70-351 ISA 2006 difficulty

How hard is this exam?

I have a slightly more than basic understanding of firewalls, but I've never actually touched ISA before.

We are having to deploy several ISA 2006 boxes at work, mainly for the web cacheing, but we will be doing a couple of othe things with it as well so i'd like to get some knowledge of the product.

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Hyper-Me

Guess not, lol

Technito

Wish I could help you, but I haven't taken this exam. I am currently studying to take the ISA 2004 exam though. From what I understand so far, it's one of those exams that CBT's are good but actually labbing out the scenarios in a virtual environment is really what's gonna get you through the exam. You may wanna just try and get a copy from work and play around with it and see what you think. It's suppose to be one of the "easier" exams of the Microsoft 2003 MCSA/MCSE electives. I have the ISA 2004 software installed on a Windows 2003 server machine and been playing around with the policies and stuff. Also I use Selftest Software as an exam simulator. And so far as my studies goes it don't seem too difficult. In fact, I just started studying yesterday and I think I can be ready for the exam in 2 weeks. But again it's ISA 2004 I'm working on. So for ISA 2006, how many differences can their possibly be?

novovictus

I found the test pretty easy, but i have a few years experience with different vendor firewalls and had my mcsa. i found cbt nuggets and train signal to be very good. i did lots of labbing and read the 70-350 book, apparently the tests are near identical. my test was all questions and just about all 'book knowledge'. hope that helps!

Hyper-Me

I have technet and i'm about to build a box that will do virtualization pretty well so I'll probably throw a copy on there and play with it a bit.

dynamik

The material itself wasn't too bad, but the lack of updated resources made it more difficult. Pretty much everything I used was for 350.

Hyper-Me

Work is sending me to a microsoft course on ISA 2006. Im hoping its better than the 2008 classes i attended last year.

I also sourced the 70-350 CBT nuggets so ill probably review those after the class, and lab a test box and then take this exam in a few weeks.

mrmcmint

Good luck with that! Let us know how you get on. This one is on my hit list at some point this year

HeroPsycho

Hyper-Me wrote: »

Work is sending me to a microsoft course on ISA 2006. Im hoping its better than the 2008 classes i attended last year.

I also sourced the 70-350 CBT nuggets so ill probably review those after the class, and lab a test box and then take this exam in a few weeks.

Get the Tom Shinder book. Best way to learn ISA IMO by far.

Hyper-Me

this one?

Amazon.com: Dr. Tom Shinder's ISA Server 2006 Migration Guide (9781597491990): Thomas W Shinder, Debra Littlejohn Shinder, Adrian F. Dimcev, James Eaton-Lee, Jason Jones, Steve Moffat: Books

veritas_libertas

WoW am I feeling ignorant

I didn't know much about the ISA2006 until I started looking it up. So Microsoft has a Proxy Firewall, huh? Interesting...

On a totally off topic question (TE is famous for this right?) has anyone heard anything about Microsoft doing any new security certifications for the MCTS/MCITP?

[Edit] Just answered my own question: http://www.microsoft.com/learning/en/us/exam.aspx?ID=70-351&locale=en-us

Hyper-Me

Im sure there will also be an MCTS for Forefront Threat Management Gateway 2010 (ISA rename).

HeroPsycho

Hyper-Me wrote: »

this one?

Amazon.com: Dr. Tom Shinder's ISA Server 2006 Migration Guide (9781597491990): Thomas W Shinder, Debra Littlejohn Shinder, Adrian F. Dimcev, James Eaton-Lee, Jason Jones, Steve Moffat: Books

That's the one.

Hyper-Me

day 1 of 3 of the class today.

I think ISA looks more intimidating than it really is.

We are using the ISA Server 2006 Unleashed book for the class.

HeroPsycho

Hyper-Me wrote: »

day 1 of 3 of the class today.

I think ISA looks more intimidating than it really is.

We are using the ISA Server 2006 Unleashed book for the class.

Haven't looked at that book, but Shinder knows more about ISA than most Microsofters. He's forced them to correct their own documentation.

Hyper-Me

I might pick up that Shinder book still.

Unleashed is alright but i prefer to read books like someone is actually teaching it to me, not ones that feel like a service manual.

The intructor is better than the last one I had. This one has done all sorts of contracts for the DoD in setting up various security related stuff, including ISA proxies for lots of bases and soem middle-east theater incident tracking databases.

Hyper-Me

Class as a whole wasnt bad. We didnt really touch VPN stuff that much.

Since second shot is back i will probably take a shot at this in the next week or so, and see what happens.

crrussell3

Let us know how it goes. At my new job, we are using ISA 2006 and I have zero experience with it, so I will be needing to get familiar with it.

wedge1988

HeroPsycho wrote: »

Haven't looked at that book, but Shinder knows more about ISA than most Microsofters. He's forced them to correct their own documentation.

LOL. you really love Shinders book dont you Hero? After bashing it against my head a few times in sharepoint questions i started to read the 70-350 ISA ms-press book, and ill be honest its a great book.

I would move on to this fabled one you speak of but TMG will be my exam mark in the near future, so ill probably miss it.

I do know how to use ISA now though

albeit the book is for ISA 2004, not 2006. shame on MS.

HeroPsycho

wedge1988 wrote: »

LOL. you really love Shinders book dont you Hero? After bashing it against my head a few times in sharepoint questions i started to read the 70-350 ISA ms-press book, and ill be honest its a great book.

I would move on to this fabled one you speak of but TMG will be my exam mark in the near future, so ill probably miss it.

I do know how to use ISA now though albeit the book is for ISA 2004, not 2006. shame on MS.

If you want to pass the ISA exam, you can use the Microsoft book. If you want to pass the exam and really know ISA and get good practical knowledge of the product and know what's good about it compared to other firewalls, how to configure the NICs the right way, how to properly design a more complex ISA solution, etc., use the Shinder book.

I read both of them. About the only downside to the Shinder book is no practice questions for the exam, but it's not like the ones in the MS book are even close to the difficulty of exams you'll get in the actual exam anyway. If you want something like that, get Transcenders for the exam.

The Shinder book is honestly one of the best product specific tech books I've read. It is exceptionally thorough and gives far better practical advice than most other tech books I've read. Shinder is an ISA evangelist with a lot of passion for the product, and it shows in his books. The Mastering vSphere book is also quite a good one along the same lines.

Bulletz

Goodluk on that i will be taking 70-351 next week i been studying it a month plus now but it seems just fine even if i haven't heared of it much, i will def c for myself next week i think is worth to try, one other thing since i will taking my 294 after this exam i think i need to relax cause 294 is much harder accounding to me, so i really don't ned to trp on 351.