Passed 70-411 on 2nd attempt

srocky26

Passed with an 841 a little bit ago!


Some background:


I took and passed the 70-410 with an 8xx last December. I ended up taking a break for Christmas and then studying and passing my VCP during the first half of the year. I decided to come back to finish my MCSA about a month ago, eyeing the 70-411.


I took the test a week ago and struggled; failing with a 620. There were a number of questions that I just didn't have a clue what the answer could be or even able to eliminate the incorrect answers. I took some practice questions (50) from Transcender and was scoring ~65%. I was strong on network services, GPO and weak on AD. I really felt I had studied enough and wanted to get the exam over with. I thought I could manage to get lucky for the last 5% and get a pass. I ended up scoring best on AD and worst on network services and GPO this time.


Initially I went through the CBT nuggets and followed along on all of the virtual labs. This was a huge help because I learn better by seeing and doing. I thought I had a pretty good grasp on the subjects, but went on to read the "Microsoft Exam Reference" book anyways. I found that the book had some random nuggets of information that weren't covered in the videos, but it was dry. It was a lot of "follow these steps to set this up" rather than explaining how things work. I used various labs to test/view the new information.


The day after failing I signed up for the free trial of pluralsight. I watched some of the videos where I felt weak and found that there was even more content that I didn't get from CBT nuggets or from my reading. The NPS information really started to sink in during these videos for some reason.


Some had suggested the "Master Windows Server 2012" book, so I picked it up and read through the chapters that seemed relavent. I found more bits of information that weren't covered in the other material. I actually found this book to be refreshing to read. It's not focused on passing the exam, but has a ton of information. I was able to pick out some of the questions from the exam.


I was still only scoring ~60% on practice tests though, so I spent a few days just going through a ton of practice questions. I think this was the key to my success. It wasn't learning the material and understanding how to deploy it, it was learning what kind of questions Microsoft was going to ask and knowing how to answer them. I was eventually getting over 90% on the practice questions.


I will continue on to the 70-412 to complete the MCSA. From what I've seen around here that is the hardest exam. I did learn about ADFS, ADRMS, and ADCS when I studied for the 2008 exams and I've done a number of the other exam tasks in actual production environments, so I hope it goes well.

Louie1277

Well congrats on passing the exam. I know for me I just started reading, watching videos. I take my exam in 2 months so I'm starting to study more and more every day.