60 Days to MCSE

Get Your MCSE: Private Cloud Certification with this FREE Step-by-Step Study Guide

2012-08-04T00:28:00Z

Keith Mayer, a Microsoft IT Evangelist and an MCT (Microsoft Certified Trainer) has an awesome blog for IT pros (subscribe to it NOW before you forget). Based on his own studying and exam prep experience, he assembled a step-by-step study guide to share with those who are working on MCSE: Private Cloud. In Keith's words:

This month (July 2012), I spent a fair amount of time preparing for the new Microsoft Private Cloud Certification Exam 70-246, Monitoring and Operating a Private Cloud with System Center 2012 and I saved links to all the study resources that I used to study and pass this exam as a step-by-step Exam Study Guide for anyone else who may be interested in targeting this exam. Exam 70-246 is the final exam needed to complete the MCSE Private Cloud certification track. The complete requirements for the MCSE Private Cloud track include:

Achieve MCSA:Windows Server 2008

- If you were previously certified as an MCITP on Windows Server 2008, you may be closer than you realize to achieving this certification requirement! MCITP’s were grandfathered into the MCSA program automatically when the new MCSA program was introduced earlier this year. Check your MCP Transcript at http://www.microsoft.com/mcp to confirm.

Successfully pass one of the following exams:

- Exam 70-659 – TS: Windows Server 2008 R2, Server Virtualization (valid until Jan 2013)
- Exam 70-247 – Configuring and Deploying a Private Cloud with System Center 2012

Successfully pass Exam 70-246 (That’s the exam targeted by this study guide!)

TIP: An exam study guide for preparing for Exam 70-659 is also available here. If you have already achieved MCSA on Windows Server 2008, then Exam 70-659 and Exam 70-246 are the only two additional exams needed to complete the MCSE: Private Cloud certification requirements and you can leverage my free study guides for each exam to help you get ready for these tests!

About This Exam Study Guide

This exam guide presents the target exam objectives within each of the above objective domains in a checklist format to provide an easy method for exam candidates to quickly self-assess their general exam preparedness and also provide specific study resources to help candidates address knowledge gap areas prior to attempting this exam. Note that this study guide is not intended as a replacement for formal training, but rather intended as a post-training resource to help you identify how you can best prepare for certification.

Download this Exam Study Guide for FREE ... For just a Tweet!

Keith has made this Exam Study Guide available as a free downloadable resource on his blog. All you have to do is help spread the word to the IT pro community. Go to this post on his blog, click the blue rectagular button toward the bottom, post a short Tweet or Facebook share about this useful resource, and you'll automatically receive a direct link to download the study guide immediately afterwards.

Congratulations to new MCSE: Private Cloud title holders

2012-06-21T23:00:00Z

Are you working on your MCSE: Private Cloud as part of the #60days2MCSE challenge? Have you visited your forum lately to post a status check or share resources with your fellow IT pros?

I wanted to take a moment and celebrate some recent achievements:

1) Congrats to B2L users ignatenko and mox_monkey on achieving their MCSE: PC titles!

2) Quite a few of you are active on Twitter and I've seen four happy announcements in the past couple of weeks, too. Congrats to @paulsanders87, @vatechguy, @oddmk79 and @haslund on completing their journey toward MCSE: PC!

Rasmus @haslund wrote a blog post today about his experience and the resources he used to get to MCSE: PC. Read it on his blog.

Microsoft MVP and MCT Mitch Garvis also got his MCSE: PC today (although not officially part of #60days2MCSE), and blogged about his thoughts after taking exam 246. Read it here.

While at TechEd North America in Orlando, FL last week, I met and talked to so many IT pros who took advantage of the free exams we offered onsite. Many of them are also participants in the #60days2MCSE challenge. In case you haven't met Michael Bender, he's the 2nd guy from the right, in the blue shirt. That's the man who inspired and spearheaded this great MCP community challenge.

60 Days to MCSE - Week 4 Check In

2012-05-15T15:43:00Z

Greetings True Believers!

So it's been a while since I've checked in via a blog post. It's great to see many of you joining the conversation on twitter as well as on the 60 Days to MCSE forum on Born to learn.

So what have I been up to? Well, first and foremost, I spent a lot of unnecessary time trying to get my System Center 2012 evaluation environment up. It took me much longer to complete the setup and installation than expected. I ran into a number of issues (most of them end user related). I'm not going to go into depth into the issues I had as they became non-issues when I started from scratch and followed John's blog post here. This is a comprehensive installation document that WILL get you a working environment in the end. He provides great insight as he failed to get SC2012 installed the first time as well using just the evaluation documentation. Follow this guide and you should have no issues.

As far as my lab environment, I'm running a custom-built system based on the specs by Jeff Guillet at Expta.com. This is a low-cost (Under $1k) system that is fast and quiet. Jeff did a phenomenal job of determining the specs for this system. If you are looking for a lab system, this is the way to go.

Besides getting the lab environment built, I made my way through some of the documentation and a couple of videos. It’s not as much progress as I would have liked. However, I have been able to download a lot of the content I need so I won’t need to hunt and peck for the information.

One thing that will make your "information" procurement easier, is a script developed by Jan Egil Ring that allows you to download content from TechNet edge using PowerShell is locate here. It's similar to the script for downloading content from MMS 2012.

Here is my updated Plan…

Week	Study Activities
Week 4	· Continuing building test lab using Evaluation Guide (Ch 4,5) · Run through 2-day Private Cloud Jump Start series from back in March. (1-6) · Begin Prep for 70-646 Exam · Create Central Store for all documents and study materials for Private Cloud exams
Week 3	· Take Exam 70-646 (5/23) · Celebrate passing exam with a new book (TBD) · Make my way through documents listed in 70-247 blog document · Make my way through documents listed in 70-246 blog document
Week 2	· Make my way through remainder of documents listed in 70-246 blog document · View Microsoft Virtual Academy track on Configuring and Deploying Microsoft’s Private Cloud · Run through downloaded videos and documents, when I have time
Week 1	· Run Through Symon Perriman’s Private Cloud Labs · Run through downloaded videos and documents, when I have time This will be a tough week as I have a VMware vSphere 5 ICM Train the Trainer class all week. I’ll need to fit studying in at night and during travel time to TechEd. Also, need to fit in family time so as you can see in my schedule, much of the work will be done prior to arriving at TechEd
Week 0	· Last Minute Exam Prep · Attend TechEd cram sessions (if available prior to taking exams) · Sit in on broad SC 2012 sessions · Exam 70-247 is Scheduled for Monday; Retake on Thursday if necessary · Exam 70-246 is Scheduled for Tuesday; Retake on Thursday if necessary

A little something on My Test Taking Strategy….

As a veteran of multiple certification exams and an MCT responsible for helping students with their exams skills, I want to share my test day strategy. Hopefully, you can take some tips from it to improve your test day results!

1. I always schedule my exams for a 12:30-1:30 start time. That is normally the time of day when I’m “on my game” mentally. Also, this leaves me the morning to do some last minute preparation and I’m not rushed.

2. I make sure to get a good night’s sleep. If you prepared properly, should not have to do a late night cram session for your exam.

3. Make sure I have two forms of ID and any other requirements per exam. As a college instructor, I can take the academic versions of the exams. These require a college ID so I make sure I have that as well.

4. I find a quiet coffee shop (or noise cancelling head phones), and review my materials. I like to run through the areas that are my sticking points. Also, I will run through 10-20 practice questions at the end of my review session to get me in the test-taking mode.

5. Have a light lunch and try to relax. Depending on your caffeine tolerance, you may or may not wish the forgo caffeine prior to the exam.

6. I arrive to the test location 15 minutes early so I can check in and use the bathroom (or water closet for those across the pondJ). You won’t be able to use the restroom during your exam so keep that in mind with lunch as well. The exam reminder recommends 30 minutes, but my test site is never busy so I’ve never had a problem with 15 before. When I have arrived 30 prior, I’ve always started early.

7. Unless I bring a coat or a bag, I leave my cell phone in the car. You won’t be able to bring it into the exam room.

8. Once into the exam, I have a specific strategy for each question that I will explain below:

a. The length of the exam should be posted with the exam information. If so, you know how much time you have for each question. Use this time as part of your preparation. Most practice exams allow you to input the time limit and # of questions. Simulate the exam day experience during your study and it will help you be more comfortable on exam day.

b. If I have 2 minutes per question, I set a limit of 2 minutes I will take on a question before moving to the next question

9. Once I have completed all questions and run through my review, the moment of truth is here. You are a few clicks away from success or failure. This can be nerve-wracking the first couple of times you take an exam as you wait for the system to tell you whether you passed or failed.

10. Once you complete your exam, you’ll be provided a copy of your exam report with your score.

Mike’s Exam Question Strategy

Here’s my strategy for each Question

1. Read the entire question end to end without going down to the answers. You need to familiarize yourself with what the question is looking for.

2. Review the answers provided but try not to answer the question unless you are 110% positive you know the answer. At this point, many test takers get into trouble. We have been taught that we should go with our “first Impression”. While this is often a correct method, it can lead you into an incorrect answer. The reason is that exam questions are designed to be a bit tricky. You will have answers provided that may be correct for some situations, but not the one you are dealing with in the question. We want to get rid of these answers.

a. I will mark my “first impression” answer at this time just in case I hit my time limit and need to move onto the next question. An answered question has a possibility of being right but an unanswered question is always wrong.

3. Now run through the question again. This time you know the provided answers and can match those answers to the information provided in the question.

a. Often times, there is information in a scenario that is not necessary, so use your knowledge of the subject matter to weed out this information.

4. Based on the information gleaned through the second pass through of the question and using the information that is relevant, I try to weed out some of the answers.

a. For example, if the question is asking for you to export DNS zones from AD and they provide you different command line tools to do it, you should be able to get rid of utilities you know cannot perform the task.

b. The goal is to get down to 2 answers to choose from. But even if you only get rid of one answer out of four, that’s changing your odds to 1:3. I’d take those in Vegas in a heartbeat!

5. If you are unable to come up with a definitive, go with your first impression answer or your “best” answer based on the question, and move on to the next question

a. If you are not definitive on the question, mark it for review and comeback to it after going through all of the questions. In regards to marking questions for review, I mark all questions that I am not 100% on, and I want to go back to them

6. After running through the questions the first time, I go to the review section which allows you to go through just the questions marked for review. This is helpful since it will only give you the questions you want to go over again

a. During this pass, I repeat the same process as above. One thing I make sure to do is count up the number of reviewed questions and determines how much time I have left based on the exam countdown clock.

7. That’s it! By the end of step 6, I am ready click the submit button!

The key to successfully completing a certification exam is providing answers to ALL questions to the best of your ability. That’s why we use the review option to comeback to questions you are unsure of. I can guarantee there are questions you could spend 10-15 minutes on, and you would still not have an answer. In that same time period, you may be able to cover 5-7 questions you do know the answers to. You need to get to the “low hanging fruit” questions and come back to the ones requiring more time. But always…ALWAYS…enter an answer for the question before moving to the next question. This ensures you have an answer for every question should your time run out.

While searching for some other resources for test taking strategies, I came across this great video from Tim Warner.

Lastly, I wanted to give out a big thank you to Gray Eimermann from TrainSignal who is giving away access to a Private Cloud certification-specific video archive. To access the archive, follow the instructions in Gary’s blog post here.

Until next time…Excelsior!

Mike

Pilgrimage to MCSE

2012-05-09T17:23:00Z

This is a guest post authored by Gary Eimerman, Director of Product Development at TrainSignal.

Every year in late May or early June, IT Admins and Developers from around the world begin an annual pilgrimage to a lovely US city where we all convene for a week of learning, networking, and of course partying at TechEd North America. This year, the buzz and excitement leading up to the pilgrimage is even more than prior years, not because of the location or the closing band, but because 2012 is shaping up to be one of the biggest release years for Microsoft in over a decade. One exciting release is the rebirth of the MCSE certification. Just last month, Microsoft announced the return of the MCSE with the MCSE: Private Cloud.

It was that announcement along with a challenge spear headed by Michael Bender, that this year's pilgrimage to TechEd would have a twist to it. Michael challenged readers of the Born to Learn blog to obtain their MCSE: Private Cloud certification by or at TechEd 2012, essentially completing their certification within 60 days. One participant, Matt Griffin, has blogged about his plan and studies and this weekend, with the help of some friends on twitter, brought #60days2MCSE to the attention of the team at TrainSignal.

As Michael and friends take on this challenge, here at TrainSignal, we want to help assist those on this journey, and so we are setting up a special #60days2MCSE learning portal for the first 25 people who contact me. The learning portal will grant users access to our Windows Server 2008 Active Directory, Windows Server 2008 Network Infrastructure, Windows Server 2008 Server Admin, Windows Server 2008 Enterprise Admin, Windows Server 2008 Applications Infrastructure, System Center Configuration Manager 2007, System Center Operations Manager 2007, System Center Data Protection Manager 2010, Windows 7 and Microsoft Server Virtualization training courses through TechEd North America in June. (Here you can find a complete list of our Microsoft Training and details of what each course covers)

What do you need to do to get access?

1) Join the #60days2MCSE group on Born to Learn (more details can be found at http://borntolearn.mslearn.net/60days2mcse/f/400/t/319869.aspx)
2) Follow #60days2MCSE hashtag on twitter, meet the others on this journey with you, and share your progress.
3) Contact me at gary at Trainsignal.com or @garyeimerman or @trainsignal on twitter

We're excited to be a part of this journey with everyone, and hopefully we can meet everyone at a #60days2MCSE tweet up (or other event) and hear about the successes at TechEd Orlando next month. I'll make sure Ed Liberman and Scott Lowe (the instructors on the TrainSignal courses) will both be there so you can share your favorite cliché from the courses, and ask them any questions you might have at TechEd. Best of luck on your journey!

How to deal with failing a Microsoft certification exam

2012-05-04T19:13:00Z

Peter Gray is participating in the #60days2MCSE community challenge, and he's got his eye on MCSE: Private Cloud. On his way there, he needs to take and pass the exams required for MCSA.

On May 3, Peter took exam 70-640 and almost passed. He gave himself a day to process the not-so-happy news and re-assess his plans for #60days2MCSE. Meanwhile, he shared his exam failure news on Twitter with fellow candidiates and #TheKrewe (a great group of IT pros), and everyone rallied around him with words of encouragement right away. That, to me, is what's so cool about #60days2MCSE. Your Microsoft certification journey is no longer a lonely one. By participating in this community driven challenge, you gain access to a support system of peers who are either traveling on the same road or have been there, and they are all very generous with advice, feedback, encouragement, and high fives.

Peter also took the time to blog about his takeaways from exam 70-640 and next steps. Encountering new and varied materials and exam question types may have contributed to his close-to-passing score, and his exam taking techniques may need to be adjusted. Taking the exam also helped identify his weaker spots and further highlighted the importance of hands-on experience. I would encourage you to read his blog post for more details. The goal of achieving MCSE: Private Cloud at TechEd in June is definitely still within Peter's reach and he is re-energized!

Peter Gray's profile on Born to Learn

Find Peter Gray on Twitter

Join the #60days2MCSE group on Born to Learn

#60days2MCSE Challenge - My Plan

2012-04-26T00:38:00Z

Greetings True Believers,

So here we are in week 2 of the Challenge to get the MCSE: Private Cloud certification. Last week, I introduced you to the challenge and there was good discussion on twitter from people joining the challenge, as well as comments and feedback through the blog comments. Keep it coming! As with anything, all of us can benefit from each other’s shared knowledge.

Many of you are hard-at-work building a study plan, and that is good to hear. 60 days is not a lot of time especially if you are looking at knocking out all 5 certification exams needed for the certification. So I want to spend some time talking about how I create a study plan, and then I’ll talk about my plan.

Mike’s General rules of Certification Studying and Testing

1. You can’t possibly know everything so rely on your strengths and focus on your weaknesses. For example, Peter has mad AD skills due to his role as an AD admin for a large company, so he’s identified areas such as AD LDS and AD CS that are not part of his daily work and is making sure to get up to speed on that.

2. You will be tested on stuff you may never have, and may never use. All IT certifications include areas that are often new or only used by larger organizations so you need to be prepared to cover all of the items listed in the Skills Measured area of the exam information. Based on my own experience gained from taking a broad range of IT certification exams, several vendors also include some under-utilized new technologies in their exams. One thing I would like to see from Microsoft Learning is improving the Skills Measured information. The information currently available on Microsoft Learning’s site leaves a lot of room for interpretation and can be quite broad. I would really like to see them deliver a blueprint for their certifications that can serve as an excellent study tool for candidates to create detailed study notes for themselves.

3. Develop a solid test-taking strategy. From my experience, I have been able to pass many exams without stressing since I know how to use what I know to answer questions about what I may not know. We’ll talk about test taking strategies in a later post, but what I’m talking about is using the information you know to be true to weed out answers on a topic you may not be familiar with. With a solid strategy, you should be able to get down to a 50/50 chance on multiple choice (single answer) questions.

4. You need hands-on experience…PERIOD! Since the point of a certification is not the piece of paper, but the knowledge, you need to have hands-on experience with the technology. So you will need some sort of test lab. In the next post, I will be detailing my lab setup for the Private Cloud certification. If you are looking for a great lab server that could also run a small company, check out Jeff’s great rig at expta.com. I built this same server spec for spec.

5. If your work/home life will allow, carve out time every day to study & practice. For me, I have a ton of material to learn in a short amount of time. I can’t afford to take a day off nor will I be successful in learning the material long-term if I try to cram it in.

6. Reward yourself when you hit your goals. Think of some things that would be fun rewards like a new video game, or a dinner out, something of value that helps make the achievement of your goals additionally rewarding.

7. Take time off when you need it. All work and no play makes us all dull so make sure to take some time away for friends, family, and fun.

So how should you start building a plan? Well, get out the calendar. I use Outlook for EVERYTHING! I print out a copy (In month view) of the timeframe I am working with. As I go through the creation process, I can visual see how things stack up. It’s also very helpful to have work & family calendars available because the last thing you want to do is schedule an exam on the Friday afternoon when you are leaving for a holiday.

1. Set your Goal. In my case, my goal is to complete 3 exams (70-646, 70-247, and 70-246) and earn my MCSE: Private Cloud by the time I step on the bus at Microsoft TechEd to go to the Attendee party. So that leaves me with approximately 52 days to accomplish my goal.

2. Gather your study materials. It may seem like you could do this after setting your goal and identifying the exams, but the Private Cloud certification exams are brand new, so there are very few books and traditional exam-taking tools available. So you are going to need to rely on various training options from Microsoft, as well as their documentation. Since there is a good amount of online training available, you’ll want to build your plan based on how fast you can consume and process the content. While I like online trainings for bite-size learning, two full days of SC 2012 training is going to take me a while to digest!

3. Set Exam Milestones. Unless you are an Uber geek and a wiz-kid, you probably will not be taking 5 exams during the same week. So you want to layout a path that allows you to complete the exams you need with enough time should you falter at some point. Typical of any project, if you do not build in slack time, failing an exam will have dire consequences. Since most exams require 24-48hrs before you can reschedule, scheduling all of your exams on Wednesday and Thursday at TechEd could cause for some problems. Since I only have one exam (70-646) that I don’t plan on taking at TechEd, I have scheduled that exam for May 23^rd. Once the Prometric scheduling opens up on the TechEd site, I will probably schedule 70-647 just so I have a date to shoot for.

4. Fill training into your calendar. Once you have your exam dates locked in, you know what you need to be prepared for and when. Now is the time to begin filling in your training calendar. If you are starting with the MCSA: Windows Server 2008, then it may be easiest to take it one exam at a time. Each exam will build a foundation for the next one as you move through the exams. Recommended path is 70-640 to 70-642 to 70-646.

For me, it is a little bit different. I have a strong background in Windows Server and Virtualization, I teach the course work surrounding much of the material on a regular basis, and I am a complete newbie to System Center (of any flavor). So even though I am taking 70-646 first, I am starting my prep with System Center since I have a ton to learn. Also, I can’t get the exam schedule in a location convenient for me until May 23^rd so I’ll carve out time the week before to “cram” for the exam.

5. Get to work. With the other responsibilities I am juggling, it is just a matter of fitting everything in over the next 7 weeks. Below you find my proposed plan.

Week	Study Activities
Week 7	· Continuing building test lab using Evaluation Guide (Ch 3) · Finish reading Private Cloud Defined White Paper · Read Unified Installer Guide · Download all content I need for studying including videos, whitepapers documentation etc.
Week 6	· Run through 2-day Private Cloud Jump Start series from back in March. · Continuing building test lab using Evaluation Guide (Ch 4)
Week 5	· Continuing building test lab using Evaluation Guide (Ch 4,5) · Make my way through documents listed in 70-247 blog document
Week 4	· Make my way through remainder of documents listed in 70-247 blog document · Begin Prep for 70-646 Exam
Week 3	· Take Exam 70-646 (5/23) · Celebrate passing exam with a new book (TBD) · Make my way through documents listed in 70-246 blog document
Week 2	· Make my way through remainder of documents listed in 70-246 blog document · View Microsoft Virtual Academy track on Configuring and Deploying Microsoft’s Private Cloud
Week 1	· Run through Guided Labs · This will be a tough week as I have a VMware vSphere 5 ICM Train the Trainer class all week. I’ll need to fit studying in at night and during travel time to TechEd.
Week 0	· Last minute exam prep · Complete as many HOLs at TechEd as possible · Sit in on broad SC 2012 sessions and hopefully test prep sessions · Take Exam 70-247 (Tuesday/Wednesday) · Take Exam 70-246 (Thursday) · Celebrate Certification with a future Windows 8 Tablet!

So that’s my plan…What’s your plan? Let us know on twitter using the hashtag of #60days2MCSE or better yet, sign up for the #60days2MCSE challenge group on borntolearn.mslearning.net. I’ve included some links to Blogged Plans of #60days2MCSE Challengers that I know of at the time of writing this post.

Peter Gray - http://becausegraymatters.wordpress.com/2012/04/20/60days2mcsethe-plan/

Matt Griffin - http://mattblogsit.com/2012/04/20/60days2mcse-challenge-the-plan-the-resources/

@guidovbrakel - http://masterofprivatecloud.com/author/admin/

So our next post will discuss building a test lab, checking in on the plan, and anything else new.

Until we talk again…Mike