70-412 or 74-409?

I just finished studying and started pre testing 70-412 and realize I didn't grasp a lot of the uninteresting topics like adrms, adcs and adfs. It's making the pretests very difficult and I'm not really looking forward to studying them again. Are these important to know on the job?

One of the few interesting topics was hyper-v and I think a hyper-v cert would look great on my resume. I passed 70-410 and 70-411 and strongly considering taking the 74-409 to complete the mcsa. Are there any drawbacks to this? Can I earn an mcse by taking 70-413 and 70-414 afterwards? What would I list it as, mcsa 2012r2 and mcp hyper-v?

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nascar_paul

I've been wondering the same thing. I was thinking about going to same route! I'm BUMPING this thread hoping that someone has the answers!

someperson49

Techfiend, I am impressed by the number of certs you have got already this year.

You could do the 70-346 instead, especially if you already have or planning to move to Office 365 and then use that to get the MCSA in O365 also.

kriscamaro68

I have taken the 74-409 and found it to be quite interesting. I however am over our Hyper-V and VMWare infrastructure so I enjoy doing that kind of thing over what is tested in the other MS exams. I have taken and passed the 410 as well and just need to pass the 411 to get the MCSA. The cert gave me the MCS and MCP designation for Hyper-V 2012R2 with System Center 2012R2. You will get the regular MCSA if you go that route and you will also be able to get the MCSE by passing the 413-414. I have verified this with MS back when this change up happened.

As a side note the 413-414 will test what is on the 412 just more in-depth so you won't be able to get away from those topics if going for the MCSE.

techfiend

O365 is an option and I work with it every day but it's not very interesting to me. Hyper-V I have very little experience with and always fallback to virtualbox for the much nicer interface. However there's whispers about moving to hyper-v at work and I'd like to learn more. The built in replication and backup is eye catching but likely less effective then what I'm used to, Veeam. I should probably learn it and no better chance than now. Hopefully it doesn't require a lot of labbing because I don't have suitable hardware to run type 1 currently.

I see AD RMS shows up again in one section of 70-414 but other than that 413-414 seem really interesting. I wasn't expecting half of 412 to be so uninteresting and I'm still wondering if these technologies are even useful in the real world.

In the long run I'd like to design systems and networks then implement the core parts. After that move on to the next implementation. I'm really big on projects and not really into administering current systems.

techfiend

I took and passed the 74-409 today. After passing 70-410 and 70-411 this was definitely the easiest test of the 3. About 50% of it is already covered in 410-412 studies. 25% was common sense questions and the other 25% I learned from http://www.veeam.com/wp-study-guide-microsoft-certification-exam-74-409-server-virtualization-windows-server-hyper-v-system-center.html I didn't do a lot of labbing beforehand because I don't have a good environment at home. At work I plan on building a small hyper-v environment to present.. and learn.

nascar_paul

Congratulations! I'm super excited to hear you had an easy time with the exam! I'm looking forward to it too (as soon as I can get through the 411)! Thanks again for the resource, I can't wait to get a hold of this test!

Louie1277

wow yes you have a lot of certs... Wish i could study like you and recall all the info when i take the exam. what or how do you study for the exam ? Any good tips

techfiend

I hope they pay off soon! Lack of experience in years has been my crux lately.

Do as much labbing as you can, at least that's how I absorbed the material best, unfortunately couldn't do much with 74-409 but starting to do more now at work. I was lucky enough to get through most of 410-412 labs in the training guides with virtualbox but 74-409 really needs bare-metal. I should have picked up a cheap, used, tower server that runs quiet. A rack mount would take up a lot more floor space and be a lot louder. When it comes to test time pay attention to what they are asking for. A lot of questions seem to have multiple correct answers on the surface, you have to dig to minimize.

joeswfc

Firstly, you need to think about what MCSE (if any) you would want to aim towards after getting the MCSA. If you are going to be doing the server infrastructure cert then you will need to know the 70-412 material to an even higher level, so I would say go for the 70-412. If you are looking into a different one then you could possible go for 74-409 if you think this would be easier (I have read that it is supposedly a beginner exam compared to the 70-412 which is intermediate). If you are just wanting the MCSA title for your CV then go for whichever you think is the easiest.
I failed the 70-412 twice and was considering looking at 74-409 if I failed a third time, luckily I passed.
I would also consider if you will be upgrading to the server 2016 certs whenever they are out, my guess would be that these certs will also include the 70-412 material like CA, RMS, ADFS so you'd still need to know it.

daviddws

I am considering the 74-409 as well, but not for the exam potentially being easier. The fact that pretty much all environments have some sort of hypervisor running tells me that this is an important topic. Note that you also receive a Microsoft Specialist certification for passing this exam.

poolmanjim

I haven't seen a lot of ADFS in life so far, its been kind of a fringe topic until just recently. With the introduction of Office 365 and the push for Azure AD as of late, the need for ADFS is becoming more and more common. I have seen several job postings asking for understanding of ADFS.

That being said, you can't go wrong with the 409 and focusing on Hyper-V more. I agree that not many companies out there ignore virtualization these days.

MariusRZR

I'm going for 409 instead of 412. As a System Administrator with little experience, I believe i will run into Hyper V more often than 412 stuff.

joeswfc

MariusRZR wrote: »

I'm going for 409 instead of 412. As a System Administrator with little experience, I believe i will run into Hyper V more often than 412 stuff.

Good move, I don't think you will come across a lot of the 412 content very often throughout your career

powerfool

If you look at it, I think that most of the alternatives have some overlap with 412... I know that the Office 365 exams cover some ADFS and the like... and if you are going for the MCSE Server Infrastructure, you are going to be dealing with these topics anyhow. I would say just get it over with and do 412. If you can't get past it, maybe consider a different exam to complete the MCSA and another option besides MCSE Server Infrastructure... but if you want to make it happen, nothing should stand in your way. It's all up to you!

joeswfc

powerfool wrote: »

If you look at it, I think that most of the alternatives have some overlap with 412... I know that the Office 365 exams cover some ADFS and the like... and if you are going for the MCSE Server Infrastructure, you are going to be dealing with these topics anyhow. I would say just get it over with and do 412. If you can't get past it, maybe consider a different exam to complete the MCSA and another option besides MCSE Server Infrastructure... but if you want to make it happen, nothing should stand in your way. It's all up to you!

I agree, if you really can't do the 412, then you will more than likely struggle the same if not more with the server infrastructure exams as these are related but at a higher level than 412.
So you may want to look into a different MCSE which doesn't heavily involve these topics.