90 Days to MCSA Challenge

fstech

It is definitely do able. I took the 410 on may 6 and the 411 today, passed both on the fist try plan on 412 in 3 weeks

Midnite8

Nice, just realized I can access all the books on Safari Books Online through my University

JoJoCal19

fstech wrote: »

It is definitely do able. I took the 410 on may 6 and the 411 today, passed both on the fist try plan on 412 in 3 weeks

Apologies if you've posted further back in this thread, but can you list your resources and study plan for those two exams?

nascar_paul

dbzrfl wrote: »

Passed the 410, yesterday, I plan to get a cert a week.
I am knocking out Server 12 first, and on to Win 8, I wish 10 was out already.
My advice, before the test begins check 06 to months on the opening survey, all the way down.

I was wondering if they give you a slightly easier time if you do this. I've done mid level, but I'll take your advise! Can't hurt!

roninkai

A cert a week, that's pretty ambitious. My goals has been a cert a month, and I started off good this year. But failed 70-686 in March and had to take a break due to having a baby in April. But I'm back at it, just got my MCSA/MCITP knocked out. Guess that's two certs if I wanted to be "technical". I'd like to upgrade that to an MCSA 2012 but that will have to wait. My track is headed into cyber security, so more sysadmin type certs are nice to have, but I don't think propel me into my next role.

Midnite8

Where exactly should I start on the Onenote? There are daily activities ok, but other things such as sections 1-6.

natharas

Midnite8 wrote: »

Where exactly should I start on the Onenote? There are daily activities ok, but other things such as sections 1-6.

I had the same issue, it felt a bit overwhelming. I have two books on the way though and some online videos as well.

ed_003

fstech wrote: »

It is definitely do able. I took the 410 on may 6 and the 411 today, passed both on the fist try plan on 412 in 3 weeks

how do u study?

Cisco Inferno

Picking this up after I complete my AA next month.
How has everyone been with the schedule?

Anyone use the Don Poulton Book for 70-410?
I plan on using the new R2 Pluralsight videos with Greg Shields. So far, so good. How does this compare to others?

jotto

I am using the Don Poulton book and bought it because of its gleaming reviews on Amazon. I'm into chapter 3 and although the information is very detailed I find it hard to digest going from one chapter to another. I correlate the chapters as being "blocks" of information. It's not a book you can read from chapter to chapter.

Louie1277

jotto wrote: »

I am using the Don Poulton book and bought it because of its gleaming reviews on Amazon. I'm into chapter 3 and although the information is very detailed I find it hard to digest going from one chapter to another. I correlate the chapters as being "blocks" of information. It's not a book you can read from chapter to chapter.

I have to agree. After failing the second time on my exam 70-410 i bought this book. The book is a big one and you can't really follow the outline. If you try to read it page by page it will take you a while. But the book goes into detail a lot more then you need for the exam. But it's always good to know more then not knowing.

gorebrush

I'm up for a change of pace from CCIE as I'm not really getting anywhere at the moment and my 2003 MCSE is now way old. I've tinkered with 2008 and 2012 so I think I could master the 90 day challenge. I passed the MCSE in 2006, and was a System Admin until November 2010... I use 2012 a fair bit at home now thinking about it. Tempted!

JoJoCal19

rugoingmiway wrote: »

On Monday evening I stayed up until 1AM and on Tuesday until 2AM
studying the exam questions. This failure is obviously not due to my lack
of effort in the equation. We have been given 340 test exam questions for
the 70-411 test that are from the same source. I do not trust in them or
in the ability of the instructor / InfosecInstitute-IntenseSchool to be
able to prepare me to pass the exams moving forward.

I am so pissed about the whole process I am happy to talk to anyone before you give them your money.

Aside from the actual issues with the company/classroom instruction you listed, if the only prep you did for the exam was to study questions that are more than likely an inaccurate brain ****, then failing the exam is solely on you. No single source of material is going to guarantee you to pass an exam. Depending on your experience level with the exam topics, it will take a combination of reading a book, reading it again and taking notes, labbing, labbing, and more labbing.

Louie1277

You are so right reading and more reading the same material. Trust me I'm tried of reading the material over and over, but i notice it's getting easier to setup. I know some users have studied a lot from different material plus using brain **** to study. They just don't use the brain **** only they have other material they used and doing labs always help.

JumpingJacks

Long time lurker, first time poster... Does anyone happen to have the original offline OneNote? I'm gearing up for the 410, and the offline document would help immensely.

MariusRZR

Hi Guys, anyone still checking this thread?
I'm Marius, 26, from Romania. I currently work Technical Support for a big US Based real estate company.
I accept this challenge. I passed MTA with a week worth of study.
I started studying for MCSA a few weeks ago. Went through James Conrad's CBT Nuggets videos and William Panek's book.

The thing i'm afraid of...
They say 411 and 412 are extremely difficult to pass without work experience. i kinda work with Windows Server 2012, but i'm the folder guy...NTFS Permissions and some other crap for all US Branch offices. My access is limited.

Is that true? Anyone passed 411 and 412 only by studying?

poolmanjim

MariusRZR wrote: »

Is that true? Anyone passed 411 and 412 only by studying?

Full disclosure here: I have worked with other versions of Windows in the workplace but not to the degree that the 411 and 412 take it.

They are, if your studying includes labbing. Without labs, I imagine these tests are close to impossible.

MariusRZR

I plan on creating quite a lab at home. So the studying includes labs. The thing is, it's still a lab, a restricted environment with a few servers and a few clients. You can't reproduce everything( I guess ).
410 should require minimal lab experience as it's mostly straight forward. I started from scratch again. My learning technique was faulty.
I was speedreading through the book and the CBT Nuggets videos.
Now i'm spending lots of time on each chapter, making sure I either fully understand everything or i'm pretty darn close.
The ITFreeTraining videos from youtube are very helpful. That guy has a nice calm tone and he's very thorough.

Hopefully in two-three weeks i'll be ready for the 410.

Piers

I'm just starting the 410 part of this challenge.. well, restarting is more accurate.

About this time last year, I had planned on the 410 and started watching the video series by videotrainer.com. I made it through 3/4 of the objectives (AD and GP to go) and switched gears to the 411, which my work had made as an optional requirement for our team. SO, I begin that.. videotrainer again, and the borntolearn blog for the great links to so many TechNet articles. Read the Panek book, and part of Minasi that applied. I have the Network Infra and Active Directory 2008 certs so I felt pretty confident already in AD and GP.

Wrote the 411 exam on January 11th after a full week of paid study time (my employer is pretty good with this, usually it's one day, I convinced the boss this needed far more than a DAY) to have my second short available and I tanked with a 482. Despite the poor score, I felt pretty good (thanks to the second shot mostly) because everything I read made sense, I wasn't confused by it all and I believe I counted 5-6 gut feelings that I changed for the worse. I went home and started jotting notes to the questions I could remember and started plugging into TechNet.

Re-read the Panek, picking up a bunch of things I must have glossed over and feeling even better now that I got to check out the style of questions and detail required.. more TechNet, more reading. Re-write on February 2nd, had about 8-10 of the same questions, and passed with a 752 I'll take it.

Funny thing, on both attempts, my lower scores were AD and GP, the exact things I felt strongest in! I know I glossed over them the first testing, but didn't the 2nd.

Anyway, the point of this long story was to say that I actually didn't spend much time labbing at all .. I have a pretty decent memory from what I see, so if I see it demo'd in a video or screenshots in a book, I can retain the info pretty well (short term anyway). I did use my work servers to navigate and get a good feel for 2012 but since they were mostly productions servers (one was a contingency server, which I did installations on and then rebuilt later)


And on to 410! As an aside, can anyone who's taken both exams venture an opinion on which one they found more difficult?

Deathmage

Joining in on this challenge...

macboy81

lmoworld wrote: »

Any Takers? This is not a new years resolution. This is a Challenge from one IT Professional to another. 90 days from today you will either have or be close to obtaining your MCSA. What do you really have to lose except for one hour a day. One hour a day in labbing, reading and watching in order to gain a certification. I can't promise you a instant pass, but what I can promise you is that within 90 days you will be know more than what you know now. In this forum I plan to post lab setup, notes, book recommendation, and YouTube Video links I have been using.

90 Day Challenge OneNote

I have my VCP6 course coming up in March but after that I would like to give this a shot. the OneNote looks great will you be leaving it up and available I think if i follow that i could be ready for my Exam come July

Hawk321

90 days are not possible if you are really want to learn. MSCA 2012 needs around 1 Year including experience.
Guys, do not get fooled by false advertisements from video vendors, wannabe rip off all your money trainers and avoiding reality HR personal.

Specially those 5 days boot camps for 5000$ are scam and people in the HR believe it and measure candidates on that short time period.

Each exams has a pool of around 480 questions, each MS book for the 2012 is almost useless junk and specially the 70-411 wants to know stuff that no one is using and is also hard to lab (and even deprecated).

Many people believe that they can simply watch some cbt nuggets, use braindumps and clicking through some basic menues.

That is BULLSHIT!!!

I own the orig. MOC books from MS even the trainer pdfs...the content of the exams are not even written in thoses books. The whole 2012 series is a worldwide disaster.
There is no sense to just memorize the questions from the first shot just to be successful in the second shot.
MSCA 2012 does not teach you PowerShell, Troubleshooting or anything else...only a extreme poor overview of useless MS technology.
Dumb questions like "what is the name of the third tab of that menu" is crap!

Microsoft is far away of Linux Exams or Cisco Exams and material. I know some MVPs who teach MS for years saying "today, you can not pass the exam within a short time without massive braindumping"

I can recommend everyone to not waste his time on the 2012 series. Wait for 2016, Microsoft will push the new server, throw away **** like NAP and RIP routing and will hopefully release serious material.

If some naiv kiddies think they can do handle 1440 questions, 2100 pages plus 1000 pages in technet, 55 hours in cbt videos...all that in 90 days...well, why do ya guys stick with the IT?
Go, study medical stuff, mathematics and 5 languages...it has less material to study than MSCA but gives you years of time....

MariusRZR

I agree and disagree with you at the same time.
90 days are enough for some, and not enough for others.
I'm currently studying for the 70-410. I don't have work experience, but I have general knowledge of Windows, Networking and so on. Got MTA, which was only useful to understand the concepts of DNS, DHCP, IP4V Subnetting and a few others. So it's not much.

But i feel pretty confident about 410. I read through Sybex's book twice, cover to cover and the CBT Nuggets videos once.
As you said, THIS IS NOT ENOUGH. And I Agree with you. That is why i'm taking each chapter from the book and try to understand every little piece before moving to the next one. Youtube is helpful, a small lab i have at home, Wikipedia...I pretty much read everything I can find on that subject, even if i've read the same thing 10 times. Don't care. I will eventually understand all of 410.

poolmanjim

Hawk, you're not helping anyone, man. Stop slamming the MCSA. If you don't think its worthwhile, that is your opinion but don't sit in here slamming it for those of us who have decided to get it.

If you do nothing but study for 90 days and have 0 experience with Server 2012 R2, you can legitimately pass the exam. I believe that. If you have zero experience with Windows Server and you spend 90 days studying and expect to pass, you're going to struggle. Also, this is not for everyone. Someone people can study and learn quick for an exam, others will struggle and struggle regardless.

GSXR750K2

It's very possible to do in 90 days or less depending on experience...see my attachment. While I have worked quite a bit with Windows Server 2003 and 2008 in the past, I had only labbed things related to 2012 prior to taking the exams. I had never taken an MS exam previously, so I didn't have any expectations leading up to the exams.

A lot of things in WinServ carry over, so while Hawk makes a point that 2016 is just around the corner, a LOT of the concepts will carry over from 2012, as they carried over from 2008, as they carried over from 2003, etc. Active Directory hasn't changed, you can still use the traditional ADUC interface or the ADAC interface that shows you the PowerShell commands running behind the scenes. DHCP/DNS hasn't changed, though in 2012 you gain the ability for DHCP failover. Group Policy Objects/Preferences work just as they have previously. You don't necessarily have to take the 2012 exams, but don't wait for the 2016 content to come out to start learning...sure you may have to go over some topics again in a different book, but what better way to reinforce the learning?

The content is challenging, but it is manageable. If you have the equipment, lab, lab, and lab again. While the time frame is possible, don't make it a race against other people. Some people have more time to devote to studying than others, and some are better at handling pressures on exam day than others. Learn the content at your pace, and the chore of passing the exams will take care of itself.

Hawk321

I just want to pretend people to make a big mistake...I know people who spend thousands of $$$ for nothing, People without MS Server Experience and people who realise that the MS Press books are junk (2012 not 200.

Also I know, that training vendors act like submarines on boards like this to give a false picture.
I know situations where those "schools" almost promise a CCNA in 5 days without prior knowledge.