New to Exchange 2010

Lamini

I was previously on the mcse2003 track and only had enough time to get an mcsa out of it as mid way through my studies my organization moved to server2008 and exchange2010! Oh well. Now I am looking for the right or better resources as I attempt to understand Exchange.

I think more has changed from e2k3 to e2kX than s2k3 to s2k8 so I will be taking down the 70-662 (which I hear should be taken before the 663) as it is more than hands on where the 663 is the design cert from what I had read so far. Either way I'll need both so, no time to be affraid. I dont really have any experience on this other than installing and successfully running mail to XP clients, but I have been setting up/using E2k3 on s2k3 for some time. But.. to be honest, a lot of that has been trial and error... and I'm sure I speak for many when I tell myself as I discover something during a training course or as I do some research "I wish I knew that back then." I've gone weary of those thoughts, and while they have slimmed down, I would like for it to stay that way. Rather than running into any more, will be doing the education/research part now, and keep the hair pulling down to minimum later.

I have bought the Unleashed series books for S2k8 and E2kX. Reading it is another topic, thanks to a busy schedule, travel, life... I might also be buying a trainsignal cbt on e2kx, as they have been best in the past for me. But I am open to your suggestions in regards to any other required reading, references, good sites, and cbts. I have not set a date, but will be testing in less than a month. Thanks ahead of time.

Lamini

Nearly a week into just studying 70-662, and i'm doing it full time this time.

Got MS Press 70-662 (ZzzZZzz), and Trainsignal 70-662. Already had the Exchange 2010 Unleashed book (!!). Videos were... well, already knew the how part (at least the basic stuff) and just fast forwarded through the majority of it.

kinda wish I started 663 first. for someone who has no Exchange certs (other than trial and error - or by fire!) and only has limited experience, kinda blindly doing things since Im doing the how before the why. Books/CBTs constantly refer to 70-663... well, why the $*@% didnt I start that one a week ago then I keep asking myself.

Exchange is a lil different from the other certs, it's not a cert within itself, or a standalone certification, like XP. If you lack the knowledge from its counterparts, ie DNS, and specially AD, youre screwed. And I mean that in such a passionate manner, I slacked on the AD portion of MCSE2003, and it will haunt me endlessly, at least until I work on MCITP-EA after Exchange certs). Anyone can do the monkey see monkey do, or work off a script/procedure. When you know why you need to do something, it kinda zooms you out to see the bigger picture. When you got that, you will know not only what to do and why, but how... its not like navigating through the windows is self explanatory (mostly). This is what separates admins from the engineers.

Not feeling the confidence right now so, will test next weekend if things work out. The how part right now doesnt seem difficult at all.

genXrcist

Nice post and you'r right, if you'd don't understand AD and DNS Exchange is really tough.

Take it from me, someone who has failed the 662 four times, be sure to really understand everything.

Understand what the Dumpster is, what the difference is between a soft delete and a hard delete. What is lititigation hold? Difference between the Discovery Mbx vs the Arbitration Mbx? Poison queue and how do you get message out of it? What Single Item Recovery? What does the Active Manager do? What are the default times for Replay and truncation logs? What benefit do these give an administrator?

powerfool

I am slowly going through 662 right now. I took both of them last week and didn't do very well on 662, but I passed 663 fairly easily. I am getting ready to start a large 2k3 to 2k10 migration and it is a requirement that I have the certification under my belt to start. I am planning on documenting my progress and hoping to knock out the MCM Exchange 2010 along the way.

If anyone knows, it has listed as a prerequisite MCITP EA and EMA. When they list EMA, they don't say EMA 2010... will 2010 suffice, or will I need to knock out the EMA on 2k7 to be eligible for MCM Exchange 2010?

Lamini

I went through a local 70-662 course (the implementation one i think)... i was quite frankly bummed out. i have learned more doing hands on, OJT, real work than reading these books/cbts...

just like my last course i went through, we spent more time fiddling with and troubleshooting VMs than actually doing work, leading to frustrated students... i understand virtualization is here, but these guys dont understand it doesnt affect everyone, specially not immediately.

so, from here out, its me and self study. ive learned more than once theres no shortcuts. sick of going to class only to find out vm's are not set appropriately.

riddle me this, if you have 20 computers in a room, nearly 3 computers per 5 students, why would you want to virtualize. The majority of us come to learn specific topics, not troubleshoot virtual machines... just my 2cents. i wouldnt mind if the machines had the balls to run VMs, but the computers are hardly better than emachines.

oh well... life ops way too high now, will once again have to chase certs later... then a new OS/exchange will come out.. again... grr ;(

jibbajabba

You don't necessarily have to go for 662 before 663, but I noticed that if you study for the 662, you are likely to pass 663 without much hassle as 663 seems to be mainly the "theory" part of 662 whereas 662 is more hands-on.

One thing you have to be aware of, the exams are now mainly SP1 based and there can be differences in certain commands.

Or some parts of the UI Have been removed completely.

If you do follow trainsignal videos, you might see an error when testing Edge sync, this is a normal behaviour.

To be perfectly honest with you. The best way to learn is working with it. I started from scratch and the book I started with was this one and read this one, which is SP1 based as well.

Even though I started from scratch, I didn't have to learn AD / DNS (working in a hosting company myself and got the MCIT:SA/EA myself) - but I think DNS is the hardest beast to fight.

I think the easiest way to learn is really having an Exchange server. My approach was setting up virtual machines which are on the internet (as in, proper ones, not on your local PC), then run private mails through it. I did several scenarios. I had a single server, then reinstalled using three server (AD, Exchange, Edge), then Split all the roles (AD, EDGE, Transport, Hub, CAS, DB) and then even more, with loadbalanced CAS and DAG.

BUT: Not everyone has access to unlimited resources obviously, but you should be able to rent a cheap Windows VM (especially since you are in the US and they are a lot cheaper than here in the UK) and if you want to go to the n-th degree, get even a certificate to test this properly. Cheapest I found are these guys.

Then like me, use it for your private mails lol - gives you enough pressure to get it working

garryking

Thanks guys for this informative discussion. I failed 70-662 few days back so I know how hard things can be sometimes. With 70-662 I found that it goes through lot of nitty-gritty which is really good and that's why it's hard to crack.

I read few topics from a book from Tony Redmond and honestly sometimes I find things to be quite confusing. Not sure about other books though. I also watched trainsignal and cbt nuggets multiple times. But this was not enough to pass the exam even though I have some experience with Exchange 2007 and bit with Exchange 2010.

I am still reading some topics multiple times (like CAS and RPCClientAccessServer property, DAG etc) to get proper understanding of these new features of Exchange 2010. I think things get complex when you have multiple servers running various roles with various Exchange versions. Things can be easy if you are implementing Exchange 2010 from scratch but this is very unlikely as most of the organisations will be mirgrating from 2003/2007 to 2010.

So overall, this is not a piece of cake.