Just passed 70-640

unnamedplayer

Just got back and passed with a 945. Phew! Glad I finally got that done

75 questions and a little over 3 hours. On to the 642!

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earweed

Congrats on the great score!

LCA

Congrats and well done!

za3bour

Congratulations, it was only 45 questions in 1.5 hour now seems much harder but you got a great score .

kriscamaro68

unnamedplayer wrote: »

Just got back and passed with a 945. Phew! Glad I finally got that done

75 questions and a little over 3 hours. On to the 642!

Congrats thats a great score. What resources did you use?

unnamedplayer

kriscamaro68 wrote: »

Congrats thats a great score. What resources did you use?

I used quite the variety lol. I started off with the Sybex book. I got about half way through when I got a hold of a copy of the MS Press Book. Then my strategy was to read a chapter in the Sybex book and then follow that up with the corresponding chapter or chapters in the MS Press Book.

Overall, I think the MS Press Book is the better book even with all the typos. It really went into a lot more detail than the Sybex book. For example, other AD Roles and Services. Sybex grouped all these into one chapter and had a few pages on each. Not really any detailed explanation or labs. The MS Press Book had an individual chapter on each and went into a lot more detail.

The MS Press Book definitely had its share of typos, but I found the Sybex had it's fair share as well. What I came to realize is that both of these books must have been written really early in the Windows 2008 life cycle or probably while it was even still in beta because there were references to things that just no longer exist in Windows 2008.

For example, in the Sybex book I remember going over restoring AD and they would use the "restore database" subcommand of the "authoritative restore" command in ntdsutil. Well, after an unsuccessful attempt in my lab, a little googling discovered restore database has been entirely removed from Windows 2008

I found a similar error going over smart card enrollments. Sybex tells you to use the Web enrollment page of your CA to enroll on behalf of another user. Well, oopsie, but the Web enrollment page in Windows 2008 CAs doesn't allow you to enroll on behalf of another, you need to use the certificates MMC.

In addition to these books, I also read the corresponding chapters in the Mastering Windows 2008 R2 book, which is a really good resource for new R2 material. I definitely recommend it and I'll probably be using it for the 642 as it looks like there is a lot of coverage on network infrastructure related material.

I was also using the Trainsignal videos for a little while. I got through most of them, but I really didn't think they were that helpful. It was nice to be able to watch something, but I didn't like the level of technical detail in them. These were the original videos released; I understand they re-released them for R2 stuff, but I have not seen those so can't comment.

To review, I used Self Test Software practice exams. Did the 30-day online access. I would say they are pretty good in terms of the level of difficulty. I know a couple of things I learned from them specifically helped me on the exam. The thing that annoyed me though, was I found a lot of technical and spelling or grammatical errors in the questions or answers. This really annoys me, but I would send feedback and would always get a response back the next day saying they would update the question so there is that I guess.

Finally, I have to mention a very valuable resource right here on TechExams. The 70-640 resource thread is very good. I recommend reading through the articles in there. The links for the R2 stuff are very helpful as well. Makes it easy to know what's changed and where to find info on this new stuff. I know the whitepapers on the certificate services features really helped me to understand that stuff.

Whew sorry for the long post, but hope that maybe helps someone.

creamy_stew

unnamedplayer wrote: »

...
Whew sorry for the long post, but hope that maybe helps someone.

Great post! Definately helpful.

ITVince

Studying hard for this exams....its a lot of information....getting the concepts down but I dont know how I'm going to remember how to navigate and execute tasks if asked...there's so many to remember....

mindCoder

ITVince wrote: »

Studying hard for this exams....its a lot of information....getting the concepts down but I dont know how I'm going to remember how to navigate and execute tasks if asked...there's so many to remember....

Try using index cards if you have not already. Review them every single night. You would be amazed how quickly you will remember them. That's the approach I took to learning Unix options.

ITVince

Its alllll about repetition

Just getting impatient, just need to stay focused.

davidspirovalentine

Awesome post!!! Also, congrats on the pass!!!

Two really quick questions. How long did you study for this one? how much server 08 experience do you have?

Regards,
David

unnamedplayer

davidspirovalentine wrote: »

Awesome post!!! Also, congrats on the pass!!!

Two really quick questions. How long did you study for this one? how much server 08 experience do you have?

Regards,
David

From time I started reading my study guides to sitting the test I think it ended up being about 5 months. That was a little longer than I wanted, but I labbed everything, and it was my first MS test so I wasn't really sure what to expect and really wanted to do well.

My only experience with Server 08 before was I had just recently put in a server 08 box to host an Exchange 2010 installation. But that wasn't a DC, all of my production DCs were still 2003. My environment is pretty small, a single site, so some of the material was new and stuff I would have never worked with before.

I saw someone else post on a different board they thought studying for the 70-640 was boring, but for the most part I thought it was really interesting. I learned a lot about stuff that I had maybe seen before or kinda had a clue about what it was but wasn't really sure how it worked and this kinda opened up my eyes to that (lots of AH-HA moments) which is really nice.

I think the parts that were really boring were the other roles. Mainly LDS and Federated Services. I was just kinda bleh on those. I think my study time was mostly extended because I went back and hammered on Certificate Services. Again, that was something I had kinda used in the past, but didn't really have a clear understanding of why things worked the way they worked and I really learned a lot on that.

I'm working on the 642 now and hoping this one goes a lot quicker. I'm aiming for 2 months. I'm a week and a half in now and about a 1/4 through the MS press book.

Since 27% of that exam is DNS, studying for the 640 is really making this a lot easier to study for since I did so much DNS work with the 640.