Revsion Advice

gbeer7

Hi All,

Currently i have around 2 1/2 hours revsion a day, have an 8 month old and 2 year old so time is limited ! I'm studying for the 640 exam, but finding revsion time not very well structured. What did others do ? Should i spend an hour on a nugget, then read the book ? Spend an hour doing practical work or recapping what i have done ? Getting concerned that stuff i have studied is going from my head. Taken lots of notes, but not sure if thats helping much either. In a bit of a muddle so any advice would be good. What sort of schedules did people setup ?

MeatCatalogue

The way I study is I watch the videos through once without any notes. Then I go back and take notes of the videos. My 70-642 notes were 147 pages, but most of the content in those notes were screen snips of the gui interface or screensnips of commands.

After I finished the videos a second time (in my case cbt nuggets) I reviewed all my notes then took some practice exams. In my case I was scoring between 68% and 80% on the exams so I was not confident. I then bought some more practice exams and tried then in "real time". What this means is I would select my answer and if wrong, figure out why by googling to subject which usually led me to technet which shed light on the correct answer.

On exam day I crammed for about 3 hours, memorizing commands (and context like netsh) and ports, etc, and walked into the exam full of redbull.

Doing all of the above I scored an 880 on the actual exam last week. I'm onto 643 and am doing the same thing again as it worked for me in the previous exam.

This is just how MY brain works, yours may work differently. As for 640, I took that exam over 3 years ago so i can't really say. I know I read almost the entire training kit book (version 1 at the time) and had 50 or so pages of notes.

gbeer7

Thank you, thats very useful to know. Not taken an exam for 15 odd years, so getting into the revison mode/exam taking is proving tricky.
Do you not referance the MS press books ?

MeatCatalogue

gbeer7 wrote: »

Thank you, thats very useful to know. Not taken an exam for 15 odd years, so getting into the revison mode/exam taking is proving tricky.
Do you not referance the MS press books ?

Nope, no need. Everything is on technet or other sources on the net. If for example you don't know what prot LDAP uses, finding out from the book would take forever. Google, 2 seconds. Just my opinion of course and not trying to take anything away from someone who studies from a book. There aren't many resources on google for Windows 2000 problems, so having a stack of windows 2000 reference manuals handy should you use that OS is wise. For modern era tech like 2008 R2, everything is on google which usually leads you directly to technet.

gbeer7

Thanks again. So how did you go about labbing things ? Make them up yourself ?

MeatCatalogue

gbeer7 wrote: »

Thanks again. So how did you go about labbing things ? Make them up yourself ?

I have a technet sub and a home computer with 16GB of ram. I just use virtualbox and have a bunch of VMs. I also have access to 2 enterprise licenses so I could do clustering.

As for actual labs - I really tried to mimic as I was going. For example, when I was learning about DHCP relay agents, I made one. When I was learning about event forwarding, I set that up on my VMs. Back in AD, I did a lot of replication, created forests, transitive trusts between VMs, etc. If you are serious about MS, pay the $200 for a technet sub and just put in a couple more gigs of ram to support up to say 8. I never really did any real labs. I call my home area a test environment more than a lab.

gbeer7

I own a HP 305 G5 server with 16gb Ram, running ESXI 5.1 and VMWARE from my laptop. I have a Technet standard licence as well, very useful. I have several 2008 R2 servers, 2008 server, 2012, Win 7 client, Win 8 and a 2003 server all running. I try a mimic the setup through the course books. Need to get my knowledge up and try and do a few of my own. Guess i keep practicing until i can do it with my eyes closed !

gbeer7

Anyone else can share there revison timetable ? Feel im lacking structure to mine.

Essendon

I would read the exam blueprint, then I'd view the CBT Nuggets to give me a bit of a grounding on the topic. Then I'd read the corresponding article on TechNet and lab the entire thing up. TechNet have step-by-step guides that I'd follow. I also read the Mastering Server 2008 R2 book and the Unleashed book as I went through the topics. I also made handwritten notes about stuff I felt was important or didnt stick in the brain easily. I'd repeat as needed. Closer to exam date I'd read my notes and go through the blueprint and re-lab what I had problems with.

I have almost never followed an MS Press book, the only exam I did use the official book was for 70-290, my very first MS exam.

gbeer7

thank you Essendon. Thats very useful. Not taken an exam for 15 years or so, and struggling to get it to sink in.