Failed 70-341

So I took the 341 exam on Friday and failed pretty miserably with a score of 513. The exam was tough but I felt confident at the end that I had done better. It started out with 4 case studies that I felt I answered pretty well. Then the remain 30-ish questions were a good mix of topics but some caught me off guard. There were quite a few on how to route email across AD sites and coexisting with previous versions of Exchange. Not as many PowerShell command as I expected, but you have to understand how to pipe commands to another command by "building" the command from drop-down menus.
Anyway, I came here to see if anyone had advice on how to approach this exam the second time around. I have a lab currently set up with CU3 and plenty of books to read (Inside Out, Cookbook, PowerShell Cookbook). Haven't picked up the Mastering Exchange 2013 but thinking I should. My current job has me supporting Exchange 2013, and I have done some Exchange 2003/2007 administration in the past (with a migration from 2003 to 2007). Anybody that has passed this exam have any advice?
Anyway, I came here to see if anyone had advice on how to approach this exam the second time around. I have a lab currently set up with CU3 and plenty of books to read (Inside Out, Cookbook, PowerShell Cookbook). Haven't picked up the Mastering Exchange 2013 but thinking I should. My current job has me supporting Exchange 2013, and I have done some Exchange 2003/2007 administration in the past (with a migration from 2003 to 2007). Anybody that has passed this exam have any advice?
Comments
I primarily work with AD and Exchange and felt like I was well armed for this. I have sat through all Scott Schnoll's sessions at TechED and completed the CBT Nuggets (Though it is a tad high level)
Anyway, I've dropped it 3 times now.
I did get the Exchange 2013 On Premise Help File from TechNet and read it... Last time I got a 653.
If you thought 70-291 was the Beast Exam, well this one is just on steroids.
Would be keen to hear about anyone that has passed.
Also work through the migration process using the Exchange Deployment Assistant. You can work through the various 2007/2010 - 2013 and on-prem to cloud scenarios. I don't know if the exam reflects it, but the current version of O365 is based on Exchange 2013 so there is no direct migration path to anywhere from Exchange 2003.
My third attempt now (quite embarrassing with Exchange being my main thing) I scored a 650ish, yet the red bars were 95% all the way - in every single category.
Not sure what it takes to get this one.
Upstart, I know your post is quite old, but seems Exchange exams are not popular here on techexams! I am taking the 70-341 this week or next, and I am in a similar situation - I'm an exchange engineer in an enterprise. I don't do any 2013 but we have a project for it. We do a mix of 2007 and 2010 and have nearly 200,000 mailboxes across hundreds of AD sites. I'm siloed in that I dont do any AD stuff, nor did I design any of the environment. I figured 2013 certification would be better than 2010 because we are deploying it soon. But after reading the notes and failure rate and realizing this was a case study exam, thinking this may have been a mistake.
If you're still around, or if anyone wants to comment - I've been in microsoft land for 10+ years but in exchange land specifically for about 2. Any advice for a "novice" senior exchange admin before taking this exam?
I guess I just got the "hard" version of the exam and either I just guessed right the majority of the time, or more likely, was graded easier because it was the hard version.
Also, I really do hate Case study exams but kudos to microsoft for improving it on this one. In the 2008 exams I would read a question and have to spend sometimes 3 to 4 minutes finding where the information was in the case study pertaining to the question. This time microsoft really made it easier with questions like "The marketing users need a solution to resolve the business requirements" and all I really had to do was go find the section entitled business requirements. So much better.
Now on to 70-342 and MCSE: Messaging!
Just recently took the 70-342, failed it as well, although I felt it was easier due to my experience with UM and the easier topics (retention policies, DLP, etc.). Keep us posted on your 342 exams success, maybe we can swap notes.
Upstart - I applaud your persistence in keeping on. Failing an exam can really be spirit crushing and i've seen many threads where people just say they give up and will try again in several months.
I just started 70-342 cbt nuggets videos and so far I'm thinking 342 has to be easier than 341. I found the pro exam (design exam as well) for server 2008 (70-647) to be easier than some of the previous exams in the MCITP track. So i'm hoping this is also true.
Unfortunately I really dont have much work history with design of exchange. I'm currently an OPs support engineer on Sharepoint, Exchange and lync - and am required to get my MCSE in at least one of these. Since about 75% of the volume of incidents that come into me are exchange or exchange/lync integrated, I went down this path... but hell the 341 was crazy hard.
As far as my notes, i'm doing CBT nuggets videos and I take extensive notes on them. For 70-341 I had about 90 pages but a lot of it is screen caps of powershell commands, etc. What are you using to study for 342, anything you recommend?
My VM environment now mimics the CBT 70-342:
2 AD sites, 6 VMs:
1 DC in each site with writable GC running server 2012 R2
2 MBX in a DAG (one per site)
2 CAS using WNLB clustering (one per site)
Oh and I have my file share witness for the DAGs on the host.
Let me know your thoughts and what you are using to (re)prepare for the 70-342!
How do you like CBT Nuggets 342 so far? I don't have a subscription but was thinking about it for that course. I took the Microsoft 342 course through New Horizons earlier this year, it was a pretty good class.
From failing the test the first time here is what I would recommend studying up on:
UM Ports, including what is TCP and UDP
Retention Tags - different types and when to use them
RBAC cmdlets
DataCenter Activation Coordination and how to perform datacenter switchovers
Enabling IRM in OWA and other AD RMS topics
Public Folder Migration - technet goes into a lot of detail, I think a high level overview is sufficient
Organizational Relationships
The instructor for the course also gave this website to use as a study guide, said it was really helpful:
Microsoft – Exchange 2013 exam preparation notes for 70-341 and 70-342 | blog.bjornhouben.com
Hope the materials help for anyone that's preparing for the exam.
I sat this again yesterday, which was my 4th attempt. Quite depressing as an MCT that works mostly with Exchange. I will say though that the updated content with SP1 seemed more achievable, though it could be because I had a few months away from it. I scrapped in there with a 700
Definitely the toughest one I've sat. Congrats to all that have got there!