Passed 70-647 - almost MCITP:EA

Todd Burrell

Well, after a few delays I finally sat for 70-647 today and passed (barely) with a 737. I honestly thought I had done much better, but I'll take the pass. From the results page I got between 80 and 95% on three of the sections, but the first one (Planning Network and Application Services) looks like I got about 40% - so that area kicked my butt. There were 5 testlets with 31 total questions and then a section with 19 questions. I thought the 19 questions were VERY easy, and I am very sure I got 16 of those correct - and I am pretty sure the other 3 were right.

The testlets were (as usual) a pain in the butt. One had all this info about remote access requirements - and then ZERO questions about remote access (you gotta love Microsoft).

The main advice (without violating the NDA) would be to know as much as possible about virtualization, Hyper-V and other ways to distribute applications as well as Remote Desktop. This seemed to be a hot button area for my test.

I used Transcender and the MS Press book and its CD and questions along with the Mastering 2008 R2 book. I would highly recommend either Transcender or selftest for practice for this exam as both now have R2 content.

Overall this test covered MANY areas - and it seemed to cover a great deal that I consider Server 2003 info. I did not think it was as hard as 70-649, but the testlet format is a pain. If it had just had 50 questions I think I could have scored much higher.

Now it's on to 70-680 and then my MCITP:EA (hopefully).

Good luck to all with this test...

LCA

Well done Todd!

Your comments are very similiar to the experiences all of us who have taken on 647 recently. As you correctly note the exam covers a wide array of topics and technologies.

Good luck with 680.

Essendon

Nicely done Todd!! Thank you for the writeup about the test and practice exams. Good luck with the Win7 test.

earweed

Copngrats Todd!
Your comments about the test reflect my recent experience with the test.

Jander1023

Great job on the pass! Thanks for the update on the exam. I'm hoping to get to the 647 latter this year.

Btw, don't sleep on the 680. I actually failed it the first time. There are some very strange, tough questions in the 680 question pool. Personally, I'd recommend reading the 680 and 685 books but then only taking the 685 exam. I thought it was easier than the 680.

Todd Burrell

Thanks for the advice about 70-680. I have already ordered the Darril Gibson 685/686 book to supplement the MS Press 680 book - and I have downloaded and printed the 85 pages of corrections for the original MS Press 680 book. My plan for 680 is to basically cram for this month and then take the test around June 1st. If I pass that's great, but if not I can use my second shot to retake it by June 30th - and I get a first look at the test and the format of 680 along with the question types.

I'm hoping that my experience with taking 70-647 and 649 will help with some of the Windows 7 material - especially areas like WDS, Group Policy, Branchcache, DirectAccess, etc...

Thanks

earweed

For the 680 exam you may also want to check out Darril Gibsons new book Amazon.com: Windows 7 Portable Command Guide: MCTS 70-680, 70-685 and 70-686 (978078974735: Darril Gibson: Books as the 680 has been known to test extensively on command line stuff. This mght help as a lot of thecommand line stuff in the MS Press book is just plain WRONG. I studied for that test (just never took it as I already had Vista for my OS and I'm cheap) and found that the authors of the 680 book were a big FAIL. The volume of corrections to the test should tell you something.
A note of advice before undrtaking this test...lab it with 2008 R2 and Windows 7 together as they ask a lot of enterprise questions. You probably made the right choice to study Server 2008 beforeWindows 7 for that reason.
Good Luck