Starting my MCITP:EA journey - start with...?

Mysterious

Have my MCSE+I from Win2000... work has paid for the MS training kit books + 1 extra book for each exam to re-cert MCITP:EA...

Any suggestions on which core exam to tackle first? Suggested order to do the exams? Thanks

ptilsen

I'd say 70-640 and 70-642 should be pretty easy for you, and most people probably start there. If you have decent experience with IIS, SharePoint, and/or Terminal Services, then 70-643 would be your third choice. You could also do 70-680 if you don't have that much experience or even if you do. But 70-680 may well introduce a lot more new concepts for an experienced professional than 70-643, which is 80% improvements on existing technologies (though some of those improvements are pretty drastic changes). To me, 70-647 is always the last exam you take.

I generally recommend 70-640, 642, 680, 643, 647, but as I said above, extensive experience with the above topics might make 643 an easier transition. Generally 643 and 647 are considered the hardest exams of the group.

If you had MCSE on 2003, you would only be on a two-test upgrade path instead of five. Too bad.

fly2dw

With an MCSE already you should have the skills to pick up the exams in any order, apart from 70-647 which I would advise to leave until last. I upgraded my MCSE:S 2003 by taking 70-649 which is a combination of 70-640, 70-642, and 70-643. But as previously mentioned above this only applies to people who have an MCSE 2003. I always do the client exam first, just my personal preference. In fact 70-680 is quite in touch with servers, and is a lot more server focused than previous MS client exams (I.E. XP and Vista), so it is a good way to break into the new features and functionality.

I would advise following order:

70-680
70-640
70-642
70-643
70-647

Make sure you understand differences between RTM and R2 versions of Server 2008. That was a key theme throughout all of the material, back when I took the exams. However with an MCSE already I think you should be in a good position to get through all these exams. I don't think this track was built like the MCSE track. I found the MCSE track a lot more attention to deal orientated in comparison. Only 70-647 requires a bit more time, just because of the vast content which you need to cover. This wasn't too bad for me as I had just completed 70-649 and obviously 3 exams in 1 is going to be quite content heavy. But doing an exam at a time and then moving to 70-647, you will realise that you need to know everything you just learnt and more. Therefore make sure you take the 70-647 exam soon after completing the other exams so that it is still fresh in your head.

Best of luck!

Mysterious

Did you guys do a lot of on PC practice or basically book reading?

fly2dw

Mysterious wrote: »

Did you guys do a lot of on PC practice or basically book reading?

I do a lot of both. I read through topics and then lab the exercises in my virtual environment (I also try and experiment and change things to see different results, helps me better understand things). I also get a lot of, on the job experience. If I am really lucky I will read, lab, and implement at work shortly after. Reading is all well and good, you can get the theory/concepts, but you need to lab it. You need to go through the exercises to see the steps unfold yourself, and identify problems along the way (Which helps cement what you learn). The exercises are not always as straight forward as they make out in some of these books, and it can take a little tweaking here and there to make things work.

ptilsen

Personally, I've found the client exams to be much harder than the earlier server exams, and I've seen that echoed on TE a lot. Unless you have a lot of experience working with deployment systems (RIS, WDS, or both), for example, that part along may throw a wrench into your studying.

I've always used books -- usually actual paper books. I used partially ebooks for my last few and it wasn't so bad. But my general strategy is this:
1. Acquire book
2. Read book
3. Take practice exam or two
4. Compile results of practice exam(s) by objects and/or sub-objectives
5. Re-read relevant book sections as needed; lab relevant topics as needed
6. Repeat 3 through 5 until scoring 75% - 95% on practice exams
7. Take test
8. ???
9. Profit!