MCTS in progress. Please enlighten a noob

Hi fellow Techexam'ers

I'm about to be certified for CCNA. I'm planning to get certified for MCTS next. Can anyone give me some guidance on how to get this done by myself? Any recommended video or book? Is there a simulator for practicing or is running Win Server 2008 on a virtual machine adequate?

Are Microsoft tests harder than Cisco? I hope not because the process of elimination does not work on Cisco exams.

Thanks for taking your time to read and contribution!!!

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dave330i

As a fellow noob who's slightly further along, I'll share my $.02.

Study material:
Video from cbt nugget was ok.
MCTS: Windows Server 2008 R2 complete study guide is suppose to be good. I used an older version and found it extremely useful.
I used a Dell 2650 with ESXi 3.5. It had 4Gig of RAM & 170G HD. Iit was enough to let me run 8 servers.

I found the Microsoft exam questions to be very tricky, which makes the exam harder than Cisco. Also there's more material covered vs. Cisco.

VinUnleaded

dave330i wrote: »

As a fellow noob who's slightly further along, I'll share my $.02.

Study material:
Video from cbt nugget was ok.
MCTS: Windows Server 2008 R2 complete study guide is suppose to be good. I used an older version and found it extremely useful.
I used a Dell 2650 with ESXi 3.5. It had 4Gig of RAM & 170G HD. Iit was enough to let me run 8 servers.

I found the Microsoft exam questions to be very tricky, which makes the exam harder than Cisco. Also there's more material covered vs. Cisco.

Thanks for the advice Dave. I have a 6core AMD computer and 16GB of RAM. you said you run 8 servers does that mean 8 virtual machines? The reason I asked is because I don't have any experience with virtual machines yet so I will need to read up on that as well.

dave330i

VinUnleaded wrote: »

Thanks for the advice Dave. I have a 6core AMD computer and 16GB of RAM. you said you run 8 servers does that mean 8 virtual machines? The reason I asked is because I don't have any experience with virtual machines yet so I will need to read up on that as well.

Yes, 8 virtual machines (VMs). You need 8 servers to setup AD FS. VMs are very easy to setup. Grab ESXi 3.5 if you have 32 bit machine or ESXi 4.1 if you have 64 bit machine. For test lab servers only need 10-20gig HD and 512 MB RAM.

VinUnleaded

dave330i wrote: »

Yes, 8 virtual machines (VMs). You need 8 servers to setup AD FS. VMs are very easy to setup. Grab ESXi 3.5 if you have 32 bit machine or ESXi 4.1 if you have 64 bit machine. For test lab servers only need 10-20gig HD and 512 MB RAM.

Thanks a lot man. I have a feeling you already saved me a couple days of doing research. Is there anything else you want to add?

dave330i

VinUnleaded wrote: »

Thanks a lot man. I have a feeling you already saved me a couple days of doing research. Is there anything else you want to add?

I mainly did the practice labs from the MS press book.

70-642 looks relatively easy since large part is networking.

Todd Burrell

If you have passed any Cisco exam then you should have no problem with the 70-642 exam. It does cover a lot of the same types of networking material.