Planning for 70-417... Any Decent Practice Exams out There?

powerfool

So, I fell off the certification map pretty much in 2011. I did my binge testing after completing my CISSP in order to bring all of my MS and Cisco certifications up to date and then focused on my graduate studies. I have been done with that for a while and I am now looking to refresh my MS certifications again.

Here is the plan (as I have been focused on Exchange On-Premise for about three years now, and need to also expand into Office 365 more and Lync On-Premise):

MCSA 2012: 70-417 (the focus of this thread)

MCSE Messaing: 70-341 and 70-342

MCSA Office 365: 70-346 and 70-347

And if I can spend some time on honing my Lync experience (I have really only done Lync Online):

MCSE Communication: 70-336 and 70-337

So, right now I am just reading through the Sybex MCSA 2012 Upgrade book and viewing the Microsoft Virtual Academy videos. The problem I have with all of these is that even though they are "upgrade" specific materials, they focus so much on what I have already covered to the point of exhaustion over the years... I mean really, I don't need a primer on DNS. So, I get unfocused and bored with the material and then I move on to something different.

So, I am looking to see if there are any decent practice exams out there that I could take to determine what I need to study specifically. If there is a free retake promo... I am half tempted to just go sit the exam to get a good feel for it.

The issue I have is that the last upgrade exam (for MCITP on 200 covered so much "existing" material... things that haven't changed since their inception in Windows NT 3.51, for instance. What is the point in an upgrade exam that covers mostly just the material you should already have "mastered" on the basis of doing an "upgrade"?

Well, end rant... any ideas?

MeatCatalogue

Powerfool,

I am pretty similar to you in terms of my certification history. MCITP: EA on 2008, CCNA, etc. I took the 417 last week and it was absolutely brutal. By far the most difficult IT exam i've taken, and that is including 70-643!

The reason the new 2012 exams are so difficult is because there are very few process of elimination questions like in the 2008 exams. Meaning theres no obviously wrong answers, leaving you a 50/50 even if you dont know the exact answer. The 417 was maybe 80% drag & drop, hotspots, powershell drop downs, etc.

I am now studying for my messaging MCSE and will also go for lync once I get it. To pass the 417 I used CBT nuggets videos, technet and virtual labs. There were a few basic questions on the exam regarding AD, but nothing very elementary. The questions were advanced and difficult. I memorized about 50 powershell commands i've never used professionally, spent hours reading technet on IPAM, Federation 2.1 and claims based / classification file shares. I have a very strong background in clustering so I didn't spend a lot of time on that but if you are not, highly recommend you focus on that as well.

Hope that helps!