. The fact that i still passed shows that good guessing can give you lots of points, because the answers are sometimes rather obvious.

There was also a good deal of normal Windows Knowledge required, and several very very basic Networking questions, which could probably be answered by your average gamer kid. If you already hold an MCSE/MCSA on Windows Server 2003, you might be able to pass this exam without having touched an IBM server before.

Even though this may sound bad, i though the exam in it’s whole made a lot of sense. Most questions where detailed, and the answers where short an concise. Again, for several questions you had to know what the limitiations of a given IBM hardware platforms are. I still don’t really like this, because i don’t deal with every piece of System x hardware IBM has to offer (even though i’d like to know, that’s currently not the case).

As expected, there were many performance tuning questions which were usually answerable with general IT knowledge. You’ll just need to know which system performance values indicate what kind of performance bottleneck.

HP0-055 is a normal test center exam. Priced at 163 CHF, it’s about a quarter cheaper than Microsoft’s exams (priced at 215 CHF).

If you’ve only done Microsoft exams before (like me), prepare yourself for a massive change of pace and question style. I had 88 questions and 2 hours to finish my exam. Less time and more questions than Microsoft. The question however are in a completely different format: There are usually only one or two lines of text, and the answers are even simpler. It’s quite possible to answer a question within less than 30 seconds.

HP offers Official Study Guide and Desk Reference, which i found utterly worthless, mostly because it reiterated facts i’ve known since several years (but might appeal to newcomers, like detailed explanations of raid levels, etc.).

The problem was that much of the exam didn’t really focus on the server itself, but instead on available service packages from HP, and the tools that HP offers for it’s customers. The latter aren’t covered in the before mentioned book, and i didn’t want to deal with most of them on productive servers after my experiences with IBM’s and DELL’s vendor tools.

Another part i found really annoying was that you were offered a problem, and then products to solve them. The products weren’t described, just their model. This can get quite annoying because i frankly don’t know every storage array, raid controller, server that HP has to offer without glancing at a web site.

I passed the exam barely, but i’m still disappointed with it’s quality. I think HP should put more emphasis on the hardware, and move away from questions that honor memorizing product names.

As such, it didn’t take to long until i had to deal with HP certifications. While there are many useful resources on the web regarding Microsoft’s certifications, this isn’t really true for HP certifications.

HP’s certification program offers much more sales certifications than Microsoft – IBM does this too. It’s important to know that the steps to your first exams are radically different from Microsoft’s approach.

The first step is to register for your own HP Student ID. You will need this to register with Prometric.

Now, HP offers two types of exams: Web based (Prefix HP2-) and normal test center based ones (Prefix HP0-). Web based exams are only available for unimportant err sales certifications and some device service certifications.

The list of available certifications is long, and in my opinion pretty irritating. There’s a “HP Certified Systems Engineer”, which is a HP-UX certification, and “HP Accredited Systems Engineer” which is a Systems Integration (read: Windows and Red Hat Linux) certification.

It’s important to know that if you want to go down the Systems Integration path, most of your already earned Microsoft credentials can apply to your HP certification path. This PDF contains all the information you need. The HP AIS certification requires a single HP exam (HP0-055, about which i’ll write tomorrow). HP’s exams are a bit less expensive than Microsoft’s exams, but they usually contain far more questions than Microsoft’s (HP: ~80, Microsoft: ~50).

Another important thing are web based exams. These are very inexpensive (25 US$), and can be done 24/7. They’re usually for sales and service certifications, contain about 50 questions and you have around 1.5 hours of time. The sales certification questions are unbelievably stupid, but not necessarely easy. You can of course use the internet to answer to questions (yes, that’s allowed). But it’s much funnier trying to get such an exam done in less than 20 minutes (which is easily possible).

In general, HP’s certifications aren’t bad – i like that most of your Microsoft certificates already apply, that the sales certifications can be done online (IBM does not offer that and Microsoft doesn’t offer sales certifications), but their web interface is awfully slow. I didn’t like their exams as much as Microsoft’s, but more about that tomorrow.