Today I decided my efforts to get hands-on experience with Windows Server 2008 Beta 3 were noble as well as inefficient. To be honest, I don’t really think it’s inefficient in terms of getting to know the product better, but it is in terms of time management towards the exam on August 3rd.
How did I get to that conclusion? I was playing with DHCPv6 and DNS and all of a sudden I found myself reading an RFC (3596 for those interested). What was I doing? Getting DHCPv6 to lease addresses and see those addresses being registered in DNS, both the AAAA records and the PTR records. But I had a little trouble getting the ip6.arpa zone created (and in the end it turned out just to be a matter of knowing what exactly to type in the wizard). That was the detail, but I am also preparing for (just) a MCTS-exam on a broad range of topics and skills.
Anyway, this scenario will be the last “getting my hands in the dirt” for a while. After that, I will look in to the free E-Learning and the free E-Book, probably followed by working my way through IIS7. Based on all info I found, IIS7 is topic #1 on the 70-649.
There is just one possible topic I’m uncertain of: PowerShell. The PowerShell book is recommended Microsoft Press self-paced training products on the Prep-guide. However PowerShell isn’t mentioned in the skills tested and I haven’t read any comments about PowerShell questions in the various experiences. Does any of the 71-649 veterans care to drop a word on PowerShell?