Failed the 70-412 for the fourth time, what to do?

Bit of background:
I'm guy in my mid-twenties with no formal IT education. I have a degree in something completely non-related to IT (comparable to an undergraduate degree, or so I'm told). I've been working as a tier 1 tech support at an ISP for the past 2 years.

I started learning for the MCSA around this time last year. I passed the 70-410 in May 2015 (took me two tries) and the 70-411 in July 2015 (although I only learned I passed in October, as there was a scoring error in the exam. I passed this one at the third try). I passed the previous two exams through a combination of watching videos (Pluralsight), reading the books (Craig Zacker for the 410, Charlie Russel for the 411) and some hands-on practicing on my home lab (I've copied the Pluralsight labs mostly).

Now on to the 70-412. My score has actually been improving as I scored around 530 on the first two tries, 600 on the third and around 660 on the fourth. My problem right now is that the results for the exams don't give me much guidance as to what I'm doing wrong . I'm ignoring the first of the four exams in the following story, as I mainly just did that one to see what the exam looks like (there was a Second Shot promotion at Microsoft, so I was able to effectively purchase 2 tries for a 1 time fee).

For the last three exams, the 'top 3 skill areas to prioritize' have changed every time (as in, there have been nine different areas that Microsoft thinks I should prioritize in over the last 3 exams). The bars do give me some information (they're kind of hard to compare on sight as well by the way, as the order in which they're placed seems to randomly change every time, Microsoft, if you're reading this); High Availability and Configuring the AD Infrastructure seem to be area's I'm good at, while I don't seem to be too good at Business Continuity and Identity and Access Solutions.

For the last three exams, I've had the idea (might just be me though) that the questions were getting progressively harder. I have the feeling that the first and second exam contained more overview-like questions (like when a certain technology should or shouldn't be used, or what for), while the last two contained more specific questions as to which settings to configure (including ones I'd never heard of before, like Moving Core Cluster Resources, for example). I'm obviously not going into detail on the specific question, but I feel like the last couple of exams I get surprised by options and settings which I've never heard of.

For the fourth exam, I purchased a 'booster pack' with a MeasureUp practice exam in it. I did actually pass the practice exam, and for all the questions, I've written down things that caught my attention and that I didn't know yet (trying to learn from the wrong answers, as well as the right ones). Even this didn't help me (or not as much as I'd hoped, seeing as I didn't pass this time either).

Now as you may or may not know, Microsoft has a policy which says that you can try an exam five times in 12 months. Once you fail the fifth time, you're not going to be able to try the exam again (save for requesting a sixth try from Microsoft, which I'm not sure how easy that is) for 12 months after that.

I'd really like to know how to proceed, as I have just one try left to pass this exam (save for another e-mail from Microsoft, but I'm not counting on having that 'luck' twice). I guess my question to you guys is how do I proceed. Do I read the book again, do I get another book or watch another video series, or do I practice more in my home lab? How do I make sure I know every single setting on every single technology? Or is there something else I'm missing here?

Really hope you can help me out, thanks in advance for replying!

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Comments

GSXR750K2

I may sound a bit harsh here at first (it will pass shortly, I promise), but there's an elephant I feel needs to be addressed. Are you just taking these and hoping to pass? For future reference, sitting through an exam "just to see what it looks like" is, at least, a questionable statement. You should be extremely familiar with the format by now, but hey, it was your money to burn.

Moving on...

Nothing beats hands on experience. What is your lab setup like? The MCSA isn't an entry level cert, so the exams don't follow the "read-test-pass-repeat" method. The exams are designed to be extremely difficult to pass with book knowledge alone since many of the principles interrelate. This means that solid hands on experience is needed to grasp what is going on in the scheme of things. MS recommends some degree of experience before attempting the exams, and while this isn't required (you've made it this far with no prior experience), as I said, it is extremely difficult.

It sounds like you have some additional book learning to do since the Measureup exam uncovered some things you didn't know (and Measureup exams aren't that difficult). While I can't recommend a good resource for that, I would look up additional labs to work with, or you could get ballsy and branch out and experiment on your own...that way if you break something you have to figure out how to fix it. CBT Nuggets does a good job of walking you through some of the scenarios (at least they did, haven't seen the R2 vids). Also work with more than one server if you're able...some of the things like DHCP failover are new in 2012 and you need at least two servers to watch it work. Working with the different roles and features will uncover any misconceptions and misunderstandings about how things work and it will also affirm any concepts you do understand.

Other than that...good luck.

Timovv

Firstly, thank you for your quick reply, and thanks for being honest.

The first attempts at the exams you could describe as taking them and hoping to pass. I'd watched the video's, read the book once, and took the exam, basically to see what it looked like and what I could expect. I didn't expect to pass them. This had everything to do with the Second Shot promotion, where I didn't pay for the second exam. I think I may have thought I'd definitely pass in 2 attempts, but I grossly underestimated the 70-412. Also, I didn't know about the 5 time limit at that time, which didn't help either. For the last three, I felt like I had enough knowledge to pass them.

This is what my lab setup for the 70-412 looks like (I had some extra DC's, but deleted them due to lack of disk space on my SSD). I did have some problems using the lab (running Hyper-V for instance), but I worked that all out. The problem I think I might have with the lab is that it doesn't emulate a lot of real-life situations, as all the servers are running 2012r2, there are no legacy applications causing trouble or needing special configuration etc. I have no problem following the installs as they are done in the videos, but I don't run into any trouble while following the videos either, which is sort of annoying, because it makes it a lot harder to get to know what the common problems are and how to fix them.

I might watch the CBT Nuggets videos for another overview/perspective on the whole thing (Does anyone know whether they go into more detail than the Pluralsight ones do?). As for the books, any recommendations on which ones to use? I've figured out by now that the Exam Refs really haven't got enough details by far, but I don't know which ones do. Regarding the labs: I haven't got any access to an actual live environment (or a test environment for that matter), so the home lab seems the best I can do.

MariusRZR

There was a Hyper-V exam that you could use to substitute 412. You'll still earn MCSA. You can focus on that one and take 412 after a year or so.

I do not know the exam code, but you can find it around here somewhere.

catch23

According to Microsft:

You can substitute

Exam 346: Managing Office 365 Identities and Requirements
Exam 409: Server Virtualization with Windows Server Hyper-V and System Center
or
Exam 462: Administering Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Databases

for Exam 412.

MariusRZR

I really don't see how 346 and 462 would help you , so go for Exam 409: Server Virtualization with Windows Server Hyper-V and System Center.
I have a feeling it's easier than 412

poolmanjim

The 412 is a brutal exam. It covers a lot of topic areas that are difficult to understand and they don't really mix well. The exam can honestly be broken down into two major areas despite the different objectives: High Availability and Identity Services. That covers well over half the content on the exam. The problem with those being over half your content is that they are also some of the most complicated topics to study and require some real investment in effort and time to make them work correctly.

The best option for HA is to make sure you have at least 3 VMs running in a cluster on your server for Failover Clustering and at least 2 VMs for NLB. This allows you to play with some of the HA features and figure out what they are doing. Understand how to optimize the environments and what the different keywords in each topic are (e.g. Affinity, Quorum, Cluster Aware Updating, Scale-Out File Server, etc.) and understand how to configure them and when they are relevant.

For Identity, that's where things start getting fuzzy. ADRMS and ADFS are a real pain to configure and have some very high level topics that go beyond even what the MCSA is willing to cover. It doesn't take long before you are really outside most engineers' skill sets when configuring those two. However, the good news is Microsoft isn't super interested in how to configure those as to when and why. You do need to know some of the ins and outs of installing and configuring them but focus more on how to solve problems. If you need to allow iPhones to connect to your AD what do you need to install to make that happen? (hint: ADFS). If you want to restrict users from printing Emails, how do you make that happen? (hint again: ADRMS). Certificate services requires you understand PKI in a nutshell and then understand how to make it all work. Know the certificate types, versions and what the different tabs do.

My last two suggestions are the ones that involve money. If you want to play with Hyper-V Replica and REALLY mess around with HA and Failover Clustering. You will need to use VMWare Workstation (or ESX if you want to abandon Hyper-V as your parent hypervisor). VMWare allows for nesting Hyper-V within the VMWare stuff so you can create the nested environments needed to be able to play with Hyper-V Replica. Workstation isn't cheap but there is a trial for it. You can also do this if you have two computers that are identical to run Hyper-V.

Last, I found the Microsoft Official Course material for this exam to be exceedingly helpful. The lab suggestions it has helped me a lot and it was very straightforward and listed most of the Powershell I would need.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/learning/exam-70-412.aspx

OctalDump

MariusRZR wrote: »

I really don't see how 346 and 462 would help you , so go for Exam 409: Server Virtualization with Windows Server Hyper-V and System Center.
I have a feeling it's easier than 412

I think of those 4, 346 is the easiest. You do the other Office 365 exam (70-347), and you get MCSA Office 365 as well. Sweet deal, no?

Anyway, I'd have to repeat what others have said, and that you do need lots of hands on. There's always a few random questions on the MS exams that are "out of scope" for the exam objectives and the study guides, but are achievable if you have lots of hands on. The exam isn't aimed at beginners or junior support staff. It's aimed at people that are currently administering Windows Server 2012 every day, with 12 months or more experience.

That mightn't match the reality of many people's experiences (have to get the cert before you can get the job), but it is how MS designs these exams.

Honestly, maybe time to step back for 12 months and get the hands on - go through every feature, and every option. Do everything with the GUI and with powershell. Do it remotely and locally. Do it on core, and do it on full install. Run up multiple servers and get them running interdependent services, like AD and DNS on one box, DHCP on another, NAP on another. Run up Hyper-V with these services, in multiple instances. Really get to learn the whole product, and the rest of the MS ecosystem.

I'll also give another thumbs up for the official MS courseware.

MariusRZR

Go for 409. You as a Junior you will most likely use 409 stuff, Hyper-V, more often than 412 stuff.
When you get to the point where to need to configure high availability and clustering, you can go for 412, but mostly Seniors do that, so as a junior i don't think you'll touch that stuff.