Passed 70-643

SamHawkins

Passed 70-643 today with a score of 746 so not great but atleast it is a pass. what are peoples opinions on 70-680 as that is my next exam towards MCITP EA

earweed

Congrats on the pass! I'm working on this on now.

SamHawkins

good luck. how long have you been studying? how close do you think you are?

earweed

I've been studying about 2-3 weeks off and on (actually spent over a week not touching anything). I've been busy and having a hard time getting motivated. I'm just starting the IIS and it looks like that'll be the hardest part for me. I'm scheduled for Sep 7 to take the exam.
I spent a lot of time labbing the early chapters as I set up Hyper-V and have been playing with it a lot. I've done some really neat stuff way beyond the normal MS Press kit labs with storage, deployment, and availability. I'm setting up a server farm later today just to get a hands on feel. Doing extra labbing is helping me to get back on track with my studies.
I did a lot of extra reading in the terminal services resource Kit as I've heard the test is heavy on TS.
I've got 5 weeks to finish the last 2 areas (Configuring a web services infrastructure and configuring network application services) and then do my final revise and start practice testing and reviewing.
I probaly should have scheduled my test earlier but work has been keeping me busy and family obligations and all.

texasit

SamHawkins wrote: »

Passed 70-643 today with a score of 746 so not great but atleast it is a pass. what are peoples opinions on 70-680 as that is my next exam towards MCITP EA

Congrads man. As far as the 70-680 its not as hard as any of the server level tests but it is not a walk in the park either.I used the mspress book and the testout videos for this test.

za3bour

Congratulations on the pass, what are the books that you used ? it's next on my list how do you rate it's difficulty comparing to 640 and 642 ?

As for 70-680 I used only one book the MS one and it was pretty good but make sure you get the list of corrections because there were many errors in the first edition.

The book itself is enough but you need to lab (get Win 2008R2) and you will be fine. I got 860 for it after studying for one month (3-4 hours daily)

Good Luck

beany101

Good work - I found this the hardest of the MCSA/MCITP:EA track.

SamHawkins

The only book that i used was the MS training kit book. i unfortunately dont have any spare computers to lab things up but the book seemed to cover everything. i was able to do the 640 and 642 in the upgrade exam so some parts i didnt have to cover. i found the topics easier in 640 and 642 as alot was building on what i had covered for my MCSA 2003. so for that i would say 643 was harder as it was more new topics for me.

hope that helps and good luck

Michael.J.Palmer

Congrats on the pass, as for the 680 it's actually a beast as far as OS configuration exams go so don't take it lightly.

I used the MS Press Book and did every lab in it to make sure I understood most of the objectives. Along with that I also watched the LearnKey videos for it (which are excellent btw) and managed to get a 914 on it after about 4 weeks of studying.

SamHawkins

Cheers I will remember that. how many hours a day were you putting in as i never seem to be able to get the study done that quick

Michael.J.Palmer

I've got in class study two nights a week (four hours a night) and at home I probably studied an additional 15-20 hours throughout the week (never did break it up evenly per day, just whenever I could study I did). I'm a strong visual learner so the videos really did it for me, I was able to see it, hear it, and do it in labs and that just solidified everything to me enough to get a decent score.

I'm sure no matter what you are able to use, whether it's just the MS book or that plus other sources that you'll do just fine.