# Tuesday, 24 July 2007

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?

Tuesday, 24 July 2007 23:04:23 (W. Europe Daylight Time, UTC+02:00)
Took the 649 today, very fair exam, dont want to break my nda but I must say it bounces all over in the technology and skill, from very basic to some what specific, under 100 questions. Took me 1.5 hour to go through it twice...
Murray Wall
Tuesday, 24 July 2007 23:08:26 (W. Europe Daylight Time, UTC+02:00)
Powershell, whats that ;-) Stick to the basics of understanding the publish sylabus and you will do fine. If you google each topic like you had in the comparison and get the gist thats really all you need, plus of course your previous mcse knowlege. Wrote the test today...
Murray Wall
Monday, 30 July 2007 10:43:13 (W. Europe Daylight Time, UTC+02:00)
I didn't get any PowerShell questions in the 70-649, and the few IPv6 questions could be answered by the experimentation i did with IPv6 a few years under Linux.

However, if you ever think about doing Exchange 2007 certification, you'll need lots of PowerShell Skills for 70-236...
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