MCITP: Getting off my lazy butt (update)

blargoe · December 2008

I am now completely focused on catching up my certs again.

I think MCITP Enterprise Messaging is some low hanging fruit for me. 70-236 should not be a problem, I've taken the official skills upgrade course, have done 2 migrations from 2003, and am brushing up on my powershell now. I am also taking a course at Global Knowledge this week that combines the curriculum from all the design/deploy courses into one class which should get me well on my way for 237 and 238. I'm going to be aggressive and try to get these passed by the end of the year (yes, I'm insane) so I can completely focus on the VCP class I'm taking at the first of January.

I was wondering how heavily UM is tested on these exams? This is the one area that I haven't had much of an opportunity to work with first-hand.

royal · December 2008

I don't believe UM is on any of the exams.

blargoe · December 2008

Awesome. Thanks.

HeroPsycho · December 2008

There is some very high level stuff about UM, like resources required, where you need UM servers, how to make them redundant, that kind of thing. VERY high level.

blargoe · January 2009

Update:

I passed 236 this morning, I got a 756 which is not as well as I figured I would do. I'll chalk it up to the following:

- Having to wait several weeks to get an exam date from the time I was first "ready" to do the test. From start of Christmas week all the way through today my local test center wasn't taking any test appointments.

- I figured knowing how to accomplish administrative tasks, and knowing the powershell equivalent noun-verb and basic options would be enough. For a good percentage of the questions, it was; but for some tasks the cmdlets presented as possible answers required deeper understanding of all the possible options for a given cmdlet.

- I didn't dig far enough into monitoring and troubleshooting and scored poorly on that section

Either way, I passed. I thought it was a good test, different than what I figured though.

I had a lot of questions about how to produce a report that contains certain kinds of information using powershell, which fortunately I just did a couple of weeks ago at work or I might have missed some of those. I was surprised that all of the troubleshooting/monitoring questions wanted powershell answers, considering how nice the GUI is for these tasks. I've never gone outside the GUI for checking queues, message tracking, etc, and I probably never will in real life. I didn't do well in that section but I did very well in the rest of them, in part because I knew and have used some of the related powershell before.

In general, knowing basics of Exchange 2007 infrastructure, knowing "what do to" to accomplish the administrative tasks in the posted MS exam objectives, knowing Powershell basics in general, and in specific the powershell verb-noun to access the same Exchange administrative features will get you most of the way there. Paying special attention to Exchange setup and monitoring/troubleshooting probably would be next, based on the number of questions I got on each.

Not as hard as the 2003 exams in that you didn't need as much AD/networking knowledge, but harder in that more in-depth of the Exchange/Powershell way of doing things is required to pass.

I'm going to take 237 and 238 as soon as I can. I've already chalked off this month to concentrate on VCP (I'm in the VI3 I&C class next week), but since I was set back on getting the Exchange exams scheduled I might go ahead and complete 237 and 238 since I feel pretty confident about being able to pass them.

dynamik · January 2009

Congrats and good luck with 237, 238, and the VCP!

royal · January 2009

Congrats blargoe!

MCITP: Getting off my lazy butt (update)

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