Studying For 70-640

Amir21

Hey yall, just wanted to join the tech exams forums as I'm also pursuing I.T certifications namely, MCITP: EA and CCNP. Right now i'm in the middle of my 70-640 studies(I'm also pursuing the CCNA, which seems to be much easier compared to the 70-640). I'm just getting my feet wet in the awesome glory of powershell. Just from reading some of the posts I understand that its part of the exam so I'll be getting pretty cosy with it. My study tools are:

The MS Press 70-640(non-R2)
Windows Server 2008 Inside Out
O'Reilly's Active Directory by B.Desmond
CBT Nuggets 70-640 with R2 Updates
Measure Practice Tests
Tech Exams Sticky Notes and Forums

I have Windows Server 08 installed on 1 of my partitions(Win7 and Ubuntu are the other two), its a 40gig partition, and that's what I'm using for my labs. I actually had the Win Sever 08 running on Ubuntu with the VMWare Player but it was too slow. Tried it on Win7 to slow as well. I notice alot of guys are running multiple vm's for your labs but I gotta work with what I got for the time being. I'd really appreciate any pointers on what to give extra attention to. So far I know to focus on CA, DNS, Powershell and that's what I'm running with. I plan to sit for the exam in about a month so hopefully I can stand a chance. Take Care.

buzzkill

Sounds like you have a lot on your plate. Do you do anything with these technologies in your job?

Group Policy is one to be solid on, you already mentioned CA and DNS which both featured heavily. I didn't get much on powershell as far as I can remember but maybe that was just the random nature of the question selection.

Psoasman

Amir21 wrote: »

Hey yall, just wanted to join the tech exams forums as I'm also pursuing I.T certifications namely, MCITP: EA and CCNP. Right now i'm in the middle of my 70-640 studies(I'm also pursuing the CCNA, which seems to be much easier compared to the 70-640). I'm just getting my feet wet in the awesome glory of powershell. Just from reading some of the posts I understand that its part of the exam so I'll be getting pretty cosy with it. My study tools are:

The MS Press 70-640(non-R2)
Windows Server 2008 Inside Out
O'Reilly's Active Directory by B.Desmond
CBT Nuggets 70-640 with R2 Updates
Measure Practice Tests
Tech Exams Sticky Notes and Forums

I have Windows Server 08 installed on 1 of my partitions(Win7 and Ubuntu are the other two), its a 40gig partition, and that's what I'm using for my labs. I actually had the Win Sever 08 running on Ubuntu with the VMWare Player but it was too slow. Tried it on Win7 to slow as well. I notice alot of guys are running multiple vm's for your labs but I gotta work with what I got for the time being. I'd really appreciate any pointers on what to give extra attention to. So far I know to focus on CA, DNS, Powershell and that's what I'm running with. I plan to sit for the exam in about a month so hopefully I can stand a chance. Take Care.

Definitely hit DNS, CS hard. Try and lab out the RMS and FS roles, too. Some of the questions are very concise and technical, so it really helps to delve deep into the topics.

Amir21

buzzkill
Sounds like you have a lot on your plate. Do you do anything with these technologies in your job?

I do, I do. Not to mention I'm also learning Python(I'm up to functions and abstraction) a topic at a time here and there. I actually I'm unemployed and never worked in I.T before so my goal is to use the certs to atleast get in the door. I'm sure i'll do alright from there. Basically to put in a nutshell, I want to be able to be a network admin who can also program. My language of choice is Python and I like it alot because there's so much you can do with it from using for mobile devices to touch based interfaces to data mining to network programming and it goes on. Getting back to base, I appreciate the pointers from both you guys. I'm really being careful not to stretch myself too thin. Right now my top priority is achieving the MCITP:EA after that its a combination of Python and Cisco. The Cisco stuff is kinda straight forward to me, there isn't as many layers to peel off as the Microsoft stuff. Once again, thank you both for pointing me in the right direction.

P.S: I had the CCNA And CWNA certs before but I never did anything with them, so they both expired. Plus at the time I couldn't stand Microsoft so I didn't go for the MCSE. Microsoft was like the evil empire and all that to me.

HandyMan

For your virtual labbing problems, try using SUN/Oracle VM VirtualBox. It works really well and many of the issues that were present before with Windows guests seem to be resolved. I have several virtual 2008 servers running on my Windows 7 64-bit host PC, all in their own private network.
I'm also on the 70-640 study track. There seems an incredible amount to learn and my fear is that by the time I get to the end of the study I may have forgotten some of the earlier content. My head has a limited storage capacity.

Psoasman

HandyMan wrote: »

For your virtual labbing problems, try using SUN/Oracle VM VirtualBox. It works really well and many of the issues that were present before with Windows guests seem to be resolved. I have several virtual 2008 servers running on my Windows 7 64-bit host PC, all in their own private network.
I'm also on the 70-640 study track. There seems an incredible amount to learn and my fear is that by the time I get to the end of the study I may have forgotten some of the earlier content. My head has a limited storage capacity.

One thing that helps with these long MS Press books it to type up some of the chapter / lesson summaries. You can read through those each week, to get the information fresh. I had posted some study notes earlier, too. Hopefully, these will help.

http://www.techexams.net/forums/mcts-mcitp-windows-2008-general/72213-640-642-study-notes.html

sherrill

HandyMan wrote: »

For your virtual labbing problems, try using SUN/Oracle VM VirtualBox. It works really well and many of the issues that were present before with Windows guests seem to be resolved. I have several virtual 2008 servers running on my Windows 7 64-bit host PC, all in their own private network.
I'm also on the 70-640 study track. There seems an incredible amount to learn and my fear is that by the time I get to the end of the study I may have forgotten some of the earlier content. My head has a limited storage capacity.

I used VmWare Player on a Win7 64 bit PC to lab for the 640, with good results.

I had the same issues as far as forgetting the earlier material. It is a lot to remember for sure. Psoasman's notes are great (thanks, man) I'm using them for the 642.

magwitch

Amir21 wrote: »

I have Windows Server 08 installed on 1 of my partitions(Win7 and Ubuntu are the other two), its a 40gig partition, and that's what I'm using for my labs. I actually had the Win Sever 08 running on Ubuntu with the VMWare Player but it was too slow. Tried it on Win7 to slow as well. I notice alot of guys are running multiple vm's for your labs but I gotta work with what I got for the time being. I'd really appreciate any pointers on what to give extra attention to. So far I know to focus on CA, DNS, Powershell and that's what I'm running with. I plan to sit for the exam in about a month so hopefully I can stand a chance. Take Care.

You can download Hyper-V Server 2008R2 SP1 here:

Download Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 with Service Pack 1 (SP1)

Server Core only so you'll get to hone your PowerShell (and Google!) skillz too...