when will MCSA 410, 411, and 412 be retired?

jerseyIT92

I'm wondering when they will be retired. I was planning on starting the exam prep, but if it's going to change soon, I'll wait. Does anyone know by chance?

thatguy67

I don't think it will be retired any time soon. You can still earn the MCSA: Server 2008 certification.

bohack

Microsoft's retirement of exams was originally after the second generation of a release or the support end date. However like thatguy67 stated 2008 MCSA is still a viable path. Microsoft is trying to get back to the pre-Balmer days and will probably keep 2012 alive for a very long time. As for if you should wait... NO! Do it now... Server 2012 is being used today and will be used for many years to come, which makes you extremely salable. When a new server OS comes out sysops don't just blindly upgrade they upgrade as needed. I.E. if the next server version is to be released in 2016 it will not be widely installed until 2018 or a few years after that. Sysops don't generally follow the forced upgrade path that retail consumers do.

jerseyIT92

Thanks friend. I'm going to order an all in one book today and start studying.

nkosiv@gmail.com

Many companies are still using 2003 and they will be upgrading to 2008, this means those who possess MCSA 2012 are more valuable since most companies will be migrating to 2012.

pjd007

nkosiv@gmail.com wrote: »

Many companies are still using 2003 and they will be upgrading to 2008, this means those who possess MCSA 2012 are more valuable since most companies will be migrating to 2012.

I'd have thought anyone running 2003 would migrate to 2012 rather than 2003.

Skelly

pjd007 wrote: »

I'd have thought anyone running 2003 would migrate to 2012 rather than 2003.

While the logical thing would be to migrate directly to 2012 R2, not all companies are doing it. Over the last year, I've migrated several mid-size companies from 2003 to 2008 R2. For various reasons, they didn't want to make that big of a jump.

Some companies, even large ones hold onto old operating systems forever. The year before last, I had a project to migrate 30 Windows NT 4.0 domains into a Windows 2008 R2 forest. The only reason they finally got around to upgrading was because they were rolling out new Windows 7 PCs and a Windows NT domain doesn't support Windows 7 clients.

ssnyderu2

My job is about to do a major network refresh, switching over to server 2012 R2 and Windows 8.1. So it will be in use for years.

netsysllc

All migrations I have done over the last 2 years have been to 2012. A few of them had 2008R2 RDS just for the end user experience. In my opinion most companies that do not get current is because they have some ignorant person heading IT who does not like change. These people will try to hold onto things forever and do not want to upgrade systems or software and are stuck in this archaic thinking of if things are not broken don't fix them. This eventually leads down the rabbit hole of major failure or major expense and headache of change down the road. This industry has started moving faster in the last few years and cycles are getting much shorter which will make organizations get behind even faster if they are not careful. Many software companies are even dropping support for older Operating systems.

Renee Simons

I've found it's not usually the IT person holding onto the old o/s, but whoever controls the checkbook. If they don't have an IT background, they just don't get the need for upgrades until their accounting systems start crashing around them.