640, 642, & 643 study times

MAC_Addy

Hello all,

My company is needing an extra systems guy and I've been asked to take these exams. I do have server knowledge and was wondering what the average study time on each exam usually is.

Thanks!

netsysllc

for the 70-640 I would say 80+ hours and the 70-642 60+ hours. I have not taken the 70-643 but at least as many hours as the other tests is what I would guess. It is unfortunate you have to take the 643, if you could do the 646 instead you would have a MCITP:SA from the combination of the 3. The three you are taking counts for the MCITP:EA but you would also have to take the 70-647 and a Windows 7 Desktop test. All of these tests expire the middle of next year, so you better get a move on.

MAC_Addy

Shoot, I did mean the 646 - apologies on that. On the hours recommended, is that for labbing? If that is for labbing, how many servers will I need to run at once through VMWare/VirtualPC?

I've also noticed that many books on Amazon.com have horrible reviews, which books do you recommend?

Lunchbocks

I would say those hours are for study and labs. Labs are very important in order to pass this exam.

Server knowledge is a big help for these exams, especially if you have experience in AD-FS, AD-CS, and AD-RMS. Also, the more experience you have in DNS, the better.

The book I recommend is the Microsoft Self-Paced Training Kit for 2008 R2. It seems to be the best that I found. There is an errata Web page that shows the corrections, and I would definitely go through those.

I don't believe one book is enough to pass the exams. I also recommend CBT Nuggets if you can get those, and I highly recommend using Technet. For me I used the Self-Paced book, Microsoft Server 2008 R2 Unleashed, CBT Nuggets, and Technet to fill in the blanks and reinforce the material. For practice tests, I used Measure Up that came with the book, and Transcender.

Good luck on the exam!

sratakhin

I feel like I'm retarded or something. Even though I haven't yet started preparing for 64x exams (on 291 now), I don't think 60 to 80 hours would be enough. I heard that 64x are easier, but really?

MAC_Addy

It probably depends on your level of knowledge going into it. If you have little to no knowledge 80+ hours sounds about right to me. 80+ hours really isn't that much if you're studying 2 hours per day during the week and 5 - 8 hours during the weekend. If that's the case, you'll be ready for the exam in less than a month.

Lunchbocks

I haven't taken the 291, but the 70-640 is a very difficult exam. If you look at the required skills for the exam, there is a lot of topics covered. And then when you look at how much there is to know with AD-CS and AD-FS alone, it can be overwhelming.

netsysllc

I have tons of experience and found the 640 very difficult. the Microsoft press book is okay but not enough to pass the test for sure. As for the labs you will want at least three virtual machines, especially for certificate services. I practiced setting up every covered domain of the test and also did some technet labs as well. There are differences between 2008 and 2008R2 that you will be tested on.

for the 646 test you should be able to pass it after other 2 with only 20 hours of study. It is not so much a technical test but will test you on how well you know the differences in the different technologies and when to choose which one.

discount81

It depends on your experience with Server 2008.
Do you use Server 2008 regularly, what do you do with it?

I did around 30 hours for 640, 10 hours for 642 and 10 hours for 646

I'd been using Windows server systems since NT4, and Server 2008 for a couple years before taking mine, so most of my study was filling in the gaps of things I rarely if ever do, like certificate services and federated services, some of the material in 642 I had to cover simply because no company with half a brain would use Microsoft for their networking so I had to learn it to pass the exam.
I used CBT Nuggets, TechNet and a Sybex book for 70-640, the other 2 didn't need the extra reading material.

My one piece of advice, if you have the experience already do these as quick as possible, I see some people posting on here that they spend 3+ months studying for 1 exam, that is overkill especially when Microsoft have second shots right now.
Try and bang these out as quick as possible while the knowledge is still fresh.

I got all 3 of mine finished in around 3 months, If I spent 3 months per exam I would begin forgetting material, after 70-640 a lot of the material is just rehashed so it is better to try and do it as quickly as you can.

MAC_Addy

I appreciate the replies. I saw that Microsoft offer their Server editions on a 180 day trial so I don't have to buy multiple copies for VirtualPC. Is that what everyone else is doing?

Also, what PC/server specs should I be looking at to run these?

Lunchbocks

MAC_Addy wrote: »

I appreciate the replies. I saw that Microsoft offer their Server editions on a 180 day trial so I don't have to buy multiple copies for VirtualPC. Is that what everyone else is doing?

Also, what PC/server specs should I be looking at to run these?

I have a VMware esxi 4 server running with 12 GB of ram. I downloaded 2008 R2 from Microsoft and use it on the 180 day trial. If I set each server (VM) to 2 GB of RAM, I can run 5 servers and two clients without any issue.

Good Luck!

discount81

In a lab I think you can put under 2GB of ram, especially for the Server Core ones boxes I have them at 512mb of ram.

I have a ESXi box with 32gb of ram, most of my server 2008 machines I put as 2GB of ram because I have the memory now.

However when I only had 8GB of ram I put each machine as 1GB of ram for labs and they ran fine.

ptilsen

I think study times are going to be highly relative to your experience. I spent maybe 40 hours (maybe less) on 70-648, which is little more than 70-640 and 70-642 glued together. Even so, 40-60 hours each seems like plenty to me.

sratakhi,, I found the 70-290 series exams to be more difficult and cover a broader range of content. Although it was years ago and I had less experience, I feel fairly confident in saying they were more difficult exams. I will say that 70-270 was definitely more difficult than 70-680.

I did most of my labbing on a Core 2 Quad with 8GB of RAM and 7,200RPM hard drives in RAID. I've since upgraded quite a bit, but that was a pretty tolerable experience. Any modern CPU, 8GB of RAM, and either a dedicated lab hard drive or SSD will provide a pretty good experience. Even a single, non-dedicated drive and 4GB of RAM is enough.