70-643 advice please

I've started studying towards the 643 exam, as my next one for the EA qualification.

Do you think that its do-able in 8 weeks?

It took me probably 4 or 5 months to do the 646 which I found very wide-ranging.
I can see that some of the 646 topics overlap into the 643

Many have said to book the exam and then get on with the study, which tends to motivate you further. As you know you can only book microsoft exams 8 weeks ahead anyway.

I'm torn between the second shot expiry day of June to finish this, or wait and do it later in the year.

Don't really want to do the exam just for the sake of it and fail badly.

I've just bought the Transcender for this, so will take a few tests to see where I'm at.

Any thoughts please?

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Essendon

Certainly doable in 8 weeks, besides you already have the 646 under your belt and with that material still fresh in your head it shouldnt be too hard.

My advice for this exam is to lab the hell out of it. Top tip > if anything in IIS, Remote Desktop Services and WDS can be done using a GPO, you MUST know how to do it. Ensure you know where you should use which NAP strategy. You should know some clustering and NLB.

Out of curiosity, have Transcender updated their test engine with R2 content?

spd3432

Essendon wrote: »

Out of curiosity, have Transcender updated their test engine with R2 content?

The Transcender site shows the 70-642 and 70-643 practice exams were updated with R2 content. I picked them both up last week (March madness sale). I'm using the 70-642 as final push before that cert exam and I can confirm it's R2. Haven't looked at the questions on 70-643 yet.

sean

Essendon

Thanks for the reply Sean. Just jumped on their website, 647 still has not been updated with R2.

LCA

Re 643 anyone who sits this exam needs to know IIS and RDS like the back of your hand. These two topics seem to carry big points.

Re 647 when I did the exam it had a lot of 2008 R2 questions and plenty of stuff about the latest MS technologies. I understand the testlets are back too. They're lots of fun!

hackmer

I've started to prep for exam (643) in the end of december, and take exam on 9 feb.
Many resources are read,many hours of labbing was here.

MickQ

Thanks LCA and Essendon. I was going to book it for this week but will take a longer look over the IIS and RDS now.

earweed

MickQ wrote: »

Thanks LCA and Essendon. I was going to book it for this week but will take a longer look over the IIS and RDS now.

Good idea. IIS and RDS are weigted heavily on that exam.

MickQ

earweed wrote: »

Good idea. IIS and RDS are weigted heavily on that exam.

Well guys, I sat it this evening. I don't know how, but I passed. I'm sick in the head (got a cold as well as being insane) and got through it. Not only that, but I somehow managed to get 972. I'm still in shock.

As you have said above; RDS, IIS and WDS. Know them inside and out! Configuration, what to expect on menus, CLI, etc. Lab, lab, lab.
I was able to answer a lot of the questions from working with the 642 and a little of 640, but the rest came from the labs and reading technet til I was reading it on my eyelids when I was trying to sleep.

spd3432

Mick,

That's good info to know. I passed 642 today with 643 being next. I started looking at the 643 materials and there isn't any although there's a Sybex book covering 643 (R2) scheduled for release near the end of April.

Sean

MickQ

Hi Sean,

Congrats on the pass and the new bunch of letters after your name!

Yeah, you're going to have to rely on technet and suggestions from here to get the theory on R2. The only other book I've found to be of any use (for me, your mileage may vary), is Minasi's Mastering Server R2.

From what I see of your certs, you seem to have a good background already, so a lab and playing with R2 features should do it for you.
I wrote down the new stuff in R2 (and the suggestions by others above) and went on technet and made my study and lab notes from there.

earweed

Technet is your best source for this test. Be sure to know your stuuf as this test is probably the hardest in the MCITP:EA series. It took me 4 tries to pass it but I finally persevered.
I had 2 versions of the test, 2 times each. A 70 question and a 40 question (90 min) and the 90 min. test I barely finished.

MickQ

Yeah, the exam took me twice as long as any of the other exams so far. I was incredibly lucky with the questions I got. I might have had a different test to any of earweed's as mine was about 150 minutes long and had the 55 questions style.

neathneathneath

Thanks for all the replies.

Scheduled exam for 8 weeks time with the second shot option.
Serious exam preparation starts today

neathneathneath

earweed wrote: »

Be sure to know your stuuf as this test is probably the hardest in the MCITP:EA series. It took me 4 tries to pass it but I finally persevered.
.

Do you really think this is the hardest test of the EA series.

I had similar problems with the 646 but got there in the end on 4th attempt.

How do others rate this 643 exam?

Notice that Web Services takes 25% and Application services 21% on the MS Skills being Measured List for this exam

LCA

I thought 647 was harder than 643 by a decent amount. 643 for me was the most tedious to study mostly because of IIS.

MickQ

LCA wrote: »

I thought 647 was harder than 643 by a decent amount. 643 for me was the most tedious to study mostly because of IIS.

Likewise. I had relatively little experience with IIS.