Microsoft exam Powershell question

hardscript

Simple question. How are powershell questions handled in the exams. Do you need to remember all the commands exactly or are they multiple choice as well?

MSSoftie

They are multiple choice and usually presented in such a way as if you understand a little of powershell, you can figure it out. You will not need to be able to produce a command. You just need to know which of the ones in the options is correct. Take the time to really look at the commands. First you will need to understand the differences between set-, get-, enable-, and the like. Next you will have to look at the rest of the command and figure out what it means. The commands usually explain themselves for the most part.

hardscript

Cheers for that, i was really worried about a simple question like what is the powershell command to remove the GUI tripping me up because i couldnt remember the features exact name.

J.Tot

MSSoftie wrote: »

They are multiple choice and usually presented in such a way as if you understand a little of powershell, you can figure it out. You will not need to be able to produce a command. You just need to know which of the ones in the options is correct. Take the time to really look at the commands. First you will need to understand the differences between set-, get-, enable-, and the like. Next you will have to look at the rest of the command and figure out what it means. The commands usually explain themselves for the most part.

I don't agree with this. My buddy took 410 recently and he said they like to trick you. Specifically said they asked him to set things like DNS through CLI in three separate questions, and 3 of the four options were technically correct. Just knowing the structure isn't enough, you need to know which method does what, and which is preferred.

I'm starting to use powershell more and more in my labs because of this.

atari37

J.Tot wrote: »

I don't agree with this. My buddy took 410 recently and he said they like to trick you. Specifically said they asked him to set things like DNS through CLI in three separate questions, and 3 of the four options were technically correct. Just knowing the structure isn't enough, you need to know which method does what, and which is preferred.

I'm starting to use powershell more and more in my labs because of this.

Well, MSSoftie is right. If you've taken the exam and know some Powershell syntax, you'll understand what he's saying. By the way, there's absolutely nothing wrong with learning Powershell. What He/She really means is that if you get a Powershell question, you can quickly eliminate 2 or 3 of the wrong answers and focus on the possible answer. Secondly, there's no CLI on any Microsoft exam I've taken (this might be new). The way you answer CLI type questions on a Microsoft test is through drag and drop.

For example, you might be asked the correct Powershell command to add a secondary dns server. Knowing that Powershell syntax starts with (verb-noun); get-something, set-something, etc

If your possible answers have something like dns-addsecondary (noun-verb), you know right away to eliminate that one.

This is an actual example from Windows IT pro:
"add-dnssecondaryzone bigfirm.com "bigfirm.com.dns" 71.23.1.5"

This type of question will usually break this command up into multiple parts and you have to drag and drop them in the right order. Hope that helps.

MSSoftie

Atari states what I meant much more clearly. I was in a rush so I couldn't give the examples I wanted to like he did. Thank you Atari. To be even more clear - You can take most of the commands and figure out what they mean. For example, Uninstall-Windowsfeature Server-Gui-Mgmt-Infra -Restart. To me is mostly self explanatory. I know what the verb is. This command will uninstall something. What will it uninstall? In this case it will uninstall a windows feature. Which windows feature? The server gui management infrastructure. The other answers may be close but if you break them down - I believe you can easily decipher them.

Contrary to popular opinion. I do not think they add answers to "trick you". They do give information that is not necessary. They will give a answers that would also work. You should be able to determine what information is needed to answer the question. In the real world, you will have tons of information available to you that may have nothing to do with the problem. You need to be able to determine what is important in the case you are working. Its not a trick. You may have more than one way to do something. Normally, there will be a good reason to do something one way over another. For Microsoft exams, many times they want you to use the newer technology over the old because of its "enhanced" features. The old way will still work but doesn't offer something they feel is important. I think that is an important thing to remember on exams. If you see answers with a newer technology and an older technology it replaces, the answer is USUALLY the newer technology. It isn't always so you still need to think the question through but if it comes down to a guess, I think that is the way to go.

Second - definitely encourage you to learn powershell. I am in the process myself so I know firsthand how useful it can be.

J.Tot

MSSoftie wrote: »

Atari states what I meant much more clearly. I was in a rush so I couldn't give the examples I wanted to like he did. Thank you Atari. To be even more clear - You can take most of the commands and figure out what they mean. For example, Uninstall-Windowsfeature Server-Gui-Mgmt-Infra -Restart. To me is mostly self explanatory. I know what the verb is. This command will uninstall something. What will it uninstall? In this case it will uninstall a windows feature. Which windows feature? The server gui management infrastructure. The other answers may be close but if you break them down - I believe you can easily decipher them.

Contrary to popular opinion. I do not think they add answers to "trick you". They do give information that is not necessary. They will give a answers that would also work. You should be able to determine what information is needed to answer the question. In the real world, you will have tons of information available to you that may have nothing to do with the problem. You need to be able to determine what is important in the case you are working. Its not a trick. You may have more than one way to do something. Normally, there will be a good reason to do something one way over another. For Microsoft exams, many times they want you to use the newer technology over the old because of its "enhanced" features. The old way will still work but doesn't offer something they feel is important. I think that is an important thing to remember on exams. If you see answers with a newer technology and an older technology it replaces, the answer is USUALLY the newer technology. It isn't always so you still need to think the question through but if it comes down to a guess, I think that is the way to go.

Second - definitely encourage you to learn powershell. I am in the process myself so I know firsthand how useful it can be.

I haven't seen the question, so I cant say if there is a keyword to look for to find out what's what. But my friend told me he couldn't discern what they wanted. The trickery comes when they ask something like this :

How do you set a DNS address, choose one only.

• Use Netsh (Which can set a DNS)
• Use set-DNSClientServerAddress(Also Valid)
• sconfig.cmd(Also valid)
• Use Get-WmiObject (Also valid)

Also just knowing the gist of powershell isn't enough for many cmdlets, and those questions will trip you up.
If you've never seen it before.Is it Set-DnsClient?(Sounds right, but isn't) Set-DnsClientServerAddress(right one but sounds fake) or set-DnsServer(Sounds plausible, but wrong). Elimination isn't always enough.

Sure the difference between set get and add can make a difference, but don't just rely on that, learn some powershell.

Knowing the basic structure of cmdlets is fine and dandy for many questions, but for MCSA/MCSE you want to know without a doubt which is which. Specifically, setting various IP settings, and nic teaming options.

MSSoftie

I have taken 5 Microsoft exams in just under 5 months. Without revealing to much. I think they used to do that but now I think the questions are much more straight forward. Normally they have patterns.

1) A and B
2) B and C
3) A and C
4) B and something more obscure.

I very much doubt you will ever see a question with more than 2 answers that will work with one that is "more correct" for some reason that admittedly might not be immediately clear. Remember, not all questions are scored. This may be where some of the weird questions come from. Most of the questions are vetted. Meaning that they have appeared as "test" questions on other exams. If the question is found to be to statistically unclear, it isn't selected as a scored question. This is also the reason they do the pre-exam survey. They ask how much experience you have with the different technologies. They can use that to gage that "most people who report to be competent in this area answered correctly" or "most people that report themselves to be expert in this area answer this question incorrectly". Those sorts of things help them self correct the test to a level that shows mastery of the topic without being unreasonable.

atari37

Sometimes, it seems like there are more than one answer or no answer at all. However, if you read the question over and over you might catch the obvious. As you take more Microsoft exams and understand how they word their questions, you become better at weeding out the wrong answers.

For the type of question you stated above, they will usually give you more information to work with. I've never seen a Microsoft question this short "How do you set a DNS address, choose one?". The exam is not that easy.

There might be details in the question like: Your company has 2 Server Core 2012. Then it will go on and give you the rest of the question like: You need to setup DNS on one of the servers. What is the quickest way or which will take the least amount of work/time...or something along that line. In a question worded like this, if you know that you can't use a GUI tool on the actual server (Core), then you can eliminate the GUI tools.

Anyway, I hope that helps.

mokaiba

They throw in a bunch that look similar and could technically be correct as well as giving you so many options to choose from you become overwhelmed if you are not familiar with all of them.

Without revealing much, some are structured this way:

QUESTION group blah blah

More about question group.

What this question wants.

Choose one from the following answers,

A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
L
M

MSSoftie

I remember a few like that. I think they got lazy for those and just used the same answer set for all of them. They just changed the question.