70-646 before 70-640 and 70-642?

Chiss

Hi, first time posting.

My office decided to train us up on the latest products that are out there and therefore I was placed on a course which introduced the 70-646 exam Windows 2008 Server Administrator. This is my first time learning about Windows Servers, although I have worked on them over the last few years.

Cutting a long story short, for the last few weeks I've been studying the material and have some grasp of the concepts, but feel I need some more time I booked an exam but have rescheduled it to January due to an increase in workload.

Now that I have more time, I'm in two minds whether it might be better to switch to doing 640 and/or 642 before doing 646, would this be better?

Or should I stay the course and solidify my knowledge in 646 and complete it in January?

Thanks for your replies in advance.

earweed

Welcome to TE!
Since the 646 uses so much of what you would learn by studying for the 640/642 you should probably do those first. You may have experience with some of the stuff but probably not enough to pass the 646 exam. If you want just study the objectives for the 640/642 and take the 646 test first or just reschedule your 646 test as either 640 or 642. Since you have some server experience the order of the 640/642 doesn't matter much. If you were a noob to servers then I would say do them 640 > 642 > 646.

neathneathneath

earweed wrote: »

Welcome to TE!
Since the 646 uses so much of what you would learn by studying for the 640/642 you should probably do those first. You may have experience with some of the stuff but probably not enough to pass the 646 exam. If you want just study the objectives for the 640/642 and take the 646 test first or just reschedule your 646 test as either 640 or 642. Since you have some server experience the order of the 640/642 doesn't matter much. If you were a noob to servers then I would say do them 640 > 642 > 646.

Agree. I had big problems with the exam style of the 646, so I would recommend the above route also.

alokin123

I did my exams in this order

70-642
70-646
70-643
70-640
70-647

It might seem a bit strange to some but i was aiming for SA (for performance review time) and then EA depending on timing. It turns out i go both before my performance review.

Whether or not you are looking at the 70-643 exam i would highly recommend you look at the objectives for this exam and match them up with the objectives for the 70-646 exam as there is plenty of overlap (same with 70-640 and 70-647). I studied for them both at the same time and found it helped me pass.

From memory, the 70-646 exam had a lot of stuff on Terminal Servers, Server Deployment and requirements, Application Deployment, Clustering, SAN, WSUS and a minimal amount of group policy and AD stuff.

The trick to this exam is to read the questions carefully. It will test you more on your knowledge of the techology rather than asking you the practical questions so you need to know when you would use one technology over another.

za3bour

I don't recommend doing 646 first unless you're really experienced with Windows 2008 this exam was really hard, the hardest I did so far.

I suggest you do 642/640 first (order doesn't really matter chose what you're more comfortable with first) then do 646.

Good Luck

Chiss

Ok, thanks for the advice, I think I'll push the 646 back further and work towards 642 and 640 first.