Pluralsight R2 70 412
Buy MCSA 70-410 Cert Guide R2. Went through the whole Pluralsight 70-410 video series, skipping sections I was comfortable with. 70-412, and 70-417 William.
A reddit dedicated to the profession of Computer System Administration.Community members shall conduct themselves with professionalism.Do not expressly advertise your product.More details on the may be found.For IT career related questions, please visitPlease check out our, which includes lists of subreddits, webpages, books, and other articles of interest that every sysadmin should read!Checkout the Users are encouraged to contribute to and grow our Wiki.So you want to be a sysadmin?Official IRC Channel - #reddit-sysadmin onOfficial Discord -. I started studying for the MCSA probably in late February/early March. I took the 410 in the beginning of April, and I just took the 411 last week.My experience is this: as far as what I've used and can tell, I would stay away from the Trainsignal videos.
I don't know if there are updated R2 videos from Pluralsight that are better, but I found them entirely too general to help. The exams are very specific and go in much more depth.
I found the CBT Nuggets videos on youtube for the 410 and 411 (not sure about 412 as I haven't started studying yet) and I found these videos were an excellent resource. James Conrad breaks down things very well and provides more text and details than just going through the OS and hitting next to install some roles.I used the Sybex MCSA book.It's got a lot of great details and is a great start in getting everything introduced if you haven't experienced it before. There are screenshots and details that are helpful to be able to go deeper into. There are practice questions and a practice test/exam provided, and while I don't find they quite match up to the test, it's a good basis on how well you've been doing. The only problem with this I found is that the book covers all three tests so the chapters may contain info for only one of the tests or for all three of the tests.
If you're studying test by test you may run into material you won't need at all. Pay attention to the information at the top of each chapter where it breaks down the sections by what applies to which test.Obviously, if possible, while going through the book, set up a virtual lab in hyper-v. The reason I recommend hyper-v is because you'll have to learn it anyway. For those you don't want to configure, or maybe don't have the resources, check out the technet virtual labs. I found them missing important, complex labs I would have liked, such as Network Access Protection or Network Policy Server in general, but it's a good place to go.
I personally did not end up using any of the virtual labs yet.I recommend the BornToLearn wikis for each test:410:411:412:There is a trove of information here. Also usually a good place to start to see what may have changed since R2 since these have been updated before many books have been published (honestly, in my two tests, despite spending the last two days before 410 reading all the 'what's new in R2' articles and diligently studying things like gen 2 VMs, I didn't find much if any R2 specific material.)While I'm doing this, I keep a OneNote notebook that I can keep notes in from all these different resources, and keep a page of little phrases or commands I'd like to get more information on. The last week before the test I spend most of my time on Technet getting things like usage, syntax, optional switches, and detailed explanations of functions. It's helpful to go through and list certain powershell commands related to roles, or be familiar with all the commands you can use with netsh or ntdsutil, etc.If you're going to use braindumps, that's the step I'd recommend using them. Not necessarily to gather answers but to gather the areas you're not familiar with or comfortable with. The answers in braindumps are a mess, and some claim to give you 'explanations' of the right answers but the few I looked through had explanations that were blatantly wrong or missed the point of the question.
Go through and brush up on things you don't know with technet.I think when properly used together, all these tools create a very well-rounded knowledge of the material, while allowing you to skip things you know (for example, if you're already a networking guru you don't need to spend that much time learning IPv6 for 410 and understanding how DNS works) and learn things you know virtually nothing about from scratch. I believe any one resource alone wouldn't be enough to pass.
I looked at some of the training guides and exam refs from Microsoft and found them to be pretty subpar. Technet is the best resource but it's so incredibly vast-that's why I like the BornToLearn wikis, most of the footwork has been done and you can use it to get other information.Lastly, you really want to focus on networking. There is a lot about DNS, DHCP, and IPv6 on the first test. I found there was a good deal of Hyper-V on 410. You'll want to know Active Directory very well, and you'll want to know Group Policy maybe even better for the first two for sure. 411 has a ton more networking info with Routing and Remote Access, Network Access Protection, different authentication methods (like knowing when you would use EAP-TLS vs MS-CHAP v2).tl;dr: The tests are honestly a bitch.
Use any resource you can get your hands on to supplement your knowledge. Practice and use what you've learned in virtual labs. Get familiar with the right click context menus for EVERYTHING and every wizard you can access. Read the questions on the test itself VERY carefully and go back and review all your answers once you're done.
They WILL trick you if you're not careful. And finally, if you don't know much about powershell, start learning.
Not only is it a very useful tool to have in your arsenal anyways, learning the verb-noun format and getting familiar with how it's typically set up will help you extrapolate correct answers and rule out wrong ones on the test when you do get powershell questions that pop up. Get comfortable with it and the test won't be as bad.EDIT: Also wanted to mention they have the 90 Days to MCSA program at Microsoft that has study and training materials. I found the MVA courses (Like this: ) to be much more of a time sink than helpful. Don't waste your time watching 10+ hours of material here.
All three in a week? Good luck, man.Know all about transitioning Server Core to Desktop Experience and Server with a GUI, along with what is and isn't in each one.Know your iSCSI.Know IPv6.DNS and DHCP specifics as well.Take your time, USE the 4 hours they give you (or is it 3?).
Cram down in your memory the stuff you have trouble with in the 30 minutes before the exam. As soon as you sit down and start, write it all on the whiteboard they give you.Balls of steel to take 3 MS exams in a week. Let us know how it goes!. Hey KristofB!How did your exams go? I hope you passed?I'm a bit curious because I'm a freelance consultant my self and have just pay for the 410-411-412 exams vouchers - and are planing to take them in the next while. I have worked as an MS sysadmin for 7+ years - but I'm still having trouble figuring out what parts I might need to read up on to be ready. Have used and studied Hyper-V, AD and all the usual stuff.
Pluralsight Video
I will take 410 first and then see how prepared I feed for the others as it will be my first MS exam. With that you can 'braindump' the exams, but please, please, PLEASE make sure you learn the content afterwards if time's a serious issue. I'm sure you're smart enough to be able to find the software if you can't pay for it. I should note that a lot of the resource on that site is good training for taking the exam as well as a braindump tool.The R2 exams have a real hard-on for Powershell I hear, I've yet to take them yet though and as I'm exceedingly lazy, I'll just do the upgrade exam. Also, expect Hyper-V questions (management with powershell too). They're trying to push into the virtualization market hard.