Xeno's MCSA/MCSE journey

Well, here we go. I feel like I need somewhere to talk/rant/ramble about all the things I'm learning as well as provide accountability to keep myself on track. I'm starting from square one having never taken a MS exam in my life. I've been working with Server 2003 on a Jr. Admin level for 3 or 4 years now, so I'm familiar with all the basic functions.

Why am I choosing to complete certs on a 7 year old Microsoft OS rather than work on the MCITP?

That's a good question, and one I asked myself before starting on this course. Our domain is still very much mixed between 03 and 08. A total migration is on the horizon, but 03 will be around in our shop for several years to come. Because I've been working with Server 2003 for a few years now, I feel like it would be a waste to have that experience but not be able to put those letters on my resume. I know the MCITP will continue to gain industry exposure as more shops migrate, but the term "MCSE" just has a certain ring to it that will still be there long after the exams are retired.

I titled this thread my "MCSA/MCSE" journey because I'm going to focus on the MCSA for the short term. I've already finished my Security+ so I know the MCSA is do-able in a reasonable amount of time. I'd really like to continue on to the MCSE, but that will largely depend on how tired of MS material I am in a few months. Time will tell.....

So....what am doing at the moment?

I'm working on the 70-290, have watched the CBT Nugget series, and am working through the TestOut/LabSim software. I'm feeling pretty good about most of the topics. I like to start with CBT Nuggets to get a birds eye view of everything. Then the TestOut software helps me really identify the areas I don't understand. I'm going to follow those up with the MS Press book and see where I'm at. Hopefully I'll be ready to sit the exam at that point. I'm looking at a test date sometime in December, but am waiting on the reimbursement from my last cert before I actually book.

I'll try to update here regularly. It should be easy, because my wife is getting tired of hearing me talk about what I'm learning. I've been needing somewhere to put it all down.

If you made it this far, "I hope this has been informative for you, and I'd like to thank you for reading!"

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I'm also on the journey to the MCSA/MCSE

Best of luck on your studies!!

xenodamus wrote: »

When I finish the MCSE it will only be 2 exams for the upgrade anyway.

You need two exams to upgrade to MCITP-SA but you need three exams to upgrade to the MCITP-EA

MCSE Certification | MCSE Training | Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer

za3bour wrote: »

You need two exams to upgrade to MCITP-SA but you need three exams to upgrade to the MCITP-EA

MCSE Certification | MCSE Training | Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer

Aha...good to know. Thanks for clarifying.

General question for anyone/everyone:

With all the overlap between 291/293, I'm trying to decide whether to head straight for the MCSE after 291 or take the 680 and get the MCSA for a psychological boost.

What did you do?

I spent most of this weekend in cram mode for the exam tomorrow. I'm going to do some light reading in the morning and take my exam at 1:30. I feel good overall, but I know I'm a little weak in RRAS and IPSec. It's not that they are overly complicated, there's just alot of info on those topics to remember.

If I manage a pass tomorrow, I'm only 1 exam away from MCSA. I'm on the fence about what to do at that point. I spent a while earlier in the "Post your Lab PICS" thread over in the Cisco forum and it really makes me miss my gear sitting in the corner. Reading about everyone going for their CCNPs and CCIEs makes me wish I was setting up VPNs on an ASA instead of a Windows server.

I tell myself that I should save the advanced networking studies until I have a network focused job. But, I was inches away from taking a Network Engineer position a few weeks ago. I couldn't get an interim clearance, so the deal fell through. I really feel like that's the direction I want to go in the long term, though. Maybe I'm just suffering from burn out after all the hours I put in this weekend. I think I'll cross that bridge after I finish the MCSA.

Whew...passed the beast with a 785. Not one of my best but I'll take it. I'm posting this mobile so I'll reply later with a more detailed review.

Congrats man!

Congratulations, good job

Congrats!!

Congrats!!!!

Thanks, everyone.

So, how bad was "the beast"? It was no walk in the park, but definitely doable if you make sure to cover all the topics thoroughly. I think what gives this exam the bad reputation is that fact that it covers such a wide range of topics. Going in with CCNA level networking knowledge and several years of general IT experience helped alot. Although I'm no expert on all the Windows Server features covered, the topics themselves were easy to grasp with background knowledge to work off.

On this exam, just like my last one, the sims were the easiest part. I know alot of people worry about those sims, but they always seem to be pretty basic tasks. Click a radio button here.....type in an IP address there.

DNS was my weakest area. Microsoft has a way of formatting their questions so that they WILL expose your lack of understanding on a topic. I felt like I had a decent grasp of DNS, but those multiple choice questions will put that to the test.

In the end my resources were:

-Test Out
-CBT Nuggets
-MS Press
-VMware Workstation

I decided I'm going to move on to the 293 next. After getting this deep, I still feel like going for the full MCSE. I could jump on the 680 and grab the MCSA next, but I want to do the 293 while all this info is still fresh in my mind. After browsing the topics, I don't think 293 will take me as long as 291 did. There's alot of overlap.

Good luck to everyone and happy studying!

I've kicked off my 293 studies with TestOut. I'm about halfway through the course and I feel really good about all the topics so far. Granted, I haven't hit PKI or clustering yet. Those look like the 2 big additions to the 291 material. I'm finding that all the repeat DNS and RRAS material is helping to drill in some concepts I may have been weak on when I took the 291. At this point I feel like the exam will be totally doable in 4 weeks or so....end of March maybe? We'll see.....

I finished the TestOut course for 70-293 and I'm feeling pretty good about it. PKI and clustering are the only new curveballs I've seen in this material. Everything else is a review or a spinoff of 291.

I don't think those two topics will cause me that much grief, though. The concepts of a PKI are easy to grasp with some experience and the Security+ behind me. Clustering is a brand new subject to me, but not overly complicated. It will really just be a matter of learning the Windows interface for it.

So, I'm starting on the CBT Nuggets this weekend and waiting on the Syngress book to arrive. I already have the MS Press, and will browse through it as well. But, I've read alot of bad things about it. I'd rather order the extra book just to be safe.

I'm looking forward to knocking this one out since I'll be past the halfway mark at that point. I've been thinking it over and unless theres good reason for me to go for the 294 right after this one, I think I'll do the 680 next. I've been waiting to get around to that exam since we use MDT at work and they want to hand over administration of that system to me soon.

I received the Syngress 293 book in the mail earlier this week (HOLY CRAP). That book looks like an encyclopedia. Cover to cover it's over 1000 pages. I don't think I'll have time to really comb over the entire book before my exam. So, I think I'm just going to focus on the chapters where I feel weak. All of the 291 repeat material gets tiresome anyway.

I'm almost through the CBT Nuggets for this one, though. I'll crack open the 293 encyclopedia after that.

Well...that was the most excruciating exam I have ever taken. Some of those questions were so long I wanted to bang my head on the table halfway through.

This one was worse for me than the 291. The 291 was all configuration and setup. The 293 was more about taking lots of factors into consideration and making high level design choices.

I did pass...barely (733).

I really didn't prep for this one like I should have, though. I took alot of the material for granted since it looked like a repeat of 291. I went through the TestOut course and CBT Nuggets. But, I didn't actually finish either of the books (MS and Syngress). There's a few topics in there I plan to go back over to read/lab a little more in depth.

All in all...tough exam. Don't take this one lightly.

congrats

Congrats Xenodamus! I hope to join you in the next forum. You and I wrote 291 around the same time in February. I hope to knock out 293 this Friday. I was cruising through testout until hitting Certificates, Encryption and Clustering, although I do have lots of experience. Just the volume of information is huge.

Hey a pass is a pass! Congrats.

Nicely done!! That exam is a beast.

Congrats

Congrats, that's tough one. So is 70-294 though!

Thanks everybody - I'm glad to have that one out of the way.

I'm going for the 680 next. I'd like to do the 294 and be done with all my core exams, but the guy who handles our MDT deployment server is leaving in 2 weeks and that system will be left to me. I feel like I have a lot to learn there, so I'll be paying special attention to the deployment chapters.

Right now I've got to sit down and decide what resources to use for this exam. I'll probably head over to the 680 forum and see what everyone is recommending. Anyone with info there feel free to chime in.

Good luck with the 680!
The MS press book is the best resource once you get past the typos and stuff.

It's about time for an update on the 680 studies.

At the moment I'm watching the CBT Nuggets and reading the MS Press in parallel. I have to say, I underestimated this deployment business.... There's a lot of possibilities with these WIM files and the multitude of imaging/deployment tools. In fact, I'm still on the deployment chapters right now (1-3). I don't want to move on until I have really labbed this stuff up.

So, I've got a Windows 7 and Server 08 VM installed and ready to go. Now I'm trying to decide what to do first.......? It looks like they would like for me to start off just using the imagex command to get comfortable working with WIM files. I plan to give that a try tonight. I left my PC downloading the AIK last night. I thought I was going to practice, but found out I needed that GB file first.

This is all a nice change of pace after the 290, 291, and 293 back to back. I'll post again after I play around in the lab for a while. There's quite a few things to try in these chapters.

Woohoo! I just imaged a PC.....

I must say, that was much more involved than the first time I used Norton Ghost in 2002.

My wife is working late, so I'm still at my office playing around. I just:

- Used WSIM to create an answer file
- Performed an unattended installation of Windows 7
- Used sysprep to generalize the reference PC
- Captured the reference PC to a .wim and copied it to a network share
- Deployed the .wim to another PC

I did all that using the "Quick-Start" instructions that come with the WAIK. I found that write up to be much more straight forward than the practice exercises in the MS Press book.

Edit to add: I just realized I'm doing all this at 7 pm on a Friday night....does that make me a geek?

Wow...I've spent the better part of this weekend on nothing but Windows imaging/deployment. I was proud to have accomplished what I did Friday night. But then I got to the few pages about MDT at the end of chapter 3 (MS Press).

They gave a nice overview of MDT 2010 in the press book, but I wanted a little more info, so I went looking around online.

Deploying Windows 7 - Part 1: Windows AIK 2.0 Enhancements

This site is THE BEST mdt walkthrough I've found. If you need to know the ins and outs of deployment using this toolkit I highly recommend going through that entire series of articles. I just finished reading all of them, and I feel like I could take over administration of that system tomorrow.

It's been a very productive weekend. I think I'll watch the CBT on the next chapter and call it a night.

I started looking over the rest of the topics for this exam and feel pretty good about them. Just coming off the 290, 291, and 293.....client OS features are a nice change of pace.

So, I scheduled the 680 for April 29th.

I'm going on a week long vacation right after that, and I don't really want to come home to an exam. So....hopefully I'll be leaving for the beach as an MCSA!

Well, it's been a complicated couple of weeks, lol.

About 2 weeks ago I got a call to interview for a "LAN/WAN Systems Engineer" position with a telco/ISP. I decided to take the week before the interview to brush up on my networking/Cisco knowledge just in case there was some sort of technical interview. I wen't on that interview yesterday, so I've been on a break from MS material.

The interview went well, and I think they liked me for the job, but it paid well below what I'm making now. I think the position was really more of a DSL install tech with a Cisco or Adtran install here and there. Not really what I would be looking for.

But....they went on to tell me that there was another position available that wasn't being advertised working underneath one of their network engineers. This is the guy who gets to install cards in the Cisco 7600 series gear at midnight while everyone else is asleep.....that's the kind of excitement I'm looking for

So, they bring in the engineer and we talk for a while. I think it wen't well and I fit what they're looking for as far as skills and experience level. They said I may hear from them in a few weeks, so we'll see how it pans out.

Meanwhile....I rescheduled my 680 exam for 5/13 and I'm back in the books.

Great news on job interview!!

Well, it looks like I underestimated the 680. I came out with a 682...probably 1-2 questions from passing. It's not a huge surprise, though. I know that I didn't put as much effort into this exam as I should have.

I've been pretty distracted the past few weeks because I'm starting a new job on Monday as a Network Engineer with Lockheed Martin. I really wanted to knock out the 680 before I started the new job because A) it will complete my MCSA, and

I have to pass the CISSP within 6 months in the new joint. I really need to get started on my CISSP, but I feel like I should finish this last MS exam before I do.

I've got the free second shot, so I think I'm going to review my weak areas and schedule a retake for later this week.

Let's see if I can finish what I started......

That's as close as it gets! This is one test that looks easily passable, but isnt because of all the snazzy new server stuff thrown in. I hope you had a lab with a couple server VM's and Win7 VM's to practice on. You should brush up on all those server-related technologies, is what I'd say. Good luck on the retake.

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