After a gruelling eight months (with the occasional day off) I have finally passed the five exams from 70-410 to 70-414. As a thank you to those on this site that have inspired me to keep going I’ll document the process, with the disclaimer that what worked for me may not work for you.
Bear in mind that I’ve had over 20 years of experience with Windows server, doing a variety of techy jobs for companies of varying size and complexity. Lately I’ve been much more involved in the architecture/design than the install/configure. My specialist subject is AD and it’s associated technologies, which is an advantage given how much AD there is spread through the exams. The big challenge was to learn all the detail required for the new features of 2012 R2 and all the roles that I’d never used before.
I bought the following books:
MCSA 70-410 Cert Guide by Poulton/Camardella – Pearson
It’s a big book for one exam. If you want to know the level of detail required this is a good place to start, although I also used Technet and the various MS team blogs. It’s a shame they didn’t produce an equivalent for 70-411 and 70-412.
Mastering Windows Server 2012 by Minasi et al – Sybex
Seems like every chapter is written by a different author. Some are excellent, some not so much. Doesn’t cover all objectives, WDS is not mentioned for example. Worth buying for the good bits.
Exam Ref 70-411 to 70-414 various authors - Microsoft Press
I’ve put these all together because none of them stand out. I used them more as placeholders to know how far through the objectives I was. Somehow it seems more real in a physical book. None of them cover the subjects in anything like enough detail to be used as a study guide.
Mastering Hyper-V 2012 R2 by Savill – Sybex
More technical than you need for MCSA, but extremely useful for MCSE. If you are setting up a lab with Hyper-V and SCVMM this is the book to get. I actually enjoyed reading this.
Lab Environment
I soon realised that my home PC wasn’t up to the job for the multi-server, multi-network environment I wanted to create, so I invested in a dedicated lab server.
Thinkserver TS140 4 core Xeon
120GB SSD for OS – Probably overkill
500GB SSD for VMs – Makes all the difference if you’re running multiple VMs
1TB HDD – Library for ISOs etc
32GB memory – Seems a lot, but soon goes if running nested hypervisors
If anyone wants more specific details of lab environments let me know.
70-410. After hitting Technet and labbing every scenario I could think of I took it and passed with a good score. This gave me a model for how to approach the subsequent exams. I had taken 2 months and decided to up the pace.
70-411. I find it hard to study subjects that I know I’ll never use, so I found NAP and NPS difficult. Once again labbing was the key. Most of the other topics I was familiar with. Took the test after 6 weeks and passed.
70-412. Some topics I didn’t know well, so I concentrated the lab on these, while going through Technet and the MS team blogs for the others. Took the test after 6 weeks and passed. To me it seemed like the questions were harder, like they’d stepped up a level.
For the MCSE exams I found the following helpful, although it’s not R2 specific. It gives a good clue to the level to aim at:
http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/TechEd/NorthAmerica/2014/EXM10
MCSE builds on the MCSA knowledge so I wanted to keep going while it was still fresh.
70-413. I approached this in the same way as the others. The lab setups were more complex, but I was comfortable with the emphasis on design. Took the test after 8 weeks and passed. The exams have some additional question types – There are a number of case studies (this is discussed in the above video so it’s not NDA). Much of the information is irrelevant to the individual questions but you have to figure out what applies as a requirement and what doesn’t. It was a tough exam, mainly because of the complexity of the questions.
70-414. Having passed 70-413 I knew I could do this. Same process, passed after 6 weeks.
Apart from the books above my main sources of reference were Technet and any blogs I could find about the real world applications of the various technologies. I recommend reading all the blogs from the various MS teams relating to the subject.
In summary - you need both theoretical knowledge and practical experience. Study for the knowledge and lab for the experience. Good luck.
