The beast beat me =(

taktsoi

I attempted to kill the beast yesterday but walked out the room with embarass by 600+..........

The test office admin said that I must have missed a question or 2 at most 3 to pass..........coz they weight this exam heavily and have a high failure rate...... and the guy said that people who took 291 these few days all walked out the room with fail.......... ****

The IP addressing, security and infrastructure are alrite ...around 70-80...the DNS is the highest, about 85%...however, the RRAS is my downfall...only about 20% or less...... its almost blank.... this is what was killing me here....if i would've got 50% at least...i wouldve passed it.......damn it....


WSUS appears to be in high business here. Make sure you understand WSUS pretty well. I had alot WSUS..about 10 or 12 Qs with hot areas. Had 2 IIS. many DNS, IP subnettings, ipsec. I remember i only had few RRAS Qs........i still don understand why it was a major downfall here............damn it..damn it.. RRAS.....

As I recall, i only had 3 SIMs. 1 of them is RRAS. I think I got this sim totally wrong....maybe they weight this Q damn heavily...it was the last Q in my exam..

total Qs are 46 with 3 SIMs.....

MS self pace is the only book i have used. have been doing practice exam using the CD in the book...got constantly around 85... I have used testout video from my friend of mine but lightly......been having hands-on practices...at work and home....but...still not quite enough....

I think i need to have dreams of DNS, WSUS, RRAS.. days and nights to pass or will fail again...I had dreams of DNS and DHCP b4 taking the exam....but..RRAS never ever.....sigh.....

I need people suggestion and books recommendations.....to kill the beast.......DAMN IT!!!!!

I will not book the exam coz i need to get myself back to the game again....apparently...my efforts i made these 2 months are not sufficient......i have to organize myself again....

sorry...didnt make it well......

shednik

Hang in there, I've never sat the exam but i'm sure it's called "the beast" for a reason. Take the results and home in on our weaker areas and go back and nail the exam next time....good luck!

Slowhand

The test is hard, so don't stress too much about failing. A lot of people don't even score 600+ on their first try. It seems like you know where your weaknesses are, so make sure you read up on those areas, and get a lot of hands-on practice with RRAS and WSUS before you go back for the exam. Of course, don't forget all about the things you did better on, this exam has a history of knocking people down with stuff they knew the first time around, making them fail all over again. I'd say, spend about 80% of your time studying the stuff you had trouble with, then the other 20% reviewing everything else. Give yourself two, maybe three weeks, then go knock it out of the park.

tb0932

I failed it a couple of weeks ago with a pathetic 540 and during the test I thought I was doing really well! 2nd attempt was yesterday and I thought I had failed, but this time got 740! It's a weird exam as even when you think you know the topics well and are scoring high in transcender and other practice tests, it can still catch you out.

I was surprised how convoluted the scenarios were. None of them had appeared in practice tests or class discussions. The DNS zone scenarios were just weird (pick which type of zone to put where-type questions). There were lots of monitoring questions that drilled right down to the performance/system/network monitor counters! And of course WSUS configuration/settings featured largely.

Test king was recommended to me as the best practice test package but I didn't have it. I used transcender, and microsoft's technet sites a lot for more information on topics but really I think this exam is testing how much you have USED server 2003 to monitor and manage a network. You need to know which option is in what menu etc. Very tough if you're learning from books and in a home lab.

But, it's not impossible, so don't lose hope.

taktsoi

thank you for all people supporting. i really appreciate.

After cooling down myself, i recall the moment of taking the exam.

I have only a few Qs about routing, such as NAT, ICS, windows firewall, remote access policy, ip routing, etc.....

I still believe the SIM did the major part in this objective section. If I would've missed one or few clicks, would the entire Q be wrong at all? Or Would they weight which CLICKS are the major and which clicks are the minors?

Honestly, I have experiences in routing. I am actually doing support because one of the labs has the windows server 2003 NAT running. I also use m0n0wall at home with different nics as vlan. Now, I am trying to collect few parts to bomb the m0n0wall and install the server as an NAT VPN router. I will also put the WSUS live here on this router as well. I still can't believe its nightmare like this as I actually do have certain level of experience in routing....

oh well....i just start re-reading the book again. Do you think re-reading the same book helps? I will do an intensive studying in this month then resit the exam again to kick its ass.

I won't give up and I never give up. I must kill you beast.

sprkymrk

tb0932 wrote:

I was surprised how convoluted the scenarios were. None of them had appeared in practice tests or class discussions.

If you're talking about general scenarios, like how to deploy DNS servers, and it wasn't covered in classroom discussions, then you may have had a poor instructor.

If you mean actual test questions, they are not supposed to appear in practice tests or classroom discussions.

tb0932 wrote:

xxx"****"xxx was recommended to me as the best practice test package but I didn't have it.

You would have been cheating had you used it, so it's good that you didn't have it really.

tb0932 wrote:

I used transcender, and microsoft's technet sites a lot for more information on topics but really I think this exam is testing how much you have USED server 2003 to monitor and manage a network. You need to know which option is in what menu etc. Very tough if you're learning from books and in a home lab.

You are correct. What book did you have? Did you have a copy of 2003? Virtual Server/VMWare?

taktsoi

people. please don use **** at all. PERIOD.

learn the technologies inside out. Even tho i fail this test, i still wanna learn more.

Good luck.

APA

Sorry to hear taktsoi............

But you can only learn from this experience........ Hit RRAS hard in the next few weeks not forgetting to still study your strong areas as you don't want them to be the ones that haunt you during your next attempt!!!!

Good luck!!!! I know you will ace it next time........

tb0932

Sprkymrk - I'll try to address your questions.
Without giving away test questions, the DNS scenarios in the exam were not the straight forward ones covered in Microsoft white papers or the MOAC textbook I used. For example, I was learned that stub zones are appropriate if the other domain's name servers may change; conditional forwarders are good in merger situations if you want to forward queries for the other company's domain directly to their name servers and they won't change; Secondary servers are appropriate if you need to ensure you can resolve names even if the link goes down between domains/servers; and Delegations are for parent-child scenarios. However, the exam scenarios did not appear to be clearcut like all the examples I had studied. It seemed like a stub zone or a conditional forwarder would be equally suitable. I still don't know if I got those questions right.

I didn't know the testing software I mentioned (x'd out in my post) was a brain ****. Good to know.

I used the MS MOAC course textbook and lab manual, took a class, read tons of stuff on this site and others, and installed Server 2003 on a virtual pc on my laptop. I couldn't get it to talk to separate desktop I had with windows 2000 on it so couldn't recreate the WSUS and other labs at home but at least I got to play with the OS a lot. The MOAC book is definitely not enough to pass this exam. It seems to me like you really have to be using the OS in a real-life environment in order to remember all the different menu options, etc.

sprkymrk

tb0932 wrote:

However, the exam scenarios did not appear to be clearcut like all the examples I had studied. It seemed like a stub zone or a conditional forwarder would be equally suitable. I still don't know if I got those questions right.

Yeah, I know what you mean. It's hard, but you have to spot the 1 clue that makes one answer "better" than the other. As you stated, they may both be viable options.

tb0932 wrote:

I didn't know the testing software I mentioned (x'd out in my post) was a brain ****. Good to know.

I was hoping that was the case.

tb0932 wrote:

I used the MS MOAC course textbook and lab manual, took a class, read tons of stuff on this site and others, and installed Server 2003 on a virtual pc on my laptop. I couldn't get it to talk to separate desktop I had with windows 2000 on it so couldn't recreate the WSUS and other labs at home but at least I got to play with the OS a lot. The MOAC book is definitely not enough to pass this exam. It seems to me like you really have to be using the OS in a real-life environment in order to remember all the different menu options, etc.

Yes, the hands-on environment is what can bring it home. Sounds like you just need to solidify what you have already learned, brush up on any possible weak points, and become familiar with the MS way of testing. If you can afford Transcenders, they may be what you need to get over the hump. Good luck!

tb0932

We got a free transcender package with the PCC course so I used that heavily - went through every single question. A couple were very similar on the real thing but not many.
But, at least it is now behind me! Next stop, 70-270 - the XP one.

taktsoi

yes, this is what my friend highly recommended. He said that i was just few questions behind. so transcender should help me complete 291 definitely. I am trying to see if i could get a copy somewhere.

thank you for your great suggestion. I really appreciate.