MCSA 2012 or 2016?

Nik 99

Hello people. Despite what you may be thinking, I know you lot would tell me to do 2012 because it's more actively used still in businesses and in terms of study materials there is a huge amount out there.

What I actually need to know is how much life is left to the 2012 cert? A year? Couple of years? Can anyone give me a rough idea? I'd like to feel confident that if I started studying server 2012 I'd have plenty of time to complete all 3 exams. I'm guessing it might take me around 6 months to a year to finish, but it's hard to tell how long it would really take in the end. Also what would happen if I completed 1-2 exams and then microsoft announced they were retiring mcsa 2012? What would my options be in that situation?

Mike7

You can find the Microsoft exams retirement list at https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/learning/retired-certification-exams.aspx. Microsoft usually provides 1 year notice period for exam retirement.

You need to understand that companies run applications on top of their base operating system; i.e. anti-virus, LOB (line-of-business) apps and most of these apps have not been tested on Server 2016.

The typical product life cycle is 10 years, so extended support for Server 2012 ends around 2023. Now there is Windows Server Premium Assurance that extends product life cycle to 16 years. So expect some companies to use Server 2012 till around 2028.