1Y1-A24 - XenServer 5.6 Beta

stupidboy

I am all booked up for November

Any other takers?

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stupidboy

The Study List so far

MentholMoose

Registered, thanks for the heads up.

stupidboy

Still only a little love for XenServer then

wd40

How do we register, is there a beta code?

I Love Free Exams

stupidboy

Just log in to Pearson Vue and book away, no code needed and it is all at no cost (except your time of course). The exam is 1Y1-A24 located at the bottom of the list.

wd40

Thanks

Non of the testing centers is open on weekends or after working hours

I will have to check with the boss if I can take a day off

stupidboy

wd40 wrote: »

Non of the testing centers is open on weekends or after working hours

Even in London there are only a few centres open at weekends.

wd40 wrote: »

I will have to check with the boss if I can take a day off

I think that you will need a day, 265 minutes are allocated for this one.

Fugazi1000

I'm booked in.

Any idea of what's going to be included? I note that a forthcoming 5 day course for XS 5.6 includes 2 days of Provisioning Server. Will the beta exam cover that as well as XS and XenCenter?

stupidboy

Fugazi1000 wrote: »

I'm booked in.

Welcome on board the crazy train

Fugazi1000 wrote: »

Any idea of what's going to be included? I note that a forthcoming 5 day course for XS 5.6 includes 2 days of Provisioning Server. Will the beta exam cover that as well as XS and XenCenter?

I have no ideas on what to expect at the moment and to be honest I am cramming like mad for my vSphere 4 exam next week

I will start thinking about the exam the week after and looking at what to brush up on. I would say that if there are two days on provisioning it would at least be good to be aware of some of the key components.

Fugazi1000

Without wanting to break the NDA....

Just took this and needed 75% of the time available. Hundreds of questions.

Some areas I felt my knowledge lacking was HA and StorageLink. Home labs cannot prepare you for some of the questions - so really understand how to recover from various failure scenarios.

Some repeat questions. Not sure of the right strategy for answering those when not 100% sure of the answer. Answer differently for each and hedge your bets, or be 100% wrong (or or right)...?

Now just waiting for the email from PearsonVue.....

Mishra

stupidboy wrote: »

Still only a little love for XenServer then

I just posted a blog article about XenServer.. oooo

Dunno if and when I will be pursing the certification. Look at signing up for the Beta for the fun of it.

Mishra

It says it's not available for delivery.

MentholMoose

Yikes, StorageLink. The SAN at work doesn't support SL so I've never used it. I'll try to set it up in the home lab before taking the exam. Anything on WLB?

Fugazi1000

WLB is definitely something to know about.

MentholMoose

Very interesting! The XS 5.0 Enterprise exam doesn't really cover the Enterprise-specific features at all. I guess that is going to change for the 5.6 Enterprise exam. I will have to lab up the stuff I don't use much. If there's anything on PVS server I will be fine, though, since I have a lot of experience on it (and the CCA for it). For reference here is the edition matrix:
Citrix Systems Server virtualization, virtual server - XenServer Editions

Fugazi1000

My view of the Enterprise (Platinum) Edition of XenServer 5.6 is that it is very much catching up with vSphere. It's surpassed Hyper-V (which does have it's niche place in the world) and has got most of the features that ESX 3.x has/had.

It needs to be better marketed now.....

stupidboy

I think this might help with some of the advanced features and it is free

Even if it is 6 hours

stupidboy

This looks good ... 2 hours is a long time but hey

ehnde

Registration for the beta exam closes on Monday, November 22, 2010 so visit Citrix Testing with Pearson VUE to register now and take advantage of this limited offer. Registration is on a first-come, first-serve basis, so don't delay - good luck!

Does that mean you have to take the exam by Nov 22nd, or just register?

stupidboy

ehnde wrote: »

Does that mean you have to take the exam by Nov 22nd, or just register?

I was not able to schedule the exam after this date so I would assume that means register and take by.

stupidboy

I would suggest that the resources I posted last are well studied. There seemed to be a lot of focus on few areas with a few off this track.

I found the sheer number of questions over the time a mental barrier and wish that Citrix would use the Microsoft approach for future betas

Not sure I will pass I think that if I get a good 50% I'll be happy.

I see that CAG5 has entered development, keep any eye for any beta exam

Good luck all.

MentholMoose

Does anyone have any suggested reading for StorageLink? I'm not going to have time to lab it, unfortunately, but would like to read an overview or something. I am currently labbing WLB using the XS 5.6 admin guide, which (I hope) is adequate.

stupidboy

MentholMoose wrote: »

Does anyone have any suggested reading for StorageLink? I'm not going to have time to lab it, unfortunately, but would like to read an overview or something. I am currently labbing WLB using the XS 5.6 admin guide, which (I hope) is adequate.

Introducing Citrix Essentials for XenServer 5.5 has a module on it

There is also a demo on www.citrix.tv but the audio is poor and there is over 2 hours worth of stuff including WLB

MentholMoose

Just took the exam, it was ridiculously long. After two hours I was getting tired, after three I was just exhausted. But, I hung in there and gave a reasonably consistent effort for the nearly four hours it took me to finish. Anyway, I'm hopeful that I will get a passing score.

stupidboy

MentholMoose wrote: »

Just took the exam, it was ridiculously long. After two hours I was getting tired, after three I was just exhausted. But, I hung in there and gave a reasonably consistent effort for the nearly four hours it took me to finish. Anyway, I'm hopeful that I will get a passing score.

Was the content of the Citrix Essentials eLearning useful to you?

A guy at the office took this beta a few days after me any reports totally different feel for the exam, which I found interesting.

Glad you stuck it out it was tough going.

MentholMoose

The eLearning was helpful, though for the exam I mostly relied on experience. I use most of the features of XS Enterprise on a regular basis at work. I built and work with a XenDesktop environment on XenServer and Provisioning Services, have performed updates and upgrades, use XenConvert often (I did two P2Vs on Friday at work), use RBAC, HA, dynamic memory, snapshots, and so on. I've also done fairly extensive troubleshooting. The only major features I didn't have experience with were WLB, which I labbed this week, and StorageLink (the SAN I use at work is not compatible with SL), which I am at least familiar with.

I can understand being pessimistic about the results. It is very easy to miss a large number of questions on the beta exam. However, since there are so many questions, I think most of them won't end up counting, and you can pass even if you did bad in certain areas.

One thing that really helped me a lot on the exam was the Citrix support forums. There were many questions about some minutia that I only knew about due to being active on their forums. The environment at work is essentially static, so I don't have a lot of experience with different configurations, and the forums give me exposure to that.

MentholMoose

Just got the results via email:

Thank you for taking the 1Y1-A24 Citrix XenServer 5.6 Administration beta exam. Congratulations! You passed the exam with a score of 86%.

Your record will be updated accordingly in Certification Manager within the next 7-10 business days, and you will receive a detailed score report from Pearson Vue within 4-6 weeks via standard mail.

stupidboy

Nice work and a good score.

I'm still waiting for the Vue website to update ... Yawn!

Fugazi1000

I also got the 'congrats' email - score not so high - must lab more!!!!

Well done to all others who have passed.

stupidboy

Finally got my email saying:

Thank you for taking the 1Y1-A24 Citrix XenServer 5.6 Administration beta exam. Congratulations! You passed the exam with a score of 78%.

Your record will be updated accordingly in Certification Manager within the next 7-10 business days, and you will receive a detailed score report from Pearson Vue within 4-6 weeks via standard mail.

Thank you for your understanding and continued support of Citrix Certification. If you have questions regarding this notification, please email training@citrix.com.