Passed 412, MCSA 2012 now

ShabazTech

So after a marathon of three months full of studying and labbing I passed the third and final exam of the MCSA track, namely 70-412. All of these exams are pretty tough, but I believe 412 is the toughest one of the lot, thankfully many of my questions revolved around AD DS, DNS and DHCP, which happen to be my strong points.

Like I said, I've been studying for three months, and especially the past eight weeks have been full of studying and labbing. I must have used 10 hours each weekend on studies the past eight weeks, so I definitely feel the certification is well deserved. Obiovusly there are a few areas I can brush up on.

What has been particularily difficult while studying for 70-412 is to try to learn AD RMS and AD FS, while simultaneously try to learn something entirely else (Citrix Xen7.x) for work related purposes. Cramming in that much information into ones head is certainly not something I'd recommend.

I used the official training guide, exam ref, Matering Server 2012 R2 and technet (to fill in the gaps) for all three exams. The exam ref books give some good hints, that you might not think of otherwise.

Plan forward is to go for the remaning two (413 and 414), to achieve MCSE, but first I'm going to take a well deserved (short) vacation.

powerfool

Well, congrats on that! Big accomplishment. I really feel that the MCSA of today is equivalent to the MCSE of yesterday.

I definitely agree with you that competing priorities are a huge conflict when studying for exams. While I was studying for the Lync exams (a work requirement), I also had to learn Skype for Business and the SfB Online new features like Cloud PBX, PSTN Dialing, Dial-in Conferencing, and Skype for Business Broadcast. I was previously attempting to get my 417 completed, but I had all of the previous things going on and it was even more difficult. So, now that I have those exams out of the way, I am focusing just on SfB at the moment and taking a break for certification studying... at least for the next month. I still have to get my 417 completed before June for my MCSE Communications to be considered valid (since the Lync 2013 exams are officially retired, now).

The good news is that I verified today that the recertification through MVA isn't just for doing your 3-year recert... it also definitely covers recertifying on the latest release. So, since only the MCSE is recert required, it makes sense for folks to go past the MCSA to an MCSE or two, like you are doing.

I don't know it requires you to do the upgrade exam for the MCSA level, though. More things to learn. I was hoping that I could be done with Microsoft exams, unless I want to add a new product to the mix. It does kind of incentivize me to do the MCSE Server Infrastructure, too... which I had not planned. Makes it easy when the recert is just going through MVA. Get the exams out of the way now.