Going for it :)

Scheduled 291 for tomorrow evening. I read the MS Press book and so far i feel pretty much confident, except the RRAS part.
I am relying on my experience mostly rather than the book itself , so lets see what happens tomorrow.

# Hardcover: 349 pages
# Publisher: Microsoft Press (January 2004)
# Language: English
# ISBN-10: 073562030X
# ISBN-13: 978-0735620308

Any last moment advices ?

Edited: Passed it.

Just passed it from the first shot. RRAS is much trickier than I thought at first glance. Some questions were with a sub-question that held the key to an answer.

Score: 810
Test time given: 2 hours and 40 min (160 min) which is strange, on the paper it says the test goes for 3 hours and 30 mins.
Time spent- 1:03 mins.

Next is 293, It's not like i really need it for MCSA:Security, but it does not hurt to have extra cert, especially considering that it's very similar to 291.

So far I have:
A+ (2003)
70-290
70-291

Studying for:
Security+
70-270

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Big Jizay

JBrown wrote: »

Any last moment advices ?

Make sure you know about DNS!! Very big topic on the test. I hope you have 2003 Server installed, because it would be helpful for RRAS. At least click around EVERYWHERE in RRAS, so you know where to do everything. A topic that doesn't appear in the 291 Press Book, but is on the 291 test is WSUS. Make sure you study that as well. If you have the 290 press book, use that to study WSUS. That's my two cents

motogpman

Agreed! Just passed mine and there is a lot of WSUS/IIS/permissions overlap from 290. It would probably be best to use multiple sources as well. Wedge put together a quick reference doc and it worked great, his "final version," used it instead of going over my Exam Cram2 pullout.

Slowhand

Ditto. Know DNS PTR and A, (that's backwards and forwards

,) know RRAS inside and out, and be quite familiar with security templates and how they're applied. Other than that, make sure you know the topics from 70-291, like file/folder ACLs and user/group permissions.

Good luck!

JBrown

Just passed it from the first shot. RRAS is much trickier than I thought at first glance. Some questions were with a sub-question that held the key to an answer.

Score: 810
Test time given: 2 hours and 40 min (160 min) which is strange, on the paper it says the test goes for 3 hours and 30 mins.
Time spent- 1:03 mins.

Next is 293, It's not like i really need it for MCSA:Security, but it does not hurt to have extra cert, especially considering that it's very similar to 291.

So far I have:
A+ (2003)
70-290
70-291

Studying for:
Security+
70-270

Big Jizay

Hey JBrown, thought I'd just throw this in. You've passed the 290, and 291, and it looks like you want to take the 270, then the 293 after that. This combination of exams will not make you MCSA. The 270, 290, and 291 are fine, but you need an elective as the fourth test. Instead of the 293, you could take the Network+, and combine that with the A+ to make an elective, or you could take an elective exam like the 620 for example. Even if you want the MCSA Security, the 293 doesn't count towards it. Here's the link to check it out for yourself. Just wanted to inform you about MCSA, just in case

http://www.microsoft.com/learning/mcp/mcsa/security/windowsserver2003.mspx

Know DNS PTR and A, (that's backwards and forwards ,)

Yeah you have to LITERALLY know PTR and A records backwards and forwards

JBrown

Big Jizay wrote: »

Hey JBrown, thought I'd just throw this in. You've passed the 290, and 291, and it looks like you want to take the 270, then the 293 after that. This combination of exams will not make you MCSA. The 270, 290, and 291 are fine, but you need an elective as the fourth test. Instead of the 293, you could take the Network+, and combine that with the A+ to make an elective, or you could take an elective exam like the 620 for example. Even if you want the MCSA Security, the 293 doesn't count towards it. Here's the link to check it out for yourself. Just wanted to inform you about MCSA, just in case

http://www.microsoft.com/learning/mcp/mcsa/security/windowsserver2003.mspx

Yeah you have to LITERALLY know PTR and A records backwards and forwards

I have a silly question here; Once I pass the 70-270 and Network+ (which gives me MCSA) can I upgrade to MCSA:Security after passing 70-299 and Security+ ? Or its whichever you get first ?

Big Jizay

Yes, you can upgrade to the MCSA Security cert when having the regular MCSA cert. If you were to pass either the Security+ or the 299, this would happen.

JBrown

I thought one can not use more than 1 third-party cert for the MCSA/S. I could not figure out how it works at MS website, its not really that clear there.

Thank you for pointing it out.

Andretii

Congrats

I think I will buy the MS Press you used. I'm going to slaughter the beast after Security+

Big Jizay

JBrown wrote: »

I thought one can not use more than 1 third-party cert for the MCSA/S. I could not figure out how it works at MS website, its not really that clear there.

Thank you for pointing it out.

That's true. For the MCSA or MCSE, you can only use one third party cert. Sorry for making it confusing.