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Good luck on your quest. Make sure you get plenty of study on AD especially Group policy and also certificate services as those get tested thoroughly throughout the EA trek. Glad to hear you're getting into the Matering Server R2 book as that is really a good resource. A lot has changed between Server 2003 and Server 2008 (server 2008 R2) and one of the big things is server core and also having Server Manager to centralize a lot of tasks. Good to see that you're gonna be labbing both Server 2008 and Server 2008 R2 as then you will get the breadth of all the different Roles and features available that you need to have knowledge about.

erpadmin

If you did ANY sort of studying in Vegas, I would tip my hat to you and give you a proper salute...

Anything that involves your MCITP:EA studies, should go here. What books/videos you are reading, what chapters you read, what section you watched...stuff like that. There's no "wrong or right way"....it's just to get you to motivate yourself (and hopefully others) to pass. In my case, the MCITP:EA is part of my studies for a degree, so I only hurt myself by not completing it. I should have been an MCSE A LONG time ago (back in the NT 4.0 days), but lazniess, financial stupidity, and a whole lotta other things prohibited me from doing it. Now, many of those shortcomings have been corrected, so I can do what I gotta do.

I look forward to reading your thread and wish you the best of luck!

rogue2shadow

I look forward to this journey!

erpadmin

xmalachi wrote: »

The closest that studying will make it to Vegas is on the plane coming into the airport and leaving the airport. I'm there to have a good time

Vegas is my graduation present to myself (one of them...

). If I go to WGU's commencement at Salt Lake City, I'm running (not walking) to the airport to get down to Vegas!

Then it's gonna be a nice week of good times. (Not written in stone though...but it's a plan!

)

lockdnloaded

Good stuff...... Keep it coming!

earweed

@Xmalachi- How about putting some of those thoughts about the book in my reviewing Mastering 2008 R2 thread. Your review of those sections of the book are very insightful and concise.

erpadmin

xmalachi wrote: »

I must say, anyone who is looking to learn about Server 2008 NEEDS to pick up this book. I am only 3 chapters in and I have learned a ton. I know that I am not going to be disappointed with the rest of this book also. In addition to all that, this book is going to serve as a reference for me for quite some time. The stuff in here is absolutely foundational, if you don't know much about the Server OS they break it down very well. Nonetheless, I probably will get a little bit of reading in today at work and then tonight and tomorrow will be crammed so I won't get to look at this book.

After reading this post, you make me want to download the Kindle App and read the Mastering I bought....I don't want to wait until I get home (something told me to bring the Kindle to work too!!). This weekend I spent a good time on Labsim and subnetting.

Actually, you know what......I think I will.

Sounds like it's something I can blaze through like Get Certified...I so want to know about the "latte sipping admin" or "sexy Chad" (please don't ruin that for me....I want to read it first...lol).

earweed

@Xmalachi- I'm mostly posting about the chapters pertinent to only the 70-643. I'm also posting a little about the Unleashed book as well. The unleashed book is different from the Mastering book mostly in that you will want to be labbing when you read it as that helps a lot.
I'd rather you post your thought on the chapters as you go along if you don't mind.

earweed

Probably a good choice as we don't even know if R2 stuff is on the 648 yet. Even if R2 is on the exam it probably wont make it that different.
Good luck in your studies for the 648.

earweed

For anyone coming up on this track the Labsim for the 70-643 is the best resource I have used thus far. I've had a bit of difficulty with this test and If I had access to the Labsim before my first try at the exam (or earlier than I got it so I could have completed it prior to my second attempt) I would have passed it. The labsim videos go into more detail and give better explanations than any of the books I've used thus far. It also provides a p[ractice test engine that is very good.

Claymoore

I took the 649 exam before the MS Press upgrade was released and relied on resource kits for my material:

http://www.techexams.net/forums/mcts-mcitp-windows-2008-general/38621-70-649-exam-review.html

I am trying to understand your upgrade path since you have an MCSA and want to get to an EA.

648 - Upgrade MCSA to MCITP:SA - counts as 640 and 642
643 - Application Infrastructure
647 - Enterprise Administrator
680 - Windows 7 Client Exam.

Is that correct?

Claymoore

I wanted to make sure we were talking about the 648 exam so I could give you better advice. Here is the Overview section from the 648 exam, and you can get the full Skills Measured here:

About this Exam
Exam 70-648 is an upgrade exam that is a composite of two stand-alone exams: 70-640 and 70-642. Exam 70-648 validates skills related to the core technology features and functionality of Windows Server 2008, from the existing knowledge base of a Microsoft Certified Systems Administrator (MCSA) on Windows Server 2003.

Exam Topics Covered
Exam 70-648 is an upgrade exam that is a composite of two stand-alone exams: 70-640 and 70-642. Exam 70-648 validates skills related to the core technology features and functionality of Windows Server 2008, from the existing knowledge base of a Microsoft Certified Systems Administrator (MCSA) on Windows Server 2003. The key topics for each source exam, plus the percentage of material per topic for each exam, are noted in the following lists. See the "Skills measured" section of this page to learn about the testing objectives of Exam 70-648.

Exam 70-640: TS: Windows Server 2008 Active Directory, Configuring
•Configuring Additional Active Directory Server Roles (11 percent)
•Maintaining the Active Directory Environment (15 percent)
•Configuring Active Directory Certificate Services (14 percent)

Exam 70-642: TS: Windows Server 2008 Network Infrastructure, Configuring
•Configuring IP Addressing and Services (24 percent)
•Configuring Network Access (22 percent)
•Monitoring and Managing a Network Infrastructure (14 percent)

For the 640 section, chapters 14-19 of the Active Directory Resource Kit should cover it. You should look for some resources on Read-Only DCs and use the links from the specific categories in the 640 sticky for more information.

For the 642 section you may have to get more creative. You can always reference the sections in the 642 sticky, and there are some free downloads like TCP/IP Fundamentals and the Core Network Guide. I used the 642 Exam Cram as my primary resource when I took the 649 exam, but I also used Understanding IPv6 for an overview of IPv6. Be sure to do some labs on NAP (there is an entire book on NAP, but that would be overkill) and understand WSUS, and you should be good.

Keep in mind that this is an upgrade exam. The base 642 objectives may include DHCP, but unless that has changed dramatically, don't expect any questions on it. MS assumes that because you have an MCSA that you already have these core skills. Focus on what has changed, be sure to cover any existing weak areas, and you will be fine.

MentholMoose

LDS was previously called ADAM. If you need to use LDAP for something but don't want to add it to your AD, then use ADAM/LDS. I don't recall ever having to create one manually, other than for testing. It's used by various applications, but the application installer will usually create and configure the ADAM instance for you, and the application management tools will manage it, so you basically don't deal with it. Two apps I've used that use ADAM are Microsoft ISA Server and VMware vCenter.

ltgenspecific

xmalachi wrote: »

Tell me about AD LDS I'm really having some issues digesting the information on it in the 648 book. I may reference some of the material that Claymoore had listed above.. I really wanted to get some real world examples to get a better idea of what situations it may be used it. I plan on labbing it tonight but I don't know how much that will help me. Thanks in advance! I will add to this if I find anything else that helps me out with it for others.

If you have access to a 70-640 book, AD LDS is covered pretty well within my MSPress Training Kit book. As you're upgrading you won't be covering the 70-640 specifically(I believe) but it's got a fairly sizable layout of it.

Hope it helps.

"WServer2K8 includes a new ADLDS role that provides developers the ability to store data for directory-enabled applications without incurring the overhead of extending the AD schema to support their applications. Each AD LDS instance has its own schema... ...this allows developers to create, deploy, and upgrade directory-enabled applications without worrying about the one-way nature of AD schema modifications."
- MCTS 70-640 Official Academic Course

**The key is in the avoidance of one-way schema mods, as I took it. Could be wrong but this is the only meta-instance I run into use of it in labs.

Essendon

Damn man that sucks. I suggest reading up on TechNet on your weak areas and labbing it up even more. I hope you had 2008 R2 running on your VM's. What was your lab setup?

earweed

Sorry to hear that. It took me 4 tries to pass that sucker. For me the thing that helped the most (even more than studying R2) was doing the Labsim. It's probably too expensive for you to get, I got it free through WGU. Big things on the test for me were IIS and RDS. Study the technet articles.