MCDST... what's the difference?

Mike-Mike

what's the difference between MCDST and the 270? obviously there are two different tests for the MCDST, but information wise.... I'm confused here

brianeaglesfan

I think the 270 focuses more on implementing and administrating the OS whereas the 271 / 272 cover supporting it and the apps running on it. I took all the tests but am not really sure there's any value in having all 3 unless you want the MCDST plus plan on pursuing a higher level cert, such as MCSA or MCSE. If you just want an MCP 271 gives you that.

Devilsbane

270 is implementing. 271 and 272 are maintaining and user/app support. But yes, there are lots of similarities.

Psoasman

The 270 covers more of the enterprise environment and it more difficult than the 271. the 272 covers a lot of IE, some MS office, and some other user options.
Interestingly enough, both the 270 and 271 MS press books have entire chapters that are almost word for word.

RobertKaucher

One major difference I recall was in the 271 you needed to watch the role assigned to you in a question. It would state "You are a desktop support agent for company X. A user calls and complains that her etc..." The issue comes down to the fact that she does not have NTFS permissions on a shared folder she needs access to. There would be two possible answsers:
A. Contact the server administrator.
B. Change the NTFS permissions to allow her user account read only access to the folder.

The correct anser would be A - not B. The idea being a desktop support agent would not be allowed to change NTFS permissions on a folder and that granting access to a single user would not be best practice. So you need to watch for stuff like that.

Mike-Mike

is one a higher cert than the other?

Repo Man

They both give you the MCP certification. Main difference is 270 can be used as an elective for MCSA/MCSE while 271 is half of MCDST. Because of how easy 272 is I'd do go the MCDST then the Win 7 client exam to give you a good foundation in both OS'es