Passed 70-291... now to crack on with 70-293

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Well I passed 70-291 today so that's the MCSA sorted. I wasn't particularly looking forward to it. I had a real struggle revising RRAS as a topic. There just seem to be so many sub options that despite trying lots of different lab setups I never really felt I got to grips with it. The feeling was reinforced when my scores from taking the MS Readiness review tests actually starting falling rather than rising. The last one I took before taking the exam I only scored 56%...

Come the actual test today I was feeling fairly dubious, especially when a fair few of the first 10 questions were a case of eliminating the two obviously wrong answers and then making an educated guess as to which of the remaining two it could be. The DNS and IP Subnetting questions seemed a lot simpler than the ones on the readiness review test but the DHCP and RRAS questions seemed more difficult. I'd like to think I've got a fairly good handle on DHCP, but some of the questions had me scratching my head wondering if it would even work in practice. I guess the answer is to set it up in the lab now and try it out.

Anyway, time to start looking at 70-293 now

 

Sorted Gerbil....top job mate. I'm sitting mine on the 12th in Long Eaton, Notts. Hope I come out of it thinking that too!

 

Congrats and well done !

 

congrats on the pass, I know what you mean with the rras stuff especially by the sounds of the MS boys and girls here its not really used in the real world.

 

Congrats on killing it

 

Congrats!

 

Exactly. From a brief read of the Server 2008 books I've bought OSPF was already missing from the 64 bit version of W2K3 and its gone from W2K8 completely. At least that'll make RRAS slightly easier to revise for in future

 

Congrats, which study material did you find of most usefulness?

 

Well I still had a copy of the Microsoft W2K MCSE to W2K3 MCSE Upgrade book which I bought when I thought there was still a chance of me getting off my butt and doing the upgrade exams before MS expired them As it turned out I was going through a bit of a bad patch and never did summon the self motivation to get on with it. So I've been reading that book, but it doesn't cover RRAS at all as it didn't feature on the upgrade exams.

So I've supplemented my reading with an old copy of the Microsoft 70-291 book which did cover RRAS and also just tried configuring some scenarios myself in the test lab. In particular I worked my way through the lab setups in this MS Technet article

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc757206(WS.10).aspx

I think you could revise for DHCP by just reading the concepts section of the online help that installs with DHCP server and make sure you know the common option numbers i.e. 003, 006, 015. For reasons best known to themselves MS seem keen to ask questions that require you to know the numbers despite the fact that I can't think of any real world scenario when it would be required.

and finally reread some of the IP subnetting and RIP routing chapters in my old CCNA study book (and wondered why I bothered when the only subnetting questions that came up were trivial with no mention of VLSM at all). I imagine that VLSM questions form part of the pool of questions that you could be asked, but one of the books I read implied that a question on VLSM was almost guaranteed.

Paid off in the end as I was gob smacked when I got 952. Just weird though given the readiness review suite exam I did prior to taking the test I got 56%. All I can say for anyone in the same position is don't get too disheartened. Use the readiness review suite as a guide to where you need to focus your revision attentions and don't get too hung up on the score.

[Don't think I've given anything away that could be interpreted as a breach of the NDA. Anyone who's used the MS Readiness Review Suite practice exams will know the style of the DHCP questions that they like to ask]

 

Thanks for sharing Gebril and much appreciated