70-662- Anyone taken it recently?

TheFunnyMan

Hey everyone. I've been a lurker here for quite sometime and am taking 70-662 this friday. I'm quite nervous about the whole thing. I've taken and passed a few exams over the 10 years I've been in IT (win2k client exam, AD 2008 config, win7 desktop admin pro exam) but this seems to be the hardest so far.

I spent the past few months building the environment out (several times) according to the trainsignal vids. I've done the trainsignal vids for this exam all the way through about 3 times. I paid for both the measureup and transcender practice tests (been doing them a lot but they are losing strength as I am kind of memorizing them) and I picked up the new book - "MCTS 70-662 Rapid Review: Configuring Microsoft Exchange Server 2010" a couple of weeks back"

I think I'm as ready as I'll ever be but, honestly, I am quite discouraged by the number of times people are failing this.

I realize that there are several threads on this exam but I just wanted to put a new post out there looking for some people to share what they can from recent experiences taking this exam. It's quite hard to find recent posts on this exam in ANY cert forums that are not just part of some random ****-sites.

Thanks in advance for any info or advice.

CChilderhose

Good luck on the test. What did you think of the Rapid Review book? I am thinking about it after I am done the Inside Out book for review along with the Transcender tests I have.

rsutton

Scheduled for next month.

TheFunnyMan

CChilderhose wrote: »

Good luck on the test. What did you think of the Rapid Review book? I am thinking about it after I am done the Inside Out book for review along with the Transcender tests I have.

I really liked it. You want to use it after you have done the bulk of your studying as it's pretty high level. If somebody got it as their only resource they would be pretty disappointed. You could almost say that it doesn't tell you how to DO anything, it tells you what you need to know, EXACTLY, and how to get the detailed information.

Example - Every chapter starts out like this:

Exam need to know
■■ Deleted items
For example: Do you know how to configure deleted item retention time for
an individual mailbox?
■■ Deleted mailbox
For example: Do you know how to reconnect a disconnected mailbox to an
Active Directory account?

And there are 3 of these in a row every few pages or so:

True or false? Mailboxes inherit deleted item retention settings from the mailbox
database that hosts them.
Answer: True. Mailboxes inherit default settings from the mailbox database. However,
you can use the EMC or the EMS to configure deleted item retention settings
on a per-mailbox basis. You can set the deleted items retention period and specify
whether items are not permanently deleted until the database is backed up.
****
My exam is tomorrow - I'm REALLY looking for thoughts from anyone who has taken it recently!

jibbajabba

So how did it go ?

TheFunnyMan

Leaving to go take it in 20 minutes

CChilderhose

TheFunnyMan wrote: »

I really liked it. You want to use it after you have done the bulk of your studying as it's pretty high level. If somebody got it as their only resource they would be pretty disappointed. You could almost say that it doesn't tell you how to DO anything, it tells you what you need to know, EXACTLY, and how to get the detailed information.

Example - Every chapter starts out like this:

Exam need to know
■■ Deleted items
For example: Do you know how to configure deleted item retention time for
an individual mailbox?
■■ Deleted mailbox
For example: Do you know how to reconnect a disconnected mailbox to an
Active Directory account?

And there are 3 of these in a row every few pages or so:

True or false? Mailboxes inherit deleted item retention settings from the mailbox
database that hosts them.
Answer: True. Mailboxes inherit default settings from the mailbox database. However,
you can use the EMC or the EMS to configure deleted item retention settings
on a per-mailbox basis. You can set the deleted items retention period and specify
whether items are not permanently deleted until the database is backed up.
****
My exam is tomorrow - I'm REALLY looking for thoughts from anyone who has taken it recently!

Nice and that is what I am looking for exactly. A review at a high level to ensure the main concepts I know enough of. Time to order.

Good luck today and knock it out.

TheFunnyMan

I failed TERRIBLY - 502/1000. I took this thing WAY too seriously. The questions were almost TOO easy. Very little explanation and nothing to go on for most questions. SEVERAL questions with possible answers A-N as apposed to A-D - They weren't that bad though cause most of them are pretty obvious whats NOT the answer. On most of those I was able to eliminate most but still ended up with 2 possibles as apposed to the 1 you would get with A-D

I spent a lot of money studying for this exam and the one thing I did not do was use the 'transcender flash' portion of the most recent set of practice tests I bought.

MY PLAN is to give this one more go. I'm going to spend the next several days memorizing the 240 'flash cards' in the transcender and REALLY LEARN the PS commands. I don't just me knowing how to type them in and their syntax but actually knowing most if not all reasons you would use each one.

MY EXPERIENCE with this exam is this:
55 Questions
5-7 of them I had NO IDEA what the answer was to the point of laughing to myself
1/2 of them were one-line questions (after you remove the 'you are an exchange administrator at contoso.com) type of intro
NO drag-n-drop or VMs or anything intuitive at ALL - straight up multiple choice with many, many choices
3 that had a terrible pic of the Exchange Mgmt Console with only a few points (hyperlinks) that you could click

The bottom line: The trainsignal was about 10-20% of what was needed. Had I perfected the 'Rapid Review' book I would have passed.

I have read every freaking post on the internet about this exam and haven't heard one person mention any of the issues I had.

Essendon

My commiserations on the fail. I have colleagues who've failed this one. The PowerShell part can trip one up big time. NOT an easy exam to get past. You'd think the next one, the 663, would be tougher, but it's the opposite. They say the 663 was easier than the 662, because of all the obscure questions they can ask on the 662. Maybe you should have a look at the 663 material? Perhaps give yourself more time on this one, I mean if you are 200 points away from passing, a few days of cramming may not be the best foot forward. Pound away on your weaker areas and strengthen on your stronger points.

Wish you all the luck you need to pass this next time around.

TheFunnyMan

Honestly, I feel almost ridiculous saying this but this is what I did to study:
I started studying for the exam in December of 2011. I was finishing up a major SCCM implementation coupled with Windows 7 rollout at work (sys engineer at my old job).
Every night after work for about 2 weeks I did a couple hours of the trainsignal (that I paid for!)
After the holidays (1 week off) I did the whole thing again except when I built the lab out I did it about 3x larger (server count) than the lab required. – I over-complicated each task in the class (bigger DAG, simulate server failure/restore)
I had a consulting gig in Feb and took two weeks off (had to).
Then in early march I took it to the next level

• Blew away my environment and did it again (this time with a super-small exchange 2007 to upgrade from and move mailboxes out of). I even simulated some users having old OWA and some with new.
• Paid $24 for 24hours on CBT nuggets.com 3 times to hit my weaker areas on their CBT to mix it up a bit
• Paid $53 (coupon code) for measureup access for 30 days (turns out to be a waste of time/money as none of the questions were anything like the over-simplified exam)
• Paid $100 for transcender access for 30 days (same result)
• Bought the 70-662 Rapid Review book (but only used it as a high-level reference, I suggest everyone taking this test get THIS book and make sure you know every single thing in it, no matter how mundane or simple)
• Made sure I hit and perused the TechNet article from ANY question that I got wrong.
• So you could say I took ‘the class’ 3 times and after that STUDIED what I consider to be pretty darn hard for 5 weeks.

TheFunnyMan

I've been going crazy on the flash cards and PS commands all weekend. Knowing what the exam kind of looks like now gives me a bit more confidence too.

I'm thinking of going back as soon as Wednesday.

TheFunnyMan

Passed on second try with a 718. Pretty ticked off about the whole thing. Obviously nobody will ever know my score but I KNOW THIS STUFF. I wasn't expecting to go from a 502 to a 990 but come on. I think I was likely one question from blowing it, again.

I bet I could take it 3 more times and get 3 different scores.

mr_xzx

Congratulations, can you please tell a bit about the exam any test-let?

CChilderhose

Congrats on the pass. Too bad it took 2 tries. I am hoping to do it in 1.

mistermasterblaster

55 questions??? What's up with that? The exam I took a month ago had 90. I failed with a 450 AND I AM AN EXCHANGE ADMIN. I have multiple years experience both directly supporting and deploying Exchange and this test ate my lunch. I prepared by spinning up a virtual environment, watching the TrainSignal videos, memorizing the flashcards that came with the videos backwards and forwards, and taking Transcenders tests until I could pass with high scores.

Congratulations for passing. I'm going out and buying the 70-662 Rapid Review for my second attempt.

TheFunnyMan

I'm sorry it took so long to reply but I didn't get the email that there were any comments.

The rapid review book is the WAY TO GO for sure.

And yeah I don't get the 90 questions thing. I had a straight up regular old test. The most technology was a terrible hyperlink-laden .jpg of the EMC and they wanted you to click on what you had to do to change the virtual directory for EAS. That was it. Only 3 possible things to click out of an entire console.

I went out 2 weeks later (2 days ago) and got the 70-659 virtualization cert. It was EASILY 10x easier than exchange. I had a lot more hyper-v experience than I did with exchange but it was like 1/3 the studying too.

good luck to all.

powerfool

I took both 662 and 663 on 31 Jul 2011 (back-to-back) and got a ~500 and an ~850, respectively, without any studying at all. I had one of those free retake vouchers that I thought I would be able to use if I took the first shot by the end of the month. My intent was to just get a look at the exams so I could study and use my retakes to pass... since I wasn't getting around to studying. Apparently they had just updated the exam to SP1 material and the SP1 material had just come out.

Well, I have not gone back to take the 662. I really need to knock it out, as I am an Exchange engineer working on a large 2003 to 2010 migration. I had actually completed the design just before the exams, so the practical experience was enough for 663. Anyhow, I probably know the material better now, even though I haven't "studied" for an exam. I have to start working on the daily procedures part of my documentation, so I will probably get more intimate with the routine PowerShell.

I will go for the Transcender flash cards... anyone know a coupon code? I need to get this one put to bed between this semester (end of the week) and the start of the summer semester (three weeks later).