Exchange 2010 - 3rd Attempt @ 70-662

genXrcist

Well, I've taken some time off from studying as my job demands have been high. But now I'm back and ready to take this sucker down.

I just finished setting up my lab of two separate forests each with their own independent Exchange organization on VMWare Workstation. Each forest also has one Virtual PC with Office 2010 running on it and I have verified email going between the organizations.

My first two attempts were met with Fails because I don't know all the nuance differences between 2007 & 2010 as well as the different Power Shell syntax's. My hope this time around is to really lab the Heck out of Exchange and get very comfortable with EMS. I have a heavy focus on Message Compliance & Monitoring this time around as those are the areas I scored low in on my first two attempts.

I'll post back as I have my "Ah Ha" moments and when I schedule/take the exam.

Essendon

Good luck with the next attempt, 3rd time's the charm! When do you intend scheduling it? Also if I could ask another question, have you used the Pocket Consultant book? How would you rate it (if you have read it)?

genXrcist

Thanks! I'm shooting for early April as I'm pretty busy at work. I bought Exchange 2010 Best Practices so I'll be using that to prep even though it wasn't written for the exam.

I like the pocket consultant books though so I think I'll check that out!

When are you hoping to test?

Essendon

I'm going to start on the 662 as soon as I have finished the 647. Hope to start on it by March end. Going to use:

1. The Pocket Consultant book
2. The CBT Nuggets
3. My lab (building a new rig atm)
4. The Instant Reference book
5. The 2010 Unleashed book
6. TechNet
7. Also have the Best Practices book, might flip a few pages through it now that you've mentioned it.

With all the above resources at hand, if I fail I should bury my head in the sand.

jibbajabba

genXrcist wrote: »

Well, I've taken some time off from studying as my job demands have been high. But now I'm back and ready to take this sucker down.

I just finished setting up my lab of two separate forests each with their own independent Exchange organization on VMWare Workstation. Each forest also has one Virtual PC with Office 2010 running on it and I have verified email going between the organizations.

My first two attempts were met with Fails because I don't know all the nuance differences between 2007 & 2010 as well as the different Power Shell syntax's. My hope this time around is to really lab the Heck out of Exchange and get very comfortable with EMS. I have a heavy focus on Message Compliance & Monitoring this time around as those are the areas I scored low in on my first two attempts.

I'll post back as I have my "Ah Ha" moments and when I schedule/take the exam.

Good luck - you were always damn close - I am sure you can get that this time .. As for powershell - you always get the used PS command after each configuration and you have a link on every page which shows the PS command for any changes you made. I always copied that into a notepad or something and tried to understand the command and maybe change it slightly and perform additional changes or try to un-do with PS what I just did with the UI .. helps a lot.

Essendon wrote: »

I'm going to start on the 662 as soon as I have finished the 647. Hope to start on it by March end. Going to use:

1. The Pocket Consultant book
2. The CBT Nuggets
3. My lab (building a new rig atm)
4. The Instant Reference book
5. The 2010 Unleashed book
6. TechNet
7. Also have the Best Practices book, might flip a few pages through it now that you've mentioned it.

With all the above resources at hand, if I fail I should bury my head in the sand.

Sounds good, although I found the CBT Nuggets extremely short compared to the Trainsignal ones.

#3 is the most important thing .. I had a big lab myself - thanks to virtualization all you need is one physical server anyway

Try to build as many environments as possible. I for example started to run my personal email off a "test" Exchange VMs .. in fact - it is still buzzing lol ...

Apart from the UM role you should be able to test every single role with a real domain - might be worth even grabbing a cheap domain from godaddy or something so you can properly test it and not just go through exercises in books / CBTs

genXrcist

Essendon wrote: »

I'm going to start on the 662 as soon as I have finished the 647. Hope to start on it by March end. Going to use:

1. The Pocket Consultant book
2. The CBT Nuggets
3. My lab (building a new rig atm)
4. The Instant Reference book
5. The 2010 Unleashed book
6. TechNet
7. Also have the Best Practices book, might flip a few pages through it now that you've mentioned it.

With all the above resources at hand, if I fail I should bury my head in the sand.

I wouldn't say that Essendon. I had a week long class, Transcender, CBTNuggets & the MS Press book. I think this one more than any other exam I've taken (sans CCNA) really requires a lot of labbing to "know" it. The concepts are easy. Administration takes practice.

Gomjaba wrote: »

Good luck - you were always damn close - I am sure you can get that this time .. As for powershell - you always get the used PS command after each configuration and you have a link on every page which shows the PS command for any changes you made. I always copied that into a notepad or something and tried to understand the command and maybe change it slightly and perform additional changes or try to un-do with PS what I just did with the UI .. helps a lot.

Thanks Gomjaba! I really like the suggestion of undoing what I just did because even if I have all the PS commands in front of me it's still rote memorization until I actually run the commands and tweak the system. There's too much to memorize for this exam so the only alternative in my opinion is to lab it up so much that the memorization comes naturally.

I will also look into using a cheap domain as well. Thanks!

jibbajabba

genXrcist wrote: »

I will also look into using a cheap domain as well. Thanks!

It is worth it - at least you can test email even through the internet as well ...

peakbagger66

Gomjaba wrote: »

It is worth it - at least you can test email even through the internet as well ...

I agree - a "live" domain is well worth it for this exam.

Something else I did for practice was to take the situations outlined in the Transcender/Measureup questions and replicate them - within reason, of course.

jibbajabba

peakbagger66 wrote: »

I agree - a "live" domain is well worth it for this exam.

Something else I did for practice was to take the situations outlined in the Transcender/Measureup questions and replicate them - within reason, of course.

Plus I even got a certificate lol .. but yea - it is worth doing more than just reading / test questions ... A shame Exchange is rock solid lol - don't get any issues to fix or mails to restore

Essendon

genXrcist wrote: »

I wouldn't say that Essendon. I had a week long class, Transcender, CBTNuggets & the MS Press book. I think this one more than any other exam I've taken (sans CCNA) really requires a lot of labbing to "know" it. The concepts are easy. Administration takes practice.

Thank you for the advice there mate. I wouldnt take the exam lightly, that's for sure.

genXrcist

Alright guys, I'm back after failing a 3rd time. I failed back in April on my 3rd attempt and was so down hearted I didn't even post. I told my manager it wasn't worth trying again until I had more practical experience running Exchange 2010 but he insisted I keep pushing. So he purchased Exchange 2010 Inside Out (which includes SP1) and let me just say this.

Do not take this exam with the training Kit as your study source. There is so much not in that book it's laughable. Active Manager? What's that? Difference between Managed Folders and Recipient Policies/Tags? Yeah right. That training book sucks and now I know by how much. I've learned so much about Exchange 2010 now I'm so glad I did fail cuz that certification would have meant nothing. I completely rebuilt my lab with two seperate Forests and Exchange Organizations so I could completely setup all the receive/send connectors and have a working email infrastructure. Ran through a lot of the PowerShell commands and while I certainly don't have all that stuff memorized I know a lot more than I did when I took this exam before. I did everything in my labs except for setting up Federated Gateway.

Anyway, taking the exam again on Tuesday, 6/28 and if I pass the 70-662 I will be taking the 70-663 on Thursday.

What started last November and was supposed to take me a month has taken 8 months so I'm really hoping for a pass on Tuesday and Thursday as my Cisco studies have been on hold for a while.

Wish me luck!

Essendon

Sorry to hear that, I know it sucks. Also when hasnt an MS Press book sucked? When hasnt it lacked the depth needed to pass an exam?

Maybe push the exam further out till you have some practical experience with it and then come back and hit it hard? A colleague of mine has been designing Exchange 2010 for our company (we're going from 2003 to 2010) and he's failed it twice too, also got stuff on the test he's never heard of.

Good luck with your next attempt. Knock it dead!

LCA

Essendon wrote: »

Also when hasnt an MS Press book sucked? When hasnt it lacked the depth needed to pass an exam?

Those MS exam books have been useless since the time when Adam was a cowboy!

I just go straight to the source and read the appropriate Technet library articles or MSDN in the case of SQL Server exam studies.

Essendon

LCA wrote: »

Those MS exam books have been useless since the time when Adam was a cowboy!

genXrcist

Well boys, I failed again with a 600. This score is lower than my 3rd attempt which around 610 or so.

There was a LOT of questions on there where I knew what was being asked and what they wanted but had no idea which powershell commandlet was supposed to be used. I felt really good about Message Records Management yet scored super low on that.

From what I've been told you can only take an exam 5 times in one year so that means I've got one more shot at this bugger.

Any suggestions and/or tips are welcome. Anyone out there that passed this exam have any tips?

powerfool

If you are taking 70-662 and you fail again, you can take 72-662 if you qualify as a student. It is the same exam, but since it is a different series, you will get your counter reset. I heard that the exams are updated for SP1 and the cloud version of exchange, but I don't see the exam concepts updated on Microsoft's site. Where can we get material to cover this?

genXrcist

I'm afraid I'm not a student, studying on my own here.

I have two books, Exch2010 Inside & Out as well as the Best Practices book. Both are updated for SP1.

The exam is just asking for too much when it asks you a question about Transport settings and then asks you to pick between set-transportconfig and set-transportserver. I'm never going to take the time to memorize all the syntaxes between these two commandlets, who is? Look at these awesome (sarcasm dripping) descriptions from Technet here:

Use the Set-TransportConfig cmdlet to modify the transport configuration settings for the whole Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 organization.

Use the Set-TransportServer cmdlet to set the transport configuration options for computers running Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 that have the Hub Transport server role or Edge Transport server role installed.

Without violating the NDA I can't get into the specific question but let's just say it wasn't related to whether or not you want the setting to apply to the whole org vs. the specific Transport server where the users site was located.

Honestly, I guessed on a lot of questions. I had to. Who can memorize all the names of the Powershell scripts available to run different tasks? Who can keep track of the commands which use enable-* vs new-*? Apparantly I can't.

This is a different kind of exam unlike anything I've ever taken. The level of detail required to answer some questions is a lot higher on this exam than any other I've taken. I thought I knew what could be done in the EMC vs the EMS and yet I still found myself guessing on some of those questions.

I'm wide open to suggestions on what to do next.

p.s.
I am taking the 70-663 on Thursday as I've heard that is a lot easier. It's my first crack at that so I'll let y'all know how I do on that.

Claymoore

genXrcist wrote: »

I have two books, Exch2010 Inside & Out as well as the Best Practices book. Both are updated for SP1.

You are reading the wrong books. Both are excellent Exchange resources, but neither claim to be exam prep guides. I used both when prepraring for the 663, with the Inside Out book as my primary resource, but you have to pay attention to the Skills Measured section of the exam to be sure you read the sections that map to the exam objectives.

662 is a 'How' exam and you are reading 'Why' books - those will help with the 663. For the 662, use the Exchange 2010 Admin Pocket Consultant. The chapters match up well to the exam objectives and I believe there were plenty of PoSh syntax examples. The Admin Pocket Consultant was the only book I used for the 662 exam, but to be fair there were only a couple of Exchange 2010 books published at that time.

genXrcist

I will buy that friggin book right now. **kicking self as I saw that book at a Half-Priced used book store not long ago for $18**

Remember though that I've been to a 70-662 class, read the training kit, watched the CBT Nugget videos and read through Inside & Out.

PoSH syntax exampls are well and good but to memorize them all so that I can answer some random question on a test? Isn't Microsoft asking a lot?

On another side note, I have been looking up the answers on TechNet to the questions I can remember and I actually got a lot of those right!

What I scored poorly on was "Configuring Client Access", "Implementing High Availability & Recovery", & "Configuring Msg Compliance and Security".

I remember two CAS array questions and I thought I got them right but must not have. As for compliance/security I remember something about enabling inspection of Outlook Client-sde RMS stamped messages but can't remember enough to look up the answer. Bugger. As for High Availabity, ugh. Who knows.

Claymoore

genXrcist wrote: »

PoSH syntax exampls are well and good but to memorize them all so that I can answer some random question on a test? Isn't Microsoft asking a lot?

Be happy you didn't take the 70-236 Exchange 2007 exam - that test was half obscure PoSH syntax. I only had about 2 months of 2007 experience when I took it and the EMC commands were tough. I had about 10 months of Exchange 2007 experience when I took the 2010 exam so PoSH wasn't much of a problem. It really does get easier with experience.

genXrcist

Claymoore wrote: »

Be happy you didn't take the 70-236 Exchange 2007 exam - that test was half obscure PoSH syntax. I only had about 2 months of 2007 experience when I took it and the EMC commands were tough. I had about 10 months of Exchange 2007 experience when I took the 2010 exam so PoSH wasn't much of a problem. It really does get easier with experience.

I believe you. My company is still running 2003 (I'm during a server refresh over the summer and will be moving to 2010 as part of that) and not many company's we work with are running 2010. That will change over time but not soon enough for me.

Anyway, I ordered the pocket consultant guide and am going to lab, lab, lab until my final attempt. It's the only "experience" I can get right now.

genXrcist

Claymoore wrote: »

You are reading the wrong books. Both are excellent Exchange resources, but neither claim to be exam prep guides. I used both when prepraring for the 663, with the Inside Out book as my primary resource, but you have to pay attention to the Skills Measured section of the exam to be sure you read the sections that map to the exam objectives.

662 is a 'How' exam and you are reading 'Why' books - those will help with the 663. For the 662, use the Exchange 2010 Admin Pocket Consultant. The chapters match up well to the exam objectives and I believe there were plenty of PoSh syntax examples. The Admin Pocket Consultant was the only book I used for the 662 exam, but to be fair there were only a couple of Exchange 2010 books published at that time.

Looks like the admin pocket consultant guide was published in 2009, well before SP1 so I'm hesitant now to use this.

The reason I used the two books I mentioned earlier as they are two of the only ones I could find with SP1 updated content.

powerfool

Well, I am scheduled to take 662 and 663 tomorrow just to get my first pass in with the vouchers... I will let you know how it goes. I have been using Inside/Out and Best Practices as well as the recent TechEd videos on Exchange Online.

The one thing that I have found with Microsoft exams as of late is that a decent chunk of questions can be answered with knowledge of previous versions alone... and I am not talking about the most recent previous version, but very old versions... for instance, 2008 exams with questions requiring only NT4 knowledge. If you are having problems, just sit back relax and think the questions through. We'll see how it goes.

powerfool

Alright, I was one-and-one today... I didn't pass 662, but I did pass 663, which seems backwards to me, but oh well. For study, I have been reading Inside Out and watching TechEd 2011 presentations. I have also purchased Best Practices and Mastering, but I haven't gotten to them yet.

As was mentioned, you have to know a lot of commands. However, I don't think it is that bad... get a general feel for the commands and it should be good. Also, know which tool to use. I am going to give 662 another shot next week.

The TechEd 2011 presentations related to Exchange Online were very helpful. Also, chapter 10 of Best Practices.

genXrcist

Way to go on the 70-663! I just took it today and even though I felt very confident throughout the test I failed with a 682.

I dunno, maybe I just don't "get" it. The world I work in is small to medium sized businesses and most of that stuff I will never see in my current role. Perhaps that's the deal, who knows.

I just got the Pocket consultant guide and I'm firing up the lab tonight. Gonna do whatever pops into the brain from defining new RBAC roles/groups to replicating public folders to setting up a CAS array and simulating a failure.

Good luck on your 2nd try!

p.s. Do you admin Exch 2007?

Lamini

aiming for my 70-662 as well... seeing all this powershell stuff is taking more of my confidence away =(. Looks like something I need to tackle as well.

Like yourself, I'm in a smaller environment, also updating ("refresh") to todays current OS/Exchange systems. I've read elsewhere you only need to know a little of powershell to pass 70-662, but I've also read of those who didnt do too well because of Powershell... will have to pay special attention to those chapters/labs. We both know what its like to get the wind knocked out from our sails. It, sucks. The important thing is you get back up (and know how to do the job).

powerfool

genXrcist wrote: »

Way to go on the 70-663! I just took it today and even though I felt very confident throughout the test I failed with a 682.

I dunno, maybe I just don't "get" it. The world I work in is small to medium sized businesses and most of that stuff I will never see in my current role. Perhaps that's the deal, who knows.

I just got the Pocket consultant guide and I'm firing up the lab tonight. Gonna do whatever pops into the brain from defining new RBAC roles/groups to replicating public folders to setting up a CAS array and simulating a failure.

Good luck on your 2nd try!

p.s. Do you admin Exch 2007?

I have used every version of Exchange since 5.5. I did a 2003 to 2007 migration two years ago... and I am preparing to do a 2003 to 2010 migration for a rather large organization right now.

Chivalry1

I recommend setting up Exchange without using any GUI. In my linux guys voice; Get away from using the GUI. Setup an entire Email system using only the exchange management shell. A certain level of powershell is required to pass 662. 663 is more of a architecture design exam and you could by if you had previous experience setting up a Exchange system. But, 662 will challenge your knowledge/experience with 2010.

genXrcist

Chivalry1 wrote: »

I recommend setting up Exchange without using any GUI. In my linux guys voice; Get away from using the GUI. Setup an entire Email system using only the exchange management shell. A certain level of powershell is required to pass 662. 663 is more of a architecture design exam and you could by if you had previous experience setting up a Exchange system. But, 662 will challenge your knowledge/experience with 2010.

This is a good idea, I'm going to use the CLI as much as I can.

It's not that there's a ton of powershell on there but that there will be some powershell questions and since you don't know what you're gonna get you need to know a lot of it. I think the only way to learn Powershell is to do it a lot but in the real world you don't have time to learn powershell so I think it's common to fallback into the Console. I try to take the time to use the CLI when not under a time crunch but there's not always a lot of that in my line of work.

Pdog

Slightly off topic,

But I have one question that has been bugging me, and I have seen it mentioned in this thread.

In vmware workstation how does one, configure the two separate forests to send email between both orgs?

I can create two separate forests but what additional configuration would be required to route mail between the two?

Would all machines have to be on the same IP network, would an additional server need to be configured as a switch / router?

Any help greatly appreciated.

Pdog

spd3432

Pdog wrote: »

Slightly off topic,

But I have one question that has been bugging me, and I have seen it mentioned in this thread.

In vmware workstation how does one, configure the two separate forests to send email between both orgs?

I can create two separate forests but what additional configuration would be required to route mail between the two?

Would all machines have to be on the same IP network, would an additional server need to be configured as a switch / router?

Any help greatly appreciated.

Pdog

Not sure what others have done, but back when I was working on Exchange 2003, I had ForestA on one network, ForestB on a second network, a ROOT DNS on a third network, and a RAS server with three NICs that routed between them. I used server 2000 as much as possible for the virtual machines since it had less memory / cpu overhead than server 2003. I started running into some resource issues with server 2008 and am now using two computers with shared physical NIC on each as the outbound interface and have each forest isolated on vm's on the two physical machines.