Passed 70-640

neilbaal

Hope everyone is well?

I passed 70-640 today with a score of 823, good enough for me.

Without breaking the NDA, lots of questions on ADCS, ADRMS and ADFS.

I used Testout, always have, always will. I did do some wider reading with the Microsoft Press Training kit for R2,
in my opinion that book is a joke, no depth, lots of mistakes, its only saving grace was the exercises you can run through, although there is better ones on technet.
I labbed a lot, doing things over and over again to attain understanding.

Its a difficult exam, if I can help people in any way to prepare give me a shout.

Enjoy your weekend, I'm off to get drunk.

Zorodzai

congrats. What's next 70-642 ?

neilbaal

Thanks, it was a beast. Yes 70-642 next its supposed to be easier after the rather bloated 640.

Zorodzai

I have heard it's a bit of a beast.

I believe 640 and 642 have a bit of overlap so it should be less of a beast compared to the 640. Good luck and keep us updated.

CChilderhose

Congrats...

pumbaa_g

Congrats!!

johnbarley

Congrats.

How long did it take you to prepare and what was your experience level?

Did you buy the MCITP server bundle from Testout for $1k? Did your practice test scores there about match the one on the real exam? Were the questions similar?

neilbaal

Thanks, it took me 8 weeks of hard study and labbing. Very little AD experience, its all about getting the understanding which is why I labbed so much, without the understanding its impossible to pass in my opinion.
I just bought testout 70-640 on its own, I think its the best out there, plenty of stuff on the exam thats not in the microsoft press books, or in correctly stated.
Hope this helps

johnbarley

neilbaal wrote: »

Thanks, it took me 8 weeks of hard study and labbing. Very little AD experience, its all about getting the understanding which is why I labbed so much, without the understanding its impossible to pass in my opinion.
I just bought testout 70-640 on its own, I think its the best out there, plenty of stuff on the exam thats not in the microsoft press books, or in correctly stated.
Hope this helps

Cool. My book doesn't seem to have enough exercises. By labbing you guys mean actually configuring the computers, etc. rather than just learning theory and jargon? Does testout have all the exercises you need for labbing or do you just play around with stuff on your own? Can you do it all with one computer and use virtual PC to create a ntwk etc or do you actually require different computers, routers, switches, etc?

neilbaal

I think the best out there is testout. It has some reading, videos, a practical then a test per breakdown of the material. In my opinion, you have to setup everything from scratch, break it, start again, and so on. Things like ADCS with a offline root CA then create an enterprise intermediate, get them both working, then setup, web enrolment, auto enrolment, when your happy it works, do it again. Same for ADRMS, ADFS, ADLDS, and obviously ADDS. This will give superb understanding which helps when trying to workout the questions. Its a very technical exam and if you don't know how it works its difficult to answer questions.
That's my theory anyway, I bought a board, ram cpu, combo, and used hyper v, worked well.
Let me know if you need further advice.

Devilry

Congrats on the pass! Thanks also for all the feedback. How many hours a week did you put in considering you spent 8 weeks?

Keener

Congrats on the pass. I am starting the 70-642 as it relates more to what I do on a daily basis, but the 70-640 will be right after.

Devilry wrote: »

Congrats on the pass! Thanks also for all the feedback. How many hours a week did you put in considering you spent 8 weeks?

I am interested to hear this as well.

tprice5

Congrats!

neilbaal

Was about 20 hours a week, every spare moment I had I would study. Destroys your social life for a bit and weekends. I must stress the labbing, this is what gave me the understanding, also for evey task you can do with the GUI, the is also at least a powershell command than you can use instead sometimes a command line tool also. This bloated the exam in my opinion. Anything else anyone wants to know give me a shout.

Lunchbocks

Congrats on the pass; my test date is September 17th and I am pretty nervous. At this point, I am definitely not ready.

Does the Test Out include labs? I am labbing pretty heavy, but they are the same labs over and over for the most part.

Thx,

neilbaal

Yes testout includes labs, text, video tutorials and video demonstrations on the material. I'm starting to sound like I work for them, I don't, its just what has worked for me. Yes its good to read as broad as you can from many different authors, testout just seems correctly targeted to the exam.
TechNet has quite a few different step by step procedures, I followed a few of them, although some of them can get quite large.
Other than that keep labbing and playing around with the settings, cover the big ones, ADDS, ADCS, ADFS, ADRMS.
Good luck on your test

Lunchbocks

Thanks, that is good to know. I don't know about the 640, but I will definitely check them out for 642.

Technet is really been filling in the gaps for me lately; what a great resource. What I found especially helpful is to be able to tag a group of articles from the library and then have Technet create a pdf of the articles for me. What a great resource.

Thanks for the advice and the good wishes.

_Marauder

Congratulations!

Henry is God

neilbaal wrote: »

Hope everyone is well?

I passed 70-640 today with a score of 823, good enough for me.

Without breaking the NDA, lots of questions on ADCS, ADRMS and ADFS.

I used Testout, always have, always will. I did do some wider reading with the Microsoft Press Training kit for R2,
in my opinion that book is a joke, no depth, lots of mistakes, its only saving grace was the exercises you can run through, although there is better ones on technet.
I labbed a lot, doing things over and over again to attain understanding.

Its a difficult exam, if I can help people in any way to prepare give me a shout.

Enjoy your weekend, I'm off to get drunk.

That caught me off guard and gave me a laugh . Congratulations man.

How much was the Testout gear?

Lunchbocks

$495.00, which is why I cannot get it right now. It's not bad for what it offers, I just don't have it available and I test in 3 weeks.

Henry is God

Lunchbocks wrote: »

Thanks, that is good to know. I don't know about the 640, but I will definitely check them out for 642.

Technet is really been filling in the gaps for me lately; what a great resource. What I found especially helpful is to be able to tag a group of articles from the library and then have Technet create a pdf of the articles for me. What a great resource.

Thanks for the advice and the good wishes.

I never knew about that. How does that work then?

Keener

Testout also has bundles too.

They have MCITP: EA and SA for $1,295 and $995 respectively. LabSim - MCITP

Or here, they have a bundle that has MCITP Server Admin, CCNA, Network Pro, Security+ for $995 (at bottom of page).
Product Bundles

I have used them for Net+, Sec+ and SSCP. Pretty good on those.

Lunchbocks

Henry is God wrote: »

I never knew about that. How does that work then?

When looking at pages in TechNet, click on the down-arrow next to the printer in the upper right hand corner and select the "Print Multiple Topic" selection. Then you can select multiple pages and when you are done, Technet will assemble all pages into either an HTML document or PDF that you can download. While studying DNS, I had somewhere around 22 pages selected and it created a single PDF that I printed and carried around with me.

jonny72

The Technet "print multiple topic" thing really doesn't like my Mac. The PDF it generates crashes Preview and Safari.