70-646 - My first failure

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Hi all,

Unfortunately failed my 70-646 exam on Tuesday, my first exam failure after passing the 640 and 642 first time. Annoyingly my score was 680 which I can't get out of my head is only 2% off the pass mark!

Strangely, it felt as though the exam was going ok at the time (I remember making "educated guesses" for the first 10 questions of the 642 as they were on my weakest area!), but I now see what everyone means when they say the 646 is somewhat of a different animal. Mostly case studies, very conceptual, and more "why" than "how".

At least it's the time of year for Second Shot so I'm already booked in for my retake in April. If all goes well it's then on to upgrading with the 417 later in the year. Time to hit the books again! I've been using the MS Press book, with it's included MeasureUP exams and CBT Nuggets videos.

I did perform the labs suggested in the MS Press book, but I think if there's one thing I did less of when studying for this one it was lab. And having read through a few posts perhaps that's the key. At work we are single-site-single-subnet infrastructure so perhaps setting up a virtual "multi-site" lab might help me get my head around the grander scale of things?

I will, of course, gladly take any advice!
Cheers
Adam

 

Do Microsoft offer virtual labs for this exam, it's been a few years since I sat the exam but I do recall it's a case of reading the scenarios and understanding the different requirements well.

I agree with Jim that labs are key, not just to this or Microsoft in general but also in pretty much most IT exams these days, sometimes just getting hands on lab time is the difference between passing and failing.

 

Age and experience has it's benefits young man

 

45 on Sunday whipper snapper

 

Yes, 45.. tbh I still act like a kid, I just struggle with the body to play like one.

 

I would probably agree that I don't look it but where are you seeing pictures of me, stalker?

 

Yeah fair haired, you could have been stalking my Twitter account

 

Thanks both, looks like labbing is going to be my hobby for the next few weeks then! I thought then TechNet Vlabs were for TechNet paid subscribers only? In any case it seems to be letting me log into them but requires a restart to launch so we'll see.

I do have a decent HP Elitebook I can use for home labs too, it's just sometimes as much of a task to get your head around the Hyper-[V config to simulate multiple sites/subnets as it is to do the lab itself! But I will duly throw myself into it feet first!

PS - I'm 28

 

Ha, I can assure you I look much older!

Cheers!

 

Tried out a couple of the R2 TechNet VLabs earlier and they do indeed work very well. Should come in very handy although I'm currently rebuilding my own hyper v lab too.

Hopefully wil help to cement the concepts in the brain!