70-642

how long should i study for the 70-642?
is start to finish in 3 weeks a doable goal? ill have about 3 hours a night a little more on the weekend

ill have labsim and one "cram" style book

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simtech

Probably more than 3 weeks. I'm currently studying 642 as well. Also, you need to lab.

demonfurbie

simtech wrote: »

Probably more than 3 weeks. I'm currently studying 642 as well. Also, you need to lab.

sadly i have no way to get a lab

Tackle

demonfurbie wrote: »

how long should i study for the 70-642?
is start to finish in 3 weeks a doable goal? ill have about 3 hours a night a little more on the weekend

ill have labsim and one "cram" style book

I used Testout Labsim and read a TON of technet articles....I failed it my first time, but passed a couple weeks later.

I had no formal Server expierence before I started studying (Besides what they teach you in school...which is nothing compared to the "real world").

I studied off and on for 6 months. I figured out my total to be ~130 hours of my own time reading/labbing, that doesn't count when I could squeeze in an hour or two somdays at work and actually using Server for my job. Besides studying the labsim, I had my own ESXi Server with a domain setup to practice with. Maybe look into VMware workstation or Virtual PC for your lab. You can get trial software direct from Microsoft and DreamSpark gives you some keys.

It is not a walk in the park. Microsoft Exams are MUCH harder than CompTIA for most people...

LAN_Guru

demonfurbie wrote: »

how long should i study for the 70-642?
is start to finish in 3 weeks a doable goal? ill have about 3 hours a night a little more on the weekend

ill have labsim and one "cram" style book

It all depends on you. I studied it for 45ish hours over 3 days and made an 880 on the exam. So yes, 3 weeks is "doable". But I also have a lot of years experience as a Windows admin and engineer working with a lot of the technologies day-in and day-out. If your experience is limited, your preparation time over the weekends better be more than just "a little more" time than weekdays. I saw somewhere that Microsoft estimates the average prep time for 70-642 at 70-something hours...

You may already have a "lab". The machine you typed your post on may be "lab" capable. Out of the scope of this thread though but the "search" tool is your friend.

Read the resource stickies in this forum. I highly recommend you do that in the future BEFORE buying any books or exam sims. Follow the advice of those that have gone before you. If a certain book or sim worked for a lot of other people, chances are pretty good it will work for you too.

There is a free online NAP simulator/lab on the Microsoft website...

Shadly1

I have crammed an MS test into 3 weeks before. I highly recommend NOT doing that. I read a fat book, watched a video series and did test sim software in that time. 8-10 hours a day on weekdays and probably 4 hours a day over the weekends. I succeeded but it hurt. Shoot for 4-6 weeks for a little more comfort.

pzero

demonfurbie wrote: »

how long should i study for the 70-642?
is start to finish in 3 weeks a doable goal? ill have about 3 hours a night a little more on the weekend

ill have labsim and one "cram" style book

demonfurbie wrote: »

sadly i have no way to get a lab

^^ 3 weeks @ 25 hrs a week may be pushing it, you def need to lab out to reinforce the stuff you read. It will also give you valuable hands on knowledge and experience.

Personally ive been aiming for 100-120 hrs of study per exam ive done and its worked out for me. It works out to be about 6-8 weeks between exams.

Essendon

demonfurbie wrote: »

sadly i have no way to get a lab

Yeah having a lab doesnt mean you need to have a room full of racks, with tons of hissing servers and Cisco switches crammed into them.

All a lab means is having a computer run a virtualisation software, VMware server and VirtualPC are both free, install 2-3 VM's (for a bare-minimum lab) and practice what you read from your books.

Downloads:

1. VMware Server
2. Download Details - Microsoft Download Center - Virtual PC 2007
3. Windows Server 2008 R2 Operating System
4. Windows 7 Enterprise | Trial, Evaluation, Test, Download

^^ All you need for a "lab" and of course a computer that can run 64 bit machines.

HTH!

LAN_Guru

The short and skinny of it is, you NEED to do labs. Don't handicap yourself by not doing labs. It would be a recipe of near certain failure. I will try to help out a little and expand upon what was already stated.

If you are going to use your production PC or laptop, the easiest way is probably going to be to use Oracle VirtualBox VirtualBox

You cannot run a x64 (Server 2008 R2) guest OS in Microsoft Virtual Server or Virtual PC, even if you have a x64 host OS. (I'm sure there is some page out there that tells a workaround to this but it is not supported natively.) Server 2008 R2 is only available in x64 flavors. You really need to be using R2 to lab so you can lab the new, R2-specific features.

In order to run a 64-bit guest OS (Server 2008 R2) in VirtualBox, you must have a CPU that is 64-bit and is hardware virtualization capable. It's easy enough to look up the specs of your CPU to see if it meets these requirements. Most (but not all) processors manufactured within the last 3-4 years should work but look it up before you spend a lot of time on this. If your CPU is not x64 or does not support hardware virtualization (VT on Intel), you can buy cheap CPU's that support those features. This is easier in a PC than in a laptop. CPU clock speed isn't as critical but the more cores, the better. A quad-core is great, a dual-core is almost necessary (maybe not with VirtualBox?).

You should be able to get by on 4GB RAM. You can set each VM up to use 1GB RAM which would let you run up to 3 VMs at a time (you have to leave memory for the host OS). It won't be blazing fast but you will be able to do labs. It's better to take 15 minutes extra to do a lab due to non-optimum hardware than to not do labs! I haven't seen any labs yet that require more than 3 VMs. Most call for 1 or 2.

You may have to play with the virtualization, TPM, VT, etc. settings in the BIOS to get the right combination to get things working right.

Here are a couple of pages that tell you how to get 2008 R2 VM setup on VirtualBox:

Install Windows Server 2008 R2 on VirtualBox

Just another tech blog: Windows Server 2008 R2 as Guest in VirtualBox

Here's the Microsoft page to download a 180-day Trial of Server 2008 R2

Windows Server 2008 R2 Evaluation Free 180-Day Trial

Essendon has already posted a link to a 90-day Trial of Windows 7 Enterprise. You must have Enterprise or Ultimate (can run trial copy in a VM) to lab certain features.

If you are going to spend the time to study and money on exams, spend the time (and maybe some money if you have to get a CPU and/or RAM) so that you can do labs. It will be time (and money) well spent.

Essendon

LAN_Guru wrote: »

Most call for 1 or 2.

Wait till you get to AD RMS and AD FS! TechNet has a basic lab for AD RMS that needs 7 VM's.

Excellent advice there, BTW.

LAN_Guru

Essendon wrote: »

Wait till you get to AD RMS and AD FS! TechNet has a basic lab for AD RMS that needs 7 VM's.

Excellent advice there, BTW.

hmmm....is that 70-640? My 70-640 2nd Edition book is enroute to me, I start studying Monday, and take the exam on 7/26.

Thank God my lab server has 16GB RAM...7 VMs isn't a problem.

pzero

Disk will always be the bottleneck.

LAN_Guru

pzero wrote: »

Disk will always be the bottleneck.

Yep. I have 4x WD RE4 500GB SATA drives in a RAID 10. My 1U will only take 4 x 3.5" drives (of course) The 2.5" enterprise-class drives are still expensive so I didnt bother getting the 8x 2.5" hot-swap 1U chassis.

I almost got a 2U instead of the 1U so I could put 6 x hot-swap drives in it. Two in a RAID 1 for the OS and 4 in a RAID 10 for the VHDs...sigh.

Hmmmm, I bet I could find room in the chassis for an SSD. Load 2008 R2 Enterprise on the SSD and just the VHDs on the existing RAID 10.

earweed

Like others before have said, labbing for this test is REALLY important. I did the 642 in about 3-1/2 weeks but had a lot more hours in a day than you seem to have free. At the time I only had my crappy old desktop (with 2 GB RAM) and VMWare Workstation which pretty much limited me to 2 VMs but it was enough for me to get the necessary practice.
The MCTS exams are nearly impossible to pass without labbing.

erpadmin

I have to concur; labbing got a lot of stuff in like AD RMS, AD FS, etc. I even labbed stuff like creating users and such, just to go through the materials. There are a bunch of inexpensive servers you can get on eBay that have 64-bit processors. Heck, you can get entry-level 64-bit servers that can support 16GB of RAM and RAID 4 disks, like my HP ML110 G6 that I used and installed 2008 R2 on. When I'm done MCITP:EAing, I'm going to focus on SQL Server 2008 labbing as well as creating a PeopleSoft lab.

There is just too much to depend on for one to depend on memory alone. I learned that lesson the hard way...