Just an Update

Hey all. This post isn't a troubleshooting, from-the-trenches post, it is just an update post due to the sad fact I haven't posted anything in more than a month. What am I doing? Well I'm still studying in my time from work for the MCSA: Server 2012 certification. I'm actually studying for all three exams before I take an exam; a studying tip from Ed Liberrman of Trainsignal. At first I wasn't sure about that method but now I completely understand his advocating that method. Studying for all three exams before taking the exams will give you a full understanding of Server 2012, which is what Ed suggested and I know this to be true now that I'm applying his method to my study time. Having studied Active Directory at the 70-411 and 70-412 levels has helped me to understand Active Directory better at level 70-410! It's just a great study method I think.

Study Tools
I'm using the Server 2012 certification book from Sybex that is authored by William Panek (an excellent tech writer) for all three exams. I have and am also using the Exam-ref book for 70-410 from Microsoft Press and the 70-410 Training Guide from Microsoft Press by Mitch Tulloch (another excellent tech writer). An additional and amazing study tool I'm using is TrainSignal. I can't recommend their videos and practice exams enough. Their practice exam for the 70-410 exam let me know quickly that I wasn't ready to take that exam. Ed Libberman is a great teacher too. His personality is engaging and you can just tell he knows what he is talking about. What about the books? The questions at the end of each chapter in the Sybex book are great questions in that they are scenario based and make you actually think instead of just matching the correct definition with the term. Also in each chapter are exercises which is always nice. The Exam-Ref book is a good book for giving you information for exactly what Microsoft requires you to know on the 70-410 exam. The author doesn't go any further than that and he doesn't exactly go in the deep end either so I can't say that book alone will prepare you for the 70-410 exam. There are practice exercises peppered throughout each chapter which, again, is nice. The 'Training Guide' form Tulloch is a very nice tool. He goes deeper on the exam objectives and his practice exercises are fun, challenging and helpful. This guide is a nice companion to the Exam-Ref book.

Is this study method and are these tools a great approach to earning the MCSA? Well I guess I'll see when I go in and take the 70-410 exam. I can't see how my current study method with all the tools I'm using is setting me up for failure. If I fail it will be because of me.

For work, I'm currently doing the day-in and day-out stuff. I'm not doing anything special but my current job is what it is: entry-level. Hopefully after earning the MCSA, along with my continued experience will land me an exciting System Administrator job elsewhere.

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Road to MCSA: Week 3

Dude, week 3 has been a major letdown. I planned on knocking out objectives 4 and 5 in one week just like I did with objectives 2 and 3 last week. Week 3 has hit me hard because I've been incredibly busy with my full-time job and my job outside my professional life. So, I've only managed to barely get through objective 4 studying Zacker's book. I still have videos from TrainSignal to watch. My plan is to watch those this weekend.

Highlights of objective 4:
* New DHCP failover options: load-balancing and hot-standby. Very cool.
* Subnetting: always interesting.
* IPv6: another one of those always interesting topics.
* DNSSEC

Road to MCSA: Week 2

Week 2 was a huge success. I was able to get through objectives 2 and 3 in that week without speed reading or skipping "stuff I know." I read carefully the chapters in Zacker's book and watched the videos offered from Trainsignal. I also did the exam exercises. Guess what? I also learned "stuff." It was a good week.

Things I especially liked from the week:
* ReFS
* High availability printing
* Hyper-V, i.e., all of it: virtual storage, scalability, virtual networks, etc.
* Remote management via server manager
* of course, doing all of the above in powershell!

Road to MCSA: Week 1

Well, week 1 isn't over because I'm studying tomorrow also, but I wanted to go ahead and blog my progress.

Week 1
Read and completed the exercises in chapter 1 of Training Guide to Server 2012 by Tulloch
Read and completed exercises for Objective 1 in Zacker's Server 2012 Exam-Ref book.
Watched two videos on the 70-410 exam from Trainsignal (highly recommend).
Read Technet wiki for Objectives 1.1 and 1.2

So far so great. I'm doing both the powershell and GUI routes for the exercises because from what I understand, so far, that is the goal of Server 2012: powershell administration. It's honestly not too bad. I'm not a scripting guy, but I hope to be after earning this MCSA.

Week 1 is a success I think. I've learned a lot just from this chapter: installing and deploying Server 2012.