Passed my 70-640

lordxar

Got 700! Was lmao when I saw my score. First swing at it was a failure at 638, second shot was mid 500s. Taking a mini break but will start the 642 soon.

Advice I'd give is study PowerShell and lab, lab, lab.

earweed

Congrats on joining the 700 club!
I joined it on the 70-642 and was really shocked at the 700 score as I was sure I had failed it.

Psoasman

Congrats, glad you passed!

Essendon

Congrats! That advice you provided on labbing, labbing and more labbing - is generally a good idea

IT Explorer

Congrats on passing , labbing is so important for the exam and production environment as well , so don't skip any lab. You're taking it after 640, so you'll find it easy to Prepare.
Best Wishes

Pishof

Congrats, another one joins us in the 700 club. I really was amazed just how out there some of the questions were.

lordxar

Honestly I'd given up on passing. I bought a two test pack earlier this year with free second shots. After the first fail I thought another month of studying would help and failed miserably. That took a lot of wind out of my sails. With the year drawing to a close, I figured I may as well take the thing fail, take it again, fail and be done. I have been labbing on and off over the last months though. This time I focused on each objective for a period of time before moving on. I started with DNS to get the command line stuff for it. Actually I think I started with PowerShell since it was the reason I failed the second time.

I really didn't think the test was all that hard this last time. Then again, several more months spent learning and labbing really does make a difference. Appreciate all the congrats!

My study material consists of Microsoft 70-640 book for Server 2008 (older, non R2 version), the Sybex 70-640, uCertify testing bank, and a lot of 2008 VM's on Virtual PC for Windows 7. You can pass this thing without actually using R2, just have to understand all the underlying parts. A comment on uCertify, get a different test bank. Overall I thought the uCertify stuff was really good, but their supposed R2 content was a joke. Just putting R2 in a question does not make it an R2 question. They asked and discussed nothing of PowerShell whatsoever. In fact, I don't recall anything about any R2 changes at all. The questions in the Microsoft Press books are very similar to the ones on the actual test (I don't think that goes against the NDA). Whoever makes those is who I'll be getting in the future, the name escapes me atm.

One of my early strategies was to burn one of my free second shots to see what the actual test was like. I'm guessing the rest of the tests will be similar, obviously different content, but the structure and types of questions should be similar. Would be nice to catch another of the free second shot deals.

Hypntick

Congrats on the pass! Now I will say that the Kaplan Selftest is also a very good practice test to go with for these tests. I used it on my second attempt at the 70-642 and passed, although I didn't fail by much the first time. These tests are quite difficult overall as i'm finding in preparing for the 70-640, although I will say having done the 642 first, it has helped with some of the sections covered like DNS for example.

elusus

Geez, you make it sound almost impossible to pass, haha!

I too, am using the older 70-640 ms press book and reading up on sybex r2 edition for a 2nd material. Im spending a lot of hours reviewing stuff before I take the exam. When you did your labs, did you follow the 70-640 book practice labs, or just wing it?

lordxar

elusus wrote: »

Geez, you make it sound almost impossible to pass, haha!

I too, am using the older 70-640 ms press book and reading up on sybex r2 edition for a 2nd material. Im spending a lot of hours reviewing stuff before I take the exam. When you did your labs, did you follow the 70-640 book practice labs, or just wing it?

First reply ended up with the moderators for some reason...Anyhow, I picked up the Sybex books sans R2. I did get the updated 640 R2 Sybex book, but that things was worthless. I couldn't really see where they changed much, least not once I took my first test. IMO Sybex puts things in English a little better, but aren't necissarily worth the money. The Microsoft Press books are awesome for technical content. Forgot that I have the Resource Kit too and a Technet sub for my software needs.

The test is hard if your unfamiliar with Microsoft technologies. When I jumped in I thought I had enough of a base, but I'd never done any actual AD work or anything to do with RMS, CS, or any other topics on the 640. I've messed a bit with GPOs and adding users, but that was about it. Makes the test even harder when you just don't have the experience. That's why labbing is so important.

As for my labbing, I studied the Microsoft Press labs as a basis, but eventually started winging things they didn't cover. Like DNS, they talk about using DNSCMD for certain things, but don't offer it as a lab. So I'd setup my DNS servers with the GUI then setup different configs using the command line.

Caveats to the Microsoft Press books:
The first CS lab where you set up an offline root CA will not work properly as the book describes. The offline root works fine but the subordinate wont start because it can't find the root CAs revocation path. This took me awhile to figure out, Googling returns a ton of hits and not much for fixes. The answer is actually in the second set of labs in the 640 book, but not labeled that way. You have to uncheck http from the root revocation list so that when it creates a cert that isn't handed out. Why the MS Press book doesn't tell you that I have no idea, but it will not work until you do it. If you read the second part, it tells you to do that for the subordinate, but not the root.

I had similar issues with getting RMS running per the MS Press book directions, but don't remember the exact problem or solution. I think it may have been something to do with https, IIS, and the cert for that.

There are a lot of errors/errata both found and not found in that book. Look up the errata through O'reilly print, theirs is a good one to use. Just know that there are other mistakes not mentioned. It's a real pain when the answers are not right to the questions too. Makes you really second guess yourself.

elusus

Thanks for that detailed response. It really put things into perspective.

After the first half of the 70-640 non-updated ms press book, I was pretty convinced that the book is full of errors due to the practice labs not working right. And I do remember that part about the AD CS in the book, and I remember something about it not being right. I'd have to go back and look at it again just to remember lol.

lordxar

elusus wrote: »

Thanks for that detailed response. It really put things into perspective.

After the first half of the 70-640 non-updated ms press book, I was pretty convinced that the book is full of errors due to the practice labs not working right. And I do remember that part about the AD CS in the book, and I remember something about it not being right. I'd have to go back and look at it again just to remember lol.

I thought it actually helped in some cases when things didn't work as advertised, but it was really, really frustrating to deal with when your new to it all. Especially when you don't know anything about that technology, like CS. It's one thing to read a Security+ book that covers the theory of it and quite another to actually try and setup a cert server. Microsoft sets a lot of default options that can mess you up. To be fair, the original 640 book may cover pre service pack settings and I had my VMs up to the latest.

lordxar

Another thought. I bought the complete books for all 6 (SA and EA) tests from Microsoft Press and Sybex and the resource kit as stated earlier. After my first two failures I had the thought of attacking the test objective by objective. To that end, I went through all the books, even those that are not the 640 and found every chapter that even resembled an objective on the 640. Sure I read a bunch of design stuff, but it helped make things make sense as to why something worked as it did. It's a thought anyway. If you already have all the books. Then again, I went and bought all those books that are now obsolete by the R2 content.....

lordxar

Final thoughts of the day. I tried the CBT Nuggets and the Trainsignal videos and honestly wasn't very impressed. If you take the time to read and lab the MS Press books you'll get a lot farther along. The videos were just too costly and didn't have as much value as I thought they should. All that said, I would endorse IT Free Training. They have Youtube videos that seem to be professionally made and rival the paid counterparts. I'm not sure how they do it, but they do. I just happened to stumble across them one day. The only problem with them is that because their free things tend to take a bit longer to do. The 640 videos are a work in progress, but I think the 642s are almost complete. No clue who those guys are, but if they fully flesh out video training for the whole 2008 Server certs my hats off to them.