Passed 70-215, on to MCDBA

I just wanted to provide a little feedback on the 70-215 exam I passed
this morning, since a lot of people see different types of exams. I
took the exam at a Prometric center in Columbus, OH. My exam was 60
questions, they gave me about 2 1/2 hours to finish. I took a little
over an hour, and they do let you go back and review all questions,
even those you didn't mark during the first run-through. They did NOT
provide an actual score, it simply says PASS. Which is fine and good
since I passed, but if I had failed, I really would have wanted to
know how close I was.

The first 8 of 10 questions were very difficult. Most were exhibits,
they dealt with SNMP, subnetting, etc. After that, it was mostly
okay. There were 5-6 questions on GPO, 12-15 exhibits total, 5-6 on
hard drive management. They can definately get tricky with the
wording, it's so important to take your time and read everything
closely.

I used the MSPress book along with as many practice/demo exams I could
find, just to get me back into test mode. I acquired my MCSE +
Internet in NT 4.0 back in July 1999, so it's been a long while since
I've done this. Now I'm going to hit the SQL exams and take 70-216 as
my last elective, which I've heard is a bear.

Hope this helps!

-Barr26

Rick Barr

"Rick" <> wrote in message news:<>...
> Barr
> 70-216 is not that bad. I have knocked out 70-270, 70-215, 70-218, 70-216
> and 70-217 since the end of July. I think what makes the difference is how
> much experience and aptitude you have. Since I am a one man IT department
> for a 400 employee business I get experience with every aspect of the IT
> operation (this is not always a positive). I have a network with 4 sites
> connected by Cisco routers, DNS, DHCP, WINS, RRAS, and Netscreen firewalls.
> I considered 70-216 a bear becuase although none of the information in the
> topics cover by the test were difficult to understand it had a massive
> amount of information to study.
>
> Rick



I have thought that maybe it would be better to jump into 70-216 while
I have all this Win2K admin stuff fresh in my head. I'm more anxious
to get to the SQL part, but I am going to check out my 70-216 book
first and see if maybe I can get it done in 2-3 weeks. Unfortunately,
while I have a lot of years of technical experience, not much of it is
in actual network administration. I've actually done more Novell
Netware administration than Windows. But I do have 3 PCs at home with
a router that I can experiment with.

As for the amount of info to study, at first glance it would seem
there is less to study, compared to the 70-215 book. A difference of
several hundred pages. But I'm sure it's quite a bit more intricate.
I'll probably make a decision after this weekend, which I am using for
some well-deserved rest.

Thanks,

-Barr26

Rick Barr

I'm sure being in the position that you are helps immensely. Right
now, I'm stuck in helpdesk-type roles simply because the market is so
terrible, so it's really up to me to be self-motivated and get this
done myself.


"Simon Chang" <> wrote in message news:<eaca01c382c6$d25cd2e0$>...
> Hey folks,
>
> Just finished MCSE Win2K myself recently. '216 wasn't
> bad, compared to 220. A lot of the networking basics like
> routing is covered, but if you have anywhere near decent
> amount of know-how about that (for example, I finished my
> CCNP prior to upgrading my MCSE, so I was fairly familiar
> with OSPF to begin with) you should be OK. (That, plus
> the ability to think logically. And a large can of
> addiction-forming drink.)
>
> Like Rick, I am one of only two IT guys in an organization
> that has multiple sites and servers to boot. My manager
> and I also support a couple of developers, one of whom is
> incidentally the department chief who (looking over my
> shoulders as I type this) is not an IT guy. We are
> rolling out Win2003 infrastructure from NT 4.0 in the next
> six months - "soup-to-nut" style. From the NOS, to re-
> organizing our subnets, to doing VLANs, to AD, to
> supporting applications (going from Office 97 to Office
> System ain't easy...) we do it all.
>
> Good luck,
>
> Simon Chang, MCSE, CCNP
>
>

Rick Barr