Yippee!! I'm an MCITP:EA

LCA

The exam took me 2 hours and 30 minutes and scored 775. Didn't think Id passed it at the end to be honest. The exam had 28 general questions and 4 scenario's with 7 + 7 + 11 + 12 questions respectively.

The networks in the scenario's all had multiple forests and a lot of other infrastructure with stuff like Exchange 2010, Forefront technologies, SQL Server 2008 R2. Having a good working knowledge of virtualization and also RODC's is a must for 647. The domains were a real mixture of all kinds of functional levels. The questions can be answered by anyone who has genuine knowledge and experience of Windows Server in a large enterprise.

Of the exams I loved 640 cause AD really rows my boat, ditto for 647 as network planning is also a real passion of mine. I didn't think 642 was especially hard whilst 643 is nothing short of a beast and was for me tedious to study. 680 is a bit of a sleeper as many here have found as I did that it is no pushover.




The is a very proud day for yours truly as I started studying the 680 exam 12 months ago.

Repo Man

Congrats man. What you have planned next?

cisco_certs

How long did it took you to finished the whole EA? I'm wondering because I need to plan to study for it after my CCNP-Security

Essendon

Nicely done mate. Congrats! What's next, SQL I believe?

Just with the scenario questions, are they like "XYZ company has a 2003 DFL domain and wants to introduce 2008R2 DC's and bump the DFL to 2008R2" and then asks a series of questions such as "What would you do first" and "What would they need to do to introduce RODC's". Just want to know what to expect before I go in.

LCA

Thanks for the kind remarks everyone!

Congrats man. What you have planned next?

It's going to be 70-432 - "Microsoft SQL Server 2008, Implementation and Maintenance". That'll keep me out of mischief for a while.......

How long did it took you to finished the whole EA? I'm wondering because I need to plan to study for it after my CCNP-Security

I started studying for all this in January 2010 the order I did the exams was 680 (Win7), 642, 640, 643, and 647. I did study 640 and 642 together as both are so intertwined in what they cover esp DNS. I did hundreds of hours of labbing stuff on VM's, for me the more complicated the better. It really helped me understand topics such as certificates.

One of the big things for me as I mentioned above I had a ball studying most of the topics so it never became a chore (though IIS never rowed my boat).

Just with the scenario questions, are they like "XYZ company has a 2003 DFL domain and wants to introduce 2008R2 DC's and bump the DFL to 2008R2" and then asks a series of questions such as "What would you do first" and "What would they need to do to introduce RODC's". Just want to know what to expect before I go in.

There was that type of stuff in there, as mentioned above a lot of questions about introducing new technologies into existing domains etc. The scenario's are probably around a couple of A4 pages long and cover future plans, security requirements, and network infrastructure requirements etc.

It's not just a Windows Server exam, MS require that the exam candidate have a very good understanding how various technologies and products fit into large network designs. I better not say much more incase I'm starting to overstep the NDA.

cisco_certs

Thanks, so i probably need a year also to prepare. Yah I gotta play around with the VM's at my work lab.

Essendon

Out of curiosity, you had what 65 questions to be done in how many hours? When I booked mine, it said the exam duration was 4 hours, I know the actual exam is usually less but how long was your exam? And thanks for the info on the scenarios, I am going to come up with my own scenarios and see what I can do about them.

LCA

Essendon wrote: »

Out of curiosity, you had what 65 questions to be done in how many hours? When I booked mine, it said the exam duration was 4 hours, I know the actual exam is usually less but how long was your exam? And thanks for the info on the scenarios, I am going to come up with my own scenarios and see what I can do about them.

The overall time was 195 minutes but it is broken up ie. the first part of 28 questions they give you an hour. The 11 and 12 question scenarios had a time allowance of about 40 minutes each. The two 7 questions scenario's were approx 20 minutes each. Bear in mind each part is separate so the spare time doesn't carry over and once each block of questions is finished off you cannot go back.

The questions in the scenario's in particular really do cover a wide array of topics and MS products.

HTH

za3bour

Congratulations and thanks a lot for explaining about the exam it self. It seems similar to what I had in 70-646 it was also 4 scenarios but with less questions.

I really hope I can pass this exam from first try, it doesn't seem like an easy exam and to be honest I'm not that familiar with Forfront for example so maybe I should get a trial and play with it before the exam.

Psoasman

Congrats on the new cert!

veritas_libertas

Congratz!

SilverGenius

Congrats! Very Nice!
The MCITP:EA is one of my goals that I am working towards, I need to set up some vm's to work with some of the technologies though.

ltgenspecific

Awesome job man! Congrats!

I'm staring down the same barrell for the upcoming year, glad to hear it can be accomplished in the same timeline.

badboyeee

Great accomplishment, congrats!

marcels

Congrats! must be a great feeling to have this cert.

Excellent1

Well done! Congratulations on your hard work over the past year--it paid off.

mikedisd2

Congrats on achieving the goal and thanks for the insite into this cert. Seems a bit different to the MCSE exams.

LCA

Again, thanks for the kind remarks everyone, much appreciated.

To the people who are going to do this exam in the future, the 647 resources thread started by Earweed and with further urls added by myself does cover many of the topics in the exam. The IPD planning guides mentioned by Claymoore are as he points out are excellent and should be compulsory reading for anyone doing 647. They get right to heart of things.

I will have another prowl around Technet and see if there is anything else worth addng to the resources listed.