MSDST

I've been working as a tech for over ten years and never bought into the
cert program. I always thought of it as another marketing gig from MS. With
renewed energy and no paticular reason I picked up MS press MCDST Exam book
for 70-271. I started reading it today and by lesson 2 regarding coporate
structures I decided to go ahead and take the mock test, after all I've been
working with XP for years. I managed get through about 30 questions and
decided to check the score and of course I failed miserably. This is so
de-moralizing to me. I'm considered by clients and workers as being a good
tech with an whole range of the OS,s, Apps and networking not mention I make
decent cash doing it. I guess I have two alternatives. I can buckle down and
really study this book and the laws of the MS way or I can just continue what
I'm doing in hopes that our little company I've worked for so long never goes
under.
My question is: Is the MCDST really worth it? At least for me the end
result from troble shooting and fixing machines and networks is the same. At
least I manged to get away with it for so long. I picked this cert because I
thought it would be easy to do and I would move on to the next one, but
within an hour I found out how tough it really is.

 

The MCDST certification, or any certification for that matter, is only
worth it if 1.) You have the recommended (or in some cases, required)
experience to back it up and 2.) If you market yourself accordingly. A
certification should not be anyone's single selling point, nor should it
be any employer's single hiring credential. Employer's received a good
2nd degree burn back in the heyday of the paper certification era. They
learned to not just look at the certifications a person possessed, but
to get back to the basics of interviewing the potential employee again.

You mention buckling down and learning the laws of the Microsoft way. Do
you honestly think that Microsoft's way is all that different from any
other way. By your own admission, you stopped after Lesson 2. Did you
take the time to read the results of your exam -- to read the answers
that you received incorrect? If so, do you feel the correct answers were
unjust? The one issue with experience is that experience, like
everything thing else, can either be good or bad. If your adopt or are
taught poor troubleshooting methods, then you will have poor experience.
No matter how many years you have that experience, the quality doesn't
change. What a majority of technicians learn is "trial and error". This
methodology has its place, but is not necessarily considered "best
practices". Would you want your doctor or mechanic to only posses the
"trial and error" skills set?

In my opinion, your feeling of demoralization is unfounded. You only got
through 2 lessons in the book, but more interesting, you quit the
practice exam half way through. And you wondered why you failed
miserably?

Michael D. Alligood, MCITP, MCTS, MCSA, MCDST, A+
CIO, CertGuard Incorporated
www.certguard.com

 

Thank you for quick response.
For starts I know that a cert is only part of my selling point. I have much
more knowledge with my experience. To give you a since of what I’ve done
past I will give an example of without being under an (SLA). I work for
shows and conferences and I think it is equal to an (SLA). I say this because
the shows I work for cost a lot of money and because of the old cliché the
show must go on no matter what. The pinch makes the difference. I’m very good
at that. I’ve stayed up many of nights figuring stuff out for shows. My
example and I can come up with tons of them. Only because to let you know the
level I’m at. On one of my first events ever a speaker in front of a crowd of
close to 3000 stuffed his presentation from a 3 ½ inch. Into a 5 ¼ drive
because he couldn’t see the machine being under podium and then wondered why
his presentation didn’t come up. I with a little hesitation ran from behind
the stage, jumped off to a little waiter tray, picked up a butter knife,
fished out his disk and put it into the right drive and saved the show with
only couple minutes delay. This is a true storey. The point is that most of
my issues since that time with machines had become in mind “keep it simple
stupid†Another example just a few weeks ago I was managing about 50
computers and a wireless network that I put together with the budget we had.
Anyway five minutes before the main keynote of the event a rogue DHCP pops
up. Well again I have one or two choices. Instead of running to my Server and
taking the time to run diagnostics to find the rogue DHCP I went straight to
the Speaker lounge and made a announcement respectfully asking all the
speakers to disconnect from my VLAN until I found what the issue was. Of
course there was a VPC running Server 2008 pushing out address and killing
my network unintentionally which I probably should not have allowed to happen
but with budget restraints I had no way of isolating the speaker room from
the rest of the network. Again I looked at it as “keep it simple stupidâ€
Now back to the few questions I took on the test. One of the questions was
something in the effect “In an enterprise environment with several computers
a client was getting a 169…… loop back address so of course was not getting
on the net?†So I reluctenly picked that answer of using the command prompt
renewing the address. Well I guess I was wrong. My answer would first be
check to see if her Ethernet was even plugged in but that wasn’t a choice,
but that is exactly what I would have done in the real world... So this is
where I have a problem and I think is wrong and what I don’t understand or
skewed for me. I’ve never gave that any consideration. When fixing a machine
it’s mostly automatic. I do have a 100 things going on in my mind but I never
worked on a machine where I needed to think about each step like MS wants.
If you can please tell me how to change that thought process. The way they
think is structured and the way I think is by all of my accounts different.
Vista is another example . I think it’s a good OS but noticed over time that
all they did was bury XP inside and added a couple of cool looking stuff that
mimics apple. I do think it is a good reliable OS but needs to be trimmed
down a bit.
I think that is what you have to do to pass these exams is to take it step
by step their way. To me that sounds really hard. Yes to me that is really
different and Yes it is trial by error is what I do but where is the error?
I really want to do this but in essence it feels like a step back. I see
you have your certs please give me a real world problem? Don’t make it to
tough. By the way I still have that butter knife in my desk.
Again thank you for your response
Respectfully
James

 

If you feel you have the experience and knowledge for the MCDST exams as
posted on the Microsoft Learning website, then we can check that off
your list. The best advice I can give you is this: Work out each answer
presented to you - keeping in mind exactly what the question is asking
of you. As technicians, we find new and creative ways of making things
work on a limited budget. However these ideas may not always be best
practices. If budget is an issue, it will normally be mentioned in the
question. This is a clue. So although you may think there are 2 correct
answers, you need to take into account EXACTLY what the question is
asking of you.

Other than that, I would review the objectives for exam - which is
located on the Microsoft Learning website.

 

This is a common issue for many people taking certification exams, and is a
big hurdle I had to overcome before felt more comfortable sitting in front
of Microsoft exams. Interestlngly, the lesson has helped me in other exams
as well.

The *key* here is to understand that the purpose of the exam is to determine
if you can identify and/or reason out the *BEST AVAILABLE* answer from a
fixed set of choices.

Your response above in the real world is absolutely correct. If I
encountered a machine with a 169.x address the FIRST thing I always do is
check to see if there's a live network connection, and the second thing I do
is make sure the DHCP server is reachable. BUT... if I'd just finished
plugging the cable into the computer and personally observed the LINK light
illuminate, I'm not going to "recheck" my seconds-old work. I'm going to
proceed with the next =logical= step given the scenario present.

In certification exams, sometime this is also a critical point. Read Very
Carefully The Scenario! I can't tell you how many practice (and I don't
even know how many actual) exam questions I've gotten wrong, not because I
didn't understand the concept being tested, but because I was in a hurry and
did not read the question scenario (or answer options) carefully and/or
thoroughly enough, causing me to miss a valid option, or select an invalid
option -- most notably this happens in "Check All That Apply" questions.
(So, I've learned, I *always* double-check my responses on "Check All That
Apply" questions, and make sure that I can justify =to myself= why the
answer chosen is correct in the context of the question being asked.

As you noted in your example question, "Checking the Ethernet" was not an
option. Some of that is exactly the point of the exam question. Sometimes,
the exam question is designed to test a very specific concept, to see if the
test-taker can recognize the appropriate response. In the instance case, the
exam question may have been designed to test the exam-taker's awareness and
knowledge of proper use of the 'ipconfig /release' and/or 'ipconfig /renew'
commands. In that particular scenario, the unspoken implication is that "The
Ethernet cable is connected and Level 1 connection is good". Given that
assumption, what is the *next* response.

NOTE: A particular annoying quirk of Windows XP. Because Wireless runs as a
user-level application on Windows XP, it's not uncommon at all for the IP
stack to initialize *BEFORE* the wireless application can establish an
actual connection. When this happens, a Windows XP system will get a 169.*
address until the wireless connection is established -- and, even after the
wireless connection is established, there's no guarantee that the
establishment of the connection will properly refresh the DHCP assignments.
Sometimes, renewing the address *is* the correct step.

--
Lawrence Garvin, M.S., MCITP(x2), MCTS(x5), MCP(x7), MCBMSP
Senior Data Architect, APQC, Houston, Texas
Microsoft MVP - Software Distribution (2005-2008)

MS WSUS Website: http://www.microsoft.com/wsus
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http://wsusinfo.onsitechsolutions.com
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