Is this enough prep for MCITP SA/MCSA2008? no exp, or prior certs...

kriscamaro68

recktechie wrote: »

Do the Ms Press books teach me hwo to use Hyper-V? How do I know if my computer is "cheap"? where can I find the junk pc's from and how much are they typically around? Would it be easy to get the whole thing set up?

How can I contact you for more questions? Idk how to message you. How do you PM ppl?

Do you think I can find a job with just the MCITP SA and no work experience?

Do you think testout and MS press books are enough to pass the examincations?

thanks.

Let me give you an analogy of what I am seeing. Don't take this the wrong way I am just trying to help you understand what I see from my point of view.

I see a person who wants to be a surgeon. You say I want to start performing surgery in 4 months time. Then you think I will go and find out what I need to learn and read a bunch of books and ask questions. Once I am done with that I should be able to do it. So you do a little bit of research and then you go to a hospital and start talking with a surgeon and say I want to do what you do but I want to be able to do it in 4 months make $300,000 and by the way what does a scalpel do.

You have asked us how to do basic tasks like setup a vm or how do I know if my computer is cheap. These are simple tasks that one should know or be able to find easily with just being a tech geek. Yet this is not something that you understand yet which leads me to believe that you are still at a very basic level of computer knowledge. This is why you should be starting with the A+ and not even thinking about anything Microsoft at this point.

Surgeons have to go to school for years and work long hours as apprentices and gain experience before someone is going to let them do surgery by themselves on a human. This is the same for I.T. You can't expect to do "surgery" (i.e. work on server related tasks/troubleshoot AD/RMS/ADFS/ADCS) without having the foundation down first and building your way up to that level of knowledge. In time it will come but you can't just bypass the low level stuff and expect to jump in and perform "surgery" in 4 months time. Even if you passed all those tests in 4 months or even 1 year you still have not gained the experience yet to perform that kind of "surgery" on enterprise systems.

Just how I am seeing it. Start with your A+ or atleast study the material and work your way up from there. I got to get back to work but think about what I have said.

pumbaa_g

I agree with the people who have responded so far, I will summarize the same.
1. Getting a job without experience is difficult, not impossible. It depends on a lot of factors like the region/demand etc. MCSA 2008 is unlikely to have recruiters breaking down the door trying to hire you. Go with the safe bet, start out in the Helpdesk and work your way up.
2. Getting a certification does not mean you get a certain salary figure, you need to be good in what you do. It’s like saying that I will shell out few thousand $ and get CCIE Certified and get a 150K salary. Doesn’t work in the real world mate!
3. If you want to study and understand the subject & topic you need atleast 6 months of study and practice. I am working and it took me almost 1 1/2 years to complete MCSA. In the time you have mentioned, the only way you can clear is using the ****. Trust me this will reflect when you open your mouth in the interview if you do.
4. For study material second hand stuff is fine, I use a decent library to get certification books as I can't always pay for them. Some books you like and may want to buy one "Windows 2008 R2 Unleashed" & "Mastering vSphere 5" "Hyper V Resource Kit" I feel come in this category. I used MCTS Study Guides and Windows 2008 R2 and the Technet website
5. I have been working for 8 years and still struggling to buy a proper lab, I currently use my old desktop Phenom 2 4 Core with 6 GB of RAM (it originally had & 1 TB hard disk as a lab. In the Hyper V exam I had to use the MS Online Labs for Hyper V as I was unable to run Hyper V on my Desktop. You need to do your R&D about this and work out what you can afford. I check out the labs in this forum as well as the rigs online and would love to have a Twin Xenon Core Server with SSD & 32 GB of RAM, twin NICs and FCoE setup with 32 TB RAID 10 Arrays, I really require something like this for my certification but costs more than a car! I will probably have to make do with a 8 Core Bulldozer Processor/16 GB of RAM and 2 TB HD with an option to buy a NAS in a few months. Live and Learn!
6. Telecommute option is a viable one for some people/positions. Don’t always count on it being available immediately! The Team I work for has that option but most of us have worked for years in the same role. One time in the interview one guy asked him if work from home option will be made available. Till then things were going really well, my boss didn’t hire him. I asked him why and he said that he prefers that the new guys work from office for some time before taking the option, it allows him to size them up and see if they can manage by themselves and ensure that they don’t give stupid excuses when things go wrong. In this industry I have heard many of them, my Laptop failed, my phone stopped working etc etc.
7. Don’t go a certification blindly, test the waters and see if it’s the right temperature. What if you don’t like it? After all this investment it will be a shame. Read a few articles, talk to people and see what you like to do and then take a call

recktechie

Its not all about the money, but I wont lie, I do not have an overwhelming passion for IT, but that doesnt mean I dont enjoy thr idea of working with computers and all. Its just its not like its been my life long dream, but like I said, I do think I will enjoy it, and especially because I like to be valuable to an organization so I will work hard. But your telling me by two years time I can actually be making 100k? lol, rly? I didnt expect that tbh.

I plan on using MS press books and Testout, like I said Im a complete noob, no prior knowledge or work exp. My first step is to get my 640, then 642, and then 646, and then get a job. I will try to get a job after the 640 or 642 if possible. is this what you meant by plan?

Thanks

Darril

@recktechie - I didn't say YOU could be making $100K in two years. I did say that many outstanding administrators with good communication and interpersonal skills have six figure careers.

Are you an outstanding administrator or are you willing to put in the time and effort to become one?
Do you have good communication skills (including good writing skills) or are you willing to develop them?
Do you have good interpersonal skills or are you willing to develop them?

If your answers are yes, yes, and yes, then setting a goal to become an outstanding administrator earning more than $100K by September 11, 2014 is realistic, believable, and achievable.

However, I also know that when people do not have a passion for a goal, they often give up when obstacles start to appear and you can certainly expect obstacles to appear.

My question was "What will you do first?"

I hear you say 70-640 is first.

OK, if this is what you want to pursue, then start on 70-640 and focus all of the energy you're willing to put into your goal on 70-640 learning the material as best you can. See how long it takes you. See if it's something you think you're willing to pursue for the long haul. As you're working on it, post questions related to specific topics on the 70-640 exam and you'll get some great responses from a lot of helpful people here.

Still, your words "I do not have an overwhelming passion for IT" ring in my head. Reading some of the other posts by people on these forums, I know there are many people that are passionate about IT posting here. They pour a lot of time, money, and energy into learning this stuff.

What do you have a passion for?

If you want to pursue a career in IT, I say go for it.

But if you have a passion somewhere else and you know what that is, you might be cheating yourself by pursuing a career in IT.

On your private message about jobs in a specific location, you will probably get a better response if you post it in the IT Jobs forum: IT Jobs / Degrees Forums. Even though I visited Lynchburg, VA just last weekend, I'm not best source for the job market there.

Good luck.

pumbaa_g

If you have no experience with Windows Server environment then yes it may take 6 months. I started studying from MTA material and then moved on to MCTS Study material. This took almost one year as initial progress was really slow, after this time I took 1-2 months to study for each exam as per the objectives. You need to have a sound understanding on Desktop and Server Hardware to succeed in this role. If you are not able to understand then I will suggest that you start with A+ first and then move into the Server Exams. I have been assembling/Troubleshooting Desktops for a long time plus worked in Helpdesk for 5 years so didn’t have to do that.
Testout & MS Press Books are sufficient for passing if you understand everything in them. My experience was that I needed to go into more details for my weak areas like DNS Replication etc from other books/blogs and Technet Site.
You need to lab to understand the material, this doesn’t work if you memorize it. MS will check your understanding of the technology and how it works. The only way to do that is to make a lab setup, break it then fix everything. Eventually you will get to a point that if someone wakes you up in the middle of the night and asks you about AD or DNS you can answer without getting up! In my case I had nightmares

Henry is God

I don't see the point in paying for Testout and buying books! Are you 'acquiring' the software or paying for it??

Testout should be OK for the concepts and knowledge, any further information can be found on the net through a simple search. I posted some of my preferred methods over on the thread I started when I passed.

As others have said, nail the concepts and lab up and only then you will find what works for you. I think you want too much too quickly but that is my personal opinion. Learn to crawl before you can charge a 40 strong mob.