70-659 anyone?

katierose

Hey guys! Long time no see.

I've been hard at work with the new job I landed last January. I love it! Couldn't be happier. Anyway, we're a Microsoft partner. Currently at Silver and going for Gold. To help with that, I am going after a couple certs.

Here are my options:

Option 1
Your organization must employ or contract with two MCPs who have each passed the following exams:
Exam 70-403: TS: System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008, Configuring
Exam 70-652: TS: Windows Server Virtualization, Configuring


Option 2
Your organization must employ or contract with two MCPs who have each passed the following exam:
Exam 70-659: TS: Windows Server 2008 R2, Server Virtualization

I decided to go with 70-659. I'd rather do one cert than two obviously. So the first thing I did was jump on here and look for resources and discussion.. and uh, no dice? I couldn't find anything on this one. Maybe it's brand new, I have no idea. This is the first Microsoft cert I am going for. So I must ask.. has anyone taken this? It's also kind of difficult to find books online. I have found some that touch on 70-652 but I'm worried if that won't be good enough for what I am going for.

However, I am excited to find stuff on 70-693 which I will go for after I attain the 70-659. We use Hyper-V all the time here and while I am pretty decent with it I can't wait to explore the subject a lot more.

Any tips/suggestions would be awesome. Thanks!

Claymoore

The 70-652 MS Training Kit and Hyper-V Resource Kit both contain information that covers Hyper-V in 2008 R2. As long as you are comfortable with what's new in Hyper-V 2008 R2 - particularly live migration and cluster shared volumes - you should be fine even if all your material is focused on 652 instead of 659.

I took the 652 and 403 SCVMM exam to meet the partner requirements from last year. I have not taken 659, but several of those who took it said it was harden than the 652. That's not saying much - the 652 is one of the easier MS exams I have taken.

Having two people pass 659 will only earn you a Silver Competency. For Gold you will need 4 people with MCITP: Virtualization Administrator or 4 people with MCITP:EA plus 659. There are a couple other ways to earn it as well, but those 4 people cannot be mapped to any other gold competency. My certs cover 4 different gold competencies, but I can only count towards one of them.

katierose

Thanks a bunch!

I forgot to mention that our company's Gold Competency focus is for Software Development. I really don't need to do anything but I like free education a lot. I am trying to see if I can grab someone else so we can get Silver for our piece of the pie. If not it's really no big deal. Then when I go for the MCITP, that's just a personal goal.

jibbajabba

Some new requirements from Microsoft are just crazy lol. We have multiple Gold competencies and had to get certain staff multiple MCITPs as there were suddenly new requirements where we needed exams no one had so a few MCITP:SE and EAs ended up with other ones too, for the reason Claymoore explained.

But I think the worst requirement (or more annoying rather) are some of the silly sales exams they require.

But that is all offtopic ... 652 really was easy - passed the beta without studying whereas I failed 659

undomiel

I'll agree with Claymoore on this one. If you've got real world experience with Hyper-V R2 involving live migrations and CSVs and have some exposure to SCVMM then you'll find the 70-659 pretty easy breezy.