Just passed 70-290 :)

I just got back from Prometric after passing 70-290 with a score of 871. To be honest, I was really surprised to pass the exam, because I guessed on a lot of questions! Some of the questions were very unclear!

I had quite a few simulations, but the multiple choice questions were the majority of the test. If you're planning on taking the test, make sure you know your command line utilities (I had a few questions regarding that). Also, know how to set-up roaming profiles in active directory, manage access to shared folders, terminal server and shadow copies. There were quite a few questions regarding NTbackup as well as performance monitoring.

I started studying about a month ago, I used TestOUT series (which was a little outdated and very boring, but otherwise useful). Make sure you know WSUS (not SUS!). I also used MCSE in a Nutshell from O'Reilly for my review. I had some previous knowledge of Server 2003, but no hands-on experience. Having a VMware lab certainly helped!

EDIT: I just realized that there is a dedicated forum for 70-290 - sorry for posting here! Will not happen again

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gojericho0

Congrats! What type of scenarios did you lab with your VMWare?

kamil

gojericho0 wrote:

Congrats! What type of scenarios did you lab with your VMWare?

I have a domain controller (DC01), a member server (SRV01) and a XP client (client01).

DC01 is also a DSN server, SRV01 has WSUS, File Server and IIS. I basically played around with WSUS, Sharing folders to certain groups and basic tasks like that. I also used it to learn about the command line utilities. Some of the tasks were already covered by the TestOUT simulations (for example NTBACKUP), so I did not have to try these...

Now it's time to create a more advanced set-up for 20-291

danclarke

Congratulations on such a good score, too!

As I've mentioned in other posts, I always keep a tally of the questions which I feel confident about - and, of course, mark the questions which I am not confident about. This (usually) gives me a rough indication of when I have got over the pass mark.

Psychologically, one benefit of this is that we tend to dwell on our doubts: If I get 8 questions correct and two wrong, it often feels like I've only got 50% right. The tallies help me to keep calm and rational.

RS_MCP

Congrats!

shednik

Congrats and good luck with 291!

tigerplug

Congrats on the pass!