After 6 months of procrastination, finally took the exam today and passed it. I was bit stressed at the start of the exam as I don't test well. Plus, it has been a good 4 years since I have undertaken any exam. Was easier than I thought in some ways and harder in other ways. I spent way too much time reading the questions - Think my reading comprehension skills have taken a dive - haha. Either that or it was the stress.
Lots of Powershell questions (about 40%) and some questions in DNS which I think were from 70-411. What I liked in the new MS exam - the questions where you had to choose multiple answers told me how many choices I had to pick. The academy version of 2008 was traumatic since it had questions that required me to 'select all that is correct'. Not sure whether this is the new direction - I remember that, few years ago, Cisco started specifying the number of correct answers you have to choose in their exams.
Preparation: I have been working on server 2012 since it came out and completed 2008 server academy 4 years ago. I just needed books that would tell me the 'Microsoft answer' to some questions and what to expect. In this context, I think the Craig Zacker book is not bad preparatory material, if you read every line carefully. Mark Minasi's book helped immensely in getting a deeper understanding and in learning scenarios which are not covered by certification - I read this for pure pleasure.
I did not prepare with certification in mind - I read everything and have followed Petri, 4Sysops, redmondmag, technet blogs etc for years & have been early adopter of products.
If you are preparing for certification, there's some good stuff in Microsoft online lab exercises. But hands-on experience and understanding MS best practices will help. Try to setup everything at home. Work with server core and powershell and learn to do everything that you do with a GUI using commandline tools. Do this and not only will you be fine in the exam, but also you will be able to succeed well in your jobs. Learning for certification has really made me feel very excited and fond of some topics, which I have not deal with in the real-world in years. This has made me to rethink some of my work. I am very keen to continue this further.
I wish you all luck in your endeavors! I am off to celebrate for a bit & maybe think about the next exam!
