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Archive for May, 2009
Student Profiles – Submit yours today
Published May 28, 2009 Tim Hazell Leave a CommentTags: Certification, Microsoft Training, Students
New and Changed Microsoft Certification Tests
Published May 27, 2009 Randy Muller 1 CommentTags: Certification, Certification Exams, Exchange Server, Windows 7, Windows Server 2008
Changes, changes and yet more changes. Changes are coming to Microsoft Learning exams. As you can well imagine with all of the new products soon to be released from Microsoft, that there will be new certification exams released for them. Windows 7 just had one examination go into Beta and there will be a number of new exams coming out for the rest of the Windows 7 MCTS and MCITP certification series. Exchange 2010 is now in Beta – you know there will be at least two if not more exams to cover it as well. Microsoft Learning introduced a new test not so long ago that has the new virtual-lab testing component and has renumbered another test.
One of the new changes is the renumbering of the MS Office Communication Server 2007-Unified Communications Voice Specialization exam. This exam was first released earlier this year as 088-924 and was intended to be a partner exam. It has now been renumbered to 74-924 as a publicly available exam. There is still no readily available study material (as of yet) for this exam. The only material available to use for studying and preparing for this exam is by attending one of the Unified Communications Voice Ignite classes, or you can trust to your luck and deep understanding of Office Communication Server and study the various voice aspects in depth.
Awhile back I blogged about the new performance based exams – ones which have a “live” component to them. As I stated before, I think these are an excellent idea. If you know the product from a “hands-on” perspective, then the exam should be straight forward. Microsoft Learning released a variant to one of the Windows Server 2008 exams: 83-640: TS: Windows Server 2008 Active Directory, Configuring. This exam, based on the 70-640 exam, has a virtual lab-based environment where examinees actually perform tasks on a virtual environment – where they tested on the output of the task, not the method of the task.
Expect more exams soon and expect more exams to be enhanced with the performance based or virtual lab piece included.
-Randy Muller
White Paper Alert! Inside SQL Server 2008 – Exploring High Availability and Scalability Enhancements
Published May 26, 2009 Tim Hazell Leave a CommentTags: Microsoft Training, White Papers
Take a peek inside SQL Server 2008 and discover the evolution of High Availability from SQL 2005 to SQL 2008 and the tools available to minimize Enterprise downtime.
Download this free white paper here.
The Amazing $25 Voucher
Published May 22, 2009 Randy Muller 3 CommentsTags: Certification, Certification Exams, Microsoft Training
If you attended TechED 2009 in Los Angeles last week, chances are you got at least one of the green Certification Exam Vouchers. These little green vouchers can save you $100 – yep, it can save you an amazing 80% off of the MSRP of a Microsoft Certification Exam….
For the bad news – you can’t sell them on any Internet based Auction facility and nor can you sell it to someone else, as the fine print states “Any resale of this voucher is expressly prohibited” That was the bad news. The good news is not only do you save $100, but it is already setup with Second Shot embedded (remember that cool program where you registered for second shot and if you failed your test, you could take it again for free?) So save your voucher as the code on it is what you will use for Second Shot.
Other points to note for these vouchers – they are only good until June 30th. Yep, you have a month-and-a-half to take your test using these vouchers. So register soon for your test, if you will fail, you will still have time to use the Second Shot feature! Also, I don’t believe you can register for the test and then reschedule after June 30th…sorry
I hope you all do well and received one of these vouchers – study hard for your test.
-Randy Muller
Windows 7 Exams
Published May 21, 2009 Randy Muller 3 CommentsTags: Certification, Certification Exams, Microsoft Training, Windows 7
In case you haven’t heard, Windows 7 (and Windows Server 2008 R2) Release Candidates are available for download. Windows 7 is simply fantastic to say the least. It easy to install, feature rich (with features that work as designed) and is very user friendly. I suspect that what you see now is what will end up in the final version due out before the Holiday Season.
As many of you are certainly aware – the first of the Windows 7 exams was opened for beta testing last week. I am sure there will be more exams coming out soon – there were three exams for Vista, so I suspect there will be at least three exams for Windows 7.
-Randy Muller
Virtual Certification
Published May 20, 2009 Brad Werner 1 CommentTags: Certification, Certification Exams, Microsoft Training, Windows Server 2008
Several years ago I worked with an avant-garde team with the goal of bringing real-world performance based assessments to the world of Microsoft Certification. I know we weren’t alone in our desires – in fact I’ve seen Brian Egler blog about such dreams recently.
This crack crew of consultants, educators, and developers nearly got such products to market not just for Microsoft technology certifications, but other technologies as well. It was the best of times… almost. At the time, perhaps the world just wasn’t ready for performance based assessments.
In any event, let’s not dwell on the past, for the present and the future is looking very exciting right about now.
Microsoft Technology Specialist Exam 83-640 on Windows Server 2008 Active Directory: Configuring is live. Indeed, this is a lab practical – a performance-based assessment.
Well OK, so it’s not 100% news if you’ve taken a beta of it or taken a live version in some parts of the world where it’s been around since November 2008. Please read the brief on it at <http://www.microsoft.com/learning/en/us/exams/83-640.aspx>.
If this exam has reached your part of the world (currently only in English, FWIW), it may have replaced the traditional exam 70-640.
Why would you want to take a lab practical instead of a largely multiple-choice exam? Why would a vendor like Microsoft want to offer one? Will such moves improve the industry? Will this cross-pollinate over to other exams? If so, how quickly? Will the world be a better place a year from now because of this? So many questions… so many questions…
With respect to the first question: “Why would you want to take it?,” my opinion is that it really depends on your learning style, your testing abilities, and your actual skills at the console(s) of some virtual servers. One of the motivations of that avant-garde group I’d referred to earlier was to eradicate the issues with a glut of “paper-MCSEs” (that was prior to the MCTS+MCITP days). Yet I know many people who can configure Active Directory, teach other people how to do so, and regularly do consulting on it, and yet freeze up when there’s a multiple choice question staring them in the face which doesn’t have any 100% correct answers. Some of these people might know more than the people who wrote the exams. Others are probably just overthinking the question. Many of these types are prone to embrace a lab practical. Just do it. That’s the ticket. What a bargain.
But then there are many other people who love the multiple choice exams. Well, perhaps love isn’t the right word, but thrive and succeed is probably more what I meant. And some of these people who might already be MCITP or MCTS certified well beyond the 70-640 might just freeze up when faced with the hands-on 83-640. Well, if the lab systems don’t freeze up first. Some of the people who apparently took betas reported that the test vendor was scrambling to keep things running smoothly.
What do you think? Hypothetically, if you felt you were ready for 70-640 and you found out that your test vendor or region was going to be transitioned to 83-640 a month from today, would you rush out and take 70-640, or would you wait until it wasn’t available anymore and take 83-640 instead a month from now?
-Brad Werner
Communications Technology Rodeo
Published May 18, 2009 Rich Luckett 1 CommentTags: Certification, Exchange Server, Microsoft Training, OCS 2007, Unified Communications
Have you ever felt that you are riding a bull at the communications technology rodeo? Just when you think you’ve come to understand the technology at hand you are troughed off by a new release or update. And while technology may not change every 7 seconds, new information about technology certainly does grow on a daily basis. And if your job depends on your in-depth knowledge of a particular technology you owe it to yourself to keep abreast of that technology. Riding the technology bull can be exhilarating though.
My expertise for the last 15 years has been in messaging and collaboration. I have watched the Exchange Server product evolve and seen the tremendous enhancements to collaboration made by LCS and now OCS. In the last month or so we have seen the release of information regarding Wave 14. This includes Exchange 2010 and Office Communications Server. This is an exciting moment in time as the technology is leaping and bounding forward. Even if you are currently deploying Exchange 2007 or OCS 2007 and you want to future proof your designs or just stay ahead of the curve knowledge wise now is the time to start taking stock.
If you haven’t had a chance to explore what is coming down the road with Wave 14 here are some excellent places to start…
Exchange Server 2010:
Microsoft Exchange Team Blog – Presenting Exchange Server 2010
http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2009/04/14/451032.aspx
Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 Beta Download
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=1898ed2c-2f88-48ac-824e-d3d20fad77d7
What’s New
http://www.microsoft.com/exchange/2010/en/us/whats-new.aspx
Office Communication Server:
Very little is publicly available at this time on the next release of OCS. I will continue to blog on Wave 14 progress as it affects unified communications. There will be some licensing changes in the next release of OCS. You can read more here:
Microsoft Drops Hints on next Communications Server Release
http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=2107
Hang on for the ride!
-Rich Luckett
Related Courses:
Microsoft Exchange Server 2007
Preventing Private NIC Registration in DNS
Published May 14, 2009 Brad Werner Leave a CommentTags: Microsoft Training
A student from a class I taught a few weeks ago wrote to me asking the following question.
“I was in your networking class a couple of weeks ago for the Networking Infrastructure. Our AD server has dual NICs with one NIC on an isolated VLAN with the SAN. How do we keep the IP of the isolated VLAN from auto-populating into DNS? This is causing traffic to route out that NIC but can’t go anywhere.”
Great question. If any of you have to deal with this sort of scenario, here’s what I’d suggest.
Via Control Panel, you can get to the Network and Sharing Center, then from there get the Status of the NIC which connects to your isolated VLAN (e.g. Local Area Connection 2, or whatever it’s called).
From the connection status you can get the Properties. Then from the Properties, you can choose Internet Protocol Version 4 (TCP/IPv4) and obtain this item’s Properties.
In the Internet Protocol Version 4 (TCP/IPv4) Properties, hit the Advanced… button. In the resulting Advanced TCP/IP Settings dialog there should be three tabs: IP Settings, DNS, and WINS. Pull the DNS tab.
At the bottom of the DNS property sheet in the Advanced TCP/IP Settings of your isolated VLAN connection, there should be a check box labeled “Register this connection’s addresses in DNS.” Please uncheck that box, and hit OK, OK, Close, and Close to close the dialogs. Then close the Network and Sharing Center.
To test this, you could do an “ipconfig /registerdns” at a cmd prompt for that server. If necessary, you could manually remove the entries from the DNS zone. The records for that NIC should not be re-added by the server as long as that “Register this connection’s addresses in DNS” setting is not set – it’s unchecked.
That’s it really.
Any time you have multiple network interfaces in a machine (e.g. server or multi-homed workstation, or notebook with wired and wireless) it’s good to be aware of what the machine is receiving and registering (advertising) via each network interface.
Author: Brad Werner
Here at Tech-Ed
Published May 13, 2009 Randy Muller Leave a CommentTags: Certification, Microsoft Training, Windows 7
I am at Tech-Ed this year – attending, but not as an attendee. I’m actually working in the Unified Communications demonstrations areas. What this means for you is that I will try and find information on new Microsoft products, technologies and Certifications.
What is new (or not so new – thank you Acer) is when will Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 be released? Microsoft announced on Monday that Windows 7 will, according to Bill Veghte, Senior Vice President of the Business at Microsoft,” is tracking well for holiday availability”. So you should be able to purchase new machines with Windows 7 installed. I am using Windows 7 RC now and had been using Windows 7 Beta before and am amazed at how well it works.
More coming later.
-Randy Muller
Are you certifiable?
Published May 13, 2009 Randy Muller 1 CommentTags: Certification, Certification Exams, Microsoft Training
Don’t take offense to the title – it is not meant as an accusation, but rather a question - not are you certifiable, but are you Microsoft certifiable? As Microsoft professionals we have all taken certification tests (otherwise you would not be a Microsoft MCSE, MCSA, MCDBA, MCTS, MCITP or MCSD), but do you retain the knowledge you learned for the test or does it evaporate after one good night’s sleep?
If you navigate to http://www.microsoft.com/click/areyoucertifiable/ you will find an amazing online quiz that will test your knowledge of Microsoft Technologies. You can clearly demonstrate your scintillating acumen of all things Active Directory and other such information and yes, you can even astound your friends and family with your arcane knowledge of Microsoft technologies. Do you want to confirm what you already thought you knew? Or do you just want the challenge of certification test without the actual stress of the test? If you answered yes to any of these (or all of them) – than I have the perfect challenge for you. If you thought your certification tests were difficult and challenging – wait until you try this one out!
What is nice about this test is you don’t have to subject yourself to Prometric, in fact you don’t have to register at all. You decide whether to be tested on Developer or IT Professional questions. You can also choose your own avatar (and here you thought Clippy was gone….. And just as you would find lifelines on a popular game show, you have three vouchers – such as Second Shot or TechNet, which you can use to assist in answering your questions). This is a fun and informative test – well worth your time to try out – and who knows, you just might learn something new as well!
Author: Randy Muller
