70-298 - passed,

Hey everyone,

I passed the 70-298 today. Got my MCSE:Sec now. I actually did shockingly well. Low 900s. So I thought I would come on and share my experience.

I prepared with
1) Community College class covering 70-298/299
2) Microsoft Press
3) vtc.com
4) ISA Server CBTnuggets
5) Already did CCNA:Sec and Sec+ which have some overlap

IPSec - if you have done CCNA:Sec or better than you already have a great understanding of IPSec. I found that the Microsoft material didn't train well on the subject. And there were a few situations that were VERY specific on the components of IPSec.

ISA Server - Seriously, if you have never done VPNs with ISA you are not going to pass. Know what protocols it can and cannot use and how to setup AAA.

IIS - Oddly, very specific about IIS. I was shocked the level of detail. I am sure this is where I got my questions wrong. As a matter of fact I am Googling my mistakes now, and I can see I should, if anything, spent more time here.

Route - know your command line options for the route command.

This had more eliminate obvious wrong answers opportunities than I have ever seen before in a Microsoft exam. I found it best to eliminate the obviously technologically wrong answers, write down the possible on your scratch paper and then filter through the case studies to find supporting evidence.

Over all, I wouldn't expect anyone to get out of this exam early. I needed almost every minute.

Debating if I should Rush XenServer cert next or get track with my Cisco... thoughts?

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Comments

Psoasman

Congrats on your pass! that's a solid score.

DragonNOA1

I didn't see anything about ISA in the objectives for the test.

MentholMoose

Thanks for the info, I'll be taking this one soon. I didn't know there was anything about ISA on 298, and here I thought I was done with ISA. Oh well, at least it's still fresh in my mind.

tbgree00

Trust me, it and IIS are there. IIS is in detail that no book I've looked in covers. After my fail I did a search on the PDFs for the keywords and topics and they don't show up.

The ISA stuff isn't too bad if you remember studying for the other MCSE tests or watched the CBT Nuggets. It's all application and reading between the lines though. I didn't feel like I got enough material from the case study to answer the questions .

ITHokie

tbgree00 wrote: »

Trust me, it and IIS are there. IIS is in detail that no book I've looked in covers. After my fail I did a search on the PDFs for the keywords and topics and they don't show up.

The ISA stuff isn't too bad if you remember studying for the other MCSE tests or watched the CBT Nuggets. It's all application and reading between the lines though. I didn't feel like I got enough material from the case study to answer the questions .

That is really strange because, as someone already pointed out, ISA is not mentioned at all in the objectives. For those of us that did Security+ for the elective, this would be kind of annoying. Has anyone else gotten questions on it?

DragonNOA1

After reviewing the objectives, you have to mean IAS; creating VPN's and the different authentication protocols that work with IAS. Sorry, but the fact that ISA would be so heavily tested on this exam just doesn't make sense. You said you should be fine if you took previous exams, well previous exams didn't have ISA but they did have IAS. You must have your acronyms mixed up.

Something that has been bugging me that I just had to point out. Good day to all!