Server experience needed?

kbowen0188

I am looking to start with the 680 test. While I am experienced with the OS, I am not very experienced at all with servers. From what I understand, this test does expect you to know a bit about 2008 R2? Do the study materials cover that and would labs help cover it, or would it perhaps be best to study and lab for a Microsoft server certification first?

I would eventually like to land a job as a junior admin. I am desktop support now (hence the desire for the 7 cert), but want to have a solid base of knowledge to hopefully progress my career in that direction.

kriscamaro68

You generally will only need to know about server related topics that will pertain to desktops. I would setup a WDS server, get to know group policy and when to use a user policy vs a computer policy, and the types of policies there are. I would not say you need to know the ins and outs of 08R2 at all. Also make sure you understand the basic syntax of powershell. Be able to look at an answer with powershell and understand what the cmd is doing so you can eliminate wrong answers. Good luck in your studies and with the test.

Brandonm2

Yep that sounds about right. I recently took the 680 and found out that I over studied quite a bit. I have no real world job experience. and have my A+ and OS Fundamentals certs plus the 680 that I just passed. I built my own lab up and practiced all the deployment methods that was possible with my lab. I found that I went alot deeper into topics when really I just needed a decent understanding of the exam requirements. I personally would defiantly set up your own lab with server 2008r2 and client win 7 pc's. I highly recommend it. Let's just say, you don't need to know alot of server stuff, but since alot of the features in windows 7 work with the server it kinda forces you to know a little bit of the server stuff(especially group policy and deployment topics) But no you do not need by any means a server cert to pass this. In fact I would say it would probably not be smart at all to go for a server test before you get this down.
also... Microsoft makes it very easy to set up your own virtual lab at home on one of your own pc's. You can set up a 2008r2 server in hyper-v on a windows 8 pc. Then you can set up your clients in say Oracle Virtual Box for your win 7 machines on that same pc. So you can run your whole lab virtually! You will need a decent pc to virtualize this stuff. These days that should not be to hard. To run that you will probably want a pc with at least 6-8GB Ram and a decent processor.
Also... You can get both the 2008r2 and win 7 software free to try @ Microsoft's Technet website. Great resource!
Hope this helps!

jacksonr

Just built a Windows 2008 R2 Server using VMWare (Found a guide on YouTube, let me know if you need the link). Set it up as a DC and created my own domain, now have a full AD Suite up and running.

I also have a Vista Machine (VMWare), Windows 7 (VMWare) and a machine with Windows PE.

Vista and 7 are on the domain and using the Vista machine as a test, will upgrade that to Windows 7 leaving me with two Win 7 machines and a PE Machine.