Overcoming Network Application Services

ptilsen

Here I am, two days away from my third attempt at 70-643. I had planned on finishing this way back in November. I pulled off 680 and 648 in a month or less each; I figured 70-643 shouldn't take more than two. Boy was I wrong. Here I am, six months later, a month past when I expected to have EA, struggling with the same topics: SharePoint and Windows Media Services.

Take my last two Transcenders practice scores:
Category ...........| 1st score | 2nd score
Deploying Servers.| 86%..... | 100%
Configuring RDS ...| 92% ......| 91%
Configuring WSI....| 80% ......| 82%
Configuring NAS....| 44% ......| 33%

One of these scores is not like the other.

I have re-read the MS Press chapters easy half a dozen each, maybe more. I've done the labs, including some of the Technet virtual labs. I even made and printed myself flash cards. I read the R2 Unleashed chapters.

The material just won't stick. I have never and almost certainly will never use WMS, and I have minimal SharePoint experience and even less desire to learn or even work with SharePoint professionally. I don't mind using it, but I have no desire to ever design, configure, or maintain SharePoint as a significant portion of my job. All of this adds up to I hate both topics and am just not taking to the material.

I wish I had some more feedback on what specifically I'm struggling with, but my practice tests results seem to indicate it's pretty much everything. I can't keep the SharePoint interface and terminology straight; I can't keep the WMS security terminology and configuration methods straight; I can't remember the correct order in which anything in SharePoint should be configured.

So, tl;dr, I'm looking for any advice on free study material or methods that will specifically help with these topics. Flashcards, practice exams, anything. I think a big part of the problem could be these Transcender questions, which I have long since used up and become frustrated with.

I'm going to be blunt in underlining that I'm not interested in actually having any skill in either. That is not how I believe certifications should be approached, but I'm going to point the finger at Microsoft on this one for including material that I think is outside the scope of what this exam should be. I can get understanding the basics of each and what they're used for, but there are way too many specifics to keep straight for technologies that are either A. almost never used (WMS) or B. handled by specialists (SharePoint). I mean, why not put Exchange or SQL on 70-643? Those are much more likely to get touched by a generalist sysadmin than SharePoint, but they aren't on here because they have their own certification tracks -- JUST LIKE SharePoint.

I've enjoyed the rest of the material in this test, but at this point I just need a way around SP and WMS.

Edit: I'm currently going through some of the links provided in the sticky.

ptilsen

Doing a bit better after more labbing and a bit of studying. I basically just need to sit and play the SharePoint interface until I remember it. The "specify quota templates" vs "configure quotas and locks" nonsense is backwards and still trips me up, even though I've labbed and configured quotas in production. I guess I should just be happy I don't have to remember cmdlet synrax.

Krunchi

Have you watched any of these videos 70-643 7 hour free training course all on you tube - YouTube ?

I have not used them yet but have them on my check list to get ready for 643.