MCITP @ Firebrand Training Blog

Discussion in 'Training & Development' started by SimonD, Mar 29, 2010.

  1. LukeP

    LukeP Gigabyte Poster

    1,194
    41
    90
    Congratulations Simon.

    Well done!
     
    WIP: Uhmm... not sure
  2. nugget
    Honorary Member

    nugget Junior toady

    7,796
    71
    224
    Great stuff mate. Pinned and repped. :thumbleft
     
    Certifications: A+ | Network+ | Security+ | MCP (270,271,272,290,620) | MCDST | MCTS:Vista
    WIP: MCSA, 70-622,680,685
  3. SimonD
    Honorary Member

    SimonD Terabyte Poster

    3,681
    440
    199
    OK, I am home now so I will finish off the blog.

    Having completed the 70-643 exam yesterday I had a decision to make, would I just take the 70-647 exam today or would I chance taking the 70-646 exam as well. Knowing that we had covered pretty much everything required for the 70-646 exam (everything except the storage side of things apparently, iscsi and mpio along with vds disks) I decided to take the risk and also sit the 70-646 exam. Arriving back in to the classroom this morning Mike had prepared a whole synopsis for the entire course, we sat down for a decent Q&A session and went through pretty much everything (having taken so much in it's very easy to forget things). By about 10:40 everyone went off to do their own thing (labs, studying, measureups), it was at this time that I decided that I may as well sit the 70-646, off I went to see Paul to explain that I wanted to book the exam, using the scratch card from one of my 70-680 books (I am so glad I had 2 of them, one I purchased, one from the course) and the exam was booked. All of this was completed within 10 minutes. Signing in at 10:55 I went in for the exam.

    70-646 had 40 questions, no sims\emus and seemed to me to be a fairly easy exam, yes it's the Pro exam but it included technology that I am either using (SCCM) or aware of (SCOM) as well as the material covered in the 70-640 and 70-642 courses. The questions weren't too long (as in amount of words on screen, unlike the 70-647 exam, more on that one later) and I was soon into the full swing of the exam.

    One thing I should tell people is that I have a habit of finishing exams very quickly, I am somewhat of a speed reader and I tend to read the answers to the question before actually reading the question, that way when I do read the question I am pretty much clear on what they want and already have the answer, the reason I am saying this is that I was shooting through my exams very fast (20 - 25 minutes on the most part, 70-640 took me an hour).

    By 11.30 I had finished the exam, nothing too surprising in it and no real gotchas. Happy to say that I had passed :D

    Off to lunch and it was decision time, should I take the exam on the Friday or the Saturday, knowing that I had missed my wife and son I decided that I was going to attempt the exam on the Friday, I wasn't going to say anything to my wife just in case I failed it and had to retake it on the Saturday, having finished lunch I spent a few hours of final revision and by 3pm left my room to go book in for my 7th exam in two weeks.

    My 70-647 exam also had 40 questions but unlike the 70-646 exam goes a lot deeper into the field of the Enterprise, it is the defining exam in the MCITP:EA certification, it's an exam designed to ensure that you know pretty much everything about an Enterprise environment, it covered more than Windows 2008 (it included questions on SCCM, SCOM, SoftGrid, MOSS, WSS, ISA2006), basically you had to know not only that the products existed but what they did, if you didn't know that SoftGrid was a virtualised app deployment tool (since replaced by App-V) or that SCOM monitored far more in depth than the internal Perf Mon tools. I will also say that the questions for 70-647 are long, very long, way way long. Not only were the questions long but so were the answers, in fact the answers more often than not also contained multiple answers meaning that this was in no way a guess cert. This is an exam that requires you to KNOW your subject matter.

    Considering I had come on the course wanting to complete all 5 exams required for the MCITP:EA course I am happy to say that I actually walked away having completed 7 exams and gained an additional 2 MCITP exams that I wasn't expecting to have at this stage (they were planned for later on in the year). It's also given me back my bug for wanting to improve myself through certification and having played further with Hyper-V I know that it's going to be one of the courses I want to go for next.


    A few lines about my time with Firebrand Training, not from an exam perspective but just from an end user perspective.

    Having used Firebrand since they were called The Training Camp (I think I have been dealing with Duncan for over 5 years I think... something quite amazing in a Sales environment, I don't normally expect a sales man to stay with a company long, they are usually tempted away by bigger more lucrative positions, the fact that Duncan is stil there to me speaks volumes about the company he works for) I have always been impressed by the fact that if I say I won't be able to do something for a particular time the salesman would leave me alone until that time, there were many a call from Duncan every 6 months or so asking me if I had the time then to take the course (for one reason or another I didn't, either I was in work or I had been out of work for too long), usually it was a case of apologising to Duncan and speaking to him 6 months later (and to be fair he was ok about that, sure he didn't get a sale from me at that time but the simple fact that he didn't pester me meant that he got the sale in the end). It's not only Duncan that I have dealt with in the past, on my previous visits I have had a great time with Paul, who if not, should be called the site manager at Wyboston lakes, he is definitely approachable and to be honest nothing is too difficult for him and the team there.

    When I first started using FB they used a leased training centre in Oxford, since the latter part of last year they moved to a dedicated training centre in Bedfordshire (Wyboston Lakes). The new centre is just great, a lot of thought has gone into it, the breakout area is large enough to accommodate a couple of courses breaking at the same time (it didn't happen often but it did happen), it had a couple of xbox 360s lined up (Fifa2010 rocks btw :D) and a large screen tv with BBC News set up on it. There was always plenty of fresh fruit available (bananas and apples) as well as free hot\cold drinks (coke, sprite etc as well as tea and coffee) and a couple of vending machines with chocolate\crisps and more drinks (redbull for those late\long nights). All the classrooms were modern, well lit and upto date with regards to machines (and were secured by key card and cctv cameras in each room and corridor). The Willows Hotel wasn't too bad, although as previously mentioned the kitchen was being refurb'd whilst we were there, the rooms themselves were far better than the rooms at the old Oxford location. Overall a very good experience at the training centre itself and a definite thumbs up from me.

    To those of you who denigrate Training Providers and suggest that people should simply study by reading a book I would strongly suggest that until you have gone to a decent training provider you simply can't tar every training provider with the same brush. I am not a noob when it comes to IT and as such I know by abilities when it comes to self-study (add to the fact I have a 3 year old son and it makes self-study very VERY difficult). I would much rather spend 2 weeks away from my family (and all the stress and hassles that entail with family life) to study with a decent training provider than struggle over 6 - 12 months to get my certifications, the simple fact that I have owned my MCITP MS Press Books for the last 13 months and not managed to take an exam in that time is testament to that fact.

    Finally (I promise) one thing I have to stress right now is that this was not the type of course to do if you are a complete novice, don't go on this course expecting this to be an easy ride and don't expect to be able to go down to the bar every evening. There is a lot of material to be taken in, a lot of labs to practice and a lot of revision to do. This is 13 days of hellishly long days, of information overload and of pure unadulterated technology, that being said I have no regrets from doing this and would thoroughly recommend Firebrand Training to anyone really serious about their IT training because I loved every minute of it :D
     
    Certifications: CNA | CNE | CCNA | MCP | MCP+I | MCSE NT4 | MCSA 2003 | Security+ | MCSA:S 2003 | MCSE:S 2003 | MCTS:SCCM 2007 | MCTS:Win 7 | MCITP:EDA7 | MCITP:SA | MCITP:EA | MCTS:Hyper-V | VCP 4 | ITIL v3 Foundation | VCP 5 DCV | VCP 5 Cloud | VCP6 NV | VCP6 DCV | VCAP 5.5 DCA
  4. Georgiesickjitz

    Georgiesickjitz Byte Poster

    151
    0
    35
    Well done buddy,great diary of your time at Firebrand.Im thinking, and have done for some time about going to Firebrand.Thank you for the insight
     
    Certifications: CompTIA A+,CompTIA Network
    WIP: CCNA
  5. tarekahf

    tarekahf Bit Poster

    30
    0
    2
    I am very happy I found this thread. I made other posts asking about Firebrand Training offers in Wyboston Lakes, UK, since I want to make sure I am doing the right thing.

    Mind you that I will be flying on a 6-hours flight to UK for this, and I will spend 30 days for my annual vacation in UK. I will stay in Cardiff with relatives, and will go for training (3.5 hours drive) to Wyboston Lakes.

    Since Firebrand provides complete package: Education + Certification + Accomodation + Food + Study facilities ...etc I think this is really tempting. The Sales Rep told me that the environment is desinged to help me focus on study, ie, nothing there to distract your attention.

    SimonD, I would like to here from you since you are giving positive feedback about Firebrand.

    How do you evaluate Firebrand in terms of:

    1. Accomodation (it must be clean and confortabe),

    2. Training Facilities and Environment: Ability to focus on study and practice after the course hourse in the good labs.

    3. Keep their word, ie, do what they say or advertise.

    In terms of value of education, all what I care about, is ability to get the knowledge to pass the exam and get the certificate. I know that I will only learn properly when I am engaged with a project.

    I am planning to take the following courses:

    1. Microsoft MCPD .NET 4 Web Developer (11 days)

    2. Scrum Certified (2 days).

    3. PMP PMI (5 days).

    I will have to pay about 8,500.00 GPB from my pocket ! and my copmany will only pay 3,500.00. I am sure I have to finance my education/certification plan during this summer.

    Do you think I can do somthing better ?

    Tarek.
     
  6. andylad9

    andylad9 Byte Poster

    206
    6
    30
    a bit late to this blog, but well worth the read. thanks.
     
    Certifications: A+ | Network+ | 70-680 | 70-685 | MTA Server
    WIP: deciding now...
  7. Boffy

    Boffy Megabyte Poster

    698
    26
    86
    Just watch out for email spam from them though, they've got 2 of my email addresses from when I went to check prices. Grrr!
     
    Certifications: BSc Computer Game Technology, A+
    WIP: MOS 2010
  8. SimonD
    Honorary Member

    SimonD Terabyte Poster

    3,681
    440
    199
    Rooky mistake, you don't actually use your email address dummy ;)
     
    Certifications: CNA | CNE | CCNA | MCP | MCP+I | MCSE NT4 | MCSA 2003 | Security+ | MCSA:S 2003 | MCSE:S 2003 | MCTS:SCCM 2007 | MCTS:Win 7 | MCITP:EDA7 | MCITP:SA | MCITP:EA | MCTS:Hyper-V | VCP 4 | ITIL v3 Foundation | VCP 5 DCV | VCP 5 Cloud | VCP6 NV | VCP6 DCV | VCAP 5.5 DCA

Share This Page

Loading...
  1. This site uses cookies to help personalise content, tailor your experience and to keep you logged in if you register.
    By continuing to use this site, you are consenting to our use of cookies.