My torn data pages - Friday, August 3, 2007

Well, I should say 71-649, because I sat the beta-exam. But how would I rate my preparations (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8) and the exam?

Let me start with the exam, 88 questions on:

• Windows Deployment Services, about 10 questions.
• Terminal Services, about 10 questions.
• Internet Information Services, about 20 questions.
• Active Directory, about 20 questions.
• Networking, about 10 questions.
• Virtual Server, about 5 questions.
• Not listed in the prep-guide, about 10 questions. These topics include Disk management, WSUS, Clustering, Recovering from boot errors; none of them really hard. I would say (apart from the different boot process and recovery options for Windows 6) basic knowledge is sufficient.

Mapping my preparation to the beta-exam, I can say IIS and Networking were well covered. Though there is one flaw on my IIS prep: .NET Trust Levels… I totally forgot about them.

My feeling on WDS and AD in general is okay, though I should have spend more time on Federation Services and Rights Management Services and gotten some hands-on experience with WDS. Towards Virtual Server, I can say I underestimated it a bit, thinking that my daily usage of Virtual Server 2005 for test and development would cover it. Not, you’ll need to invest in your skills to manage a production environment of legacy OS-es hosted on Virtual Server, including securing (the level of) access to specific machines and scripts.

And then there were Terminal Services, well actually my exam started with them and I was shocked (or maybe stunned) with the level of depth and detail in the questions. Maybe, like with Virtual Server, I underestimated TS. But with VS, I had at least the feeling the questions were fair, some the TS question however were IMHO based on look-up facts, not skill. If the spread of the exam will be the same as on my beta, prep deep and hard at ALL topics on Terminal Services.

That said about my preparation, but will I pass? Hard to say, first of all it’s a beta exam, so it’s also a test for the question pool (and some won’t make the cut). There were errors in at least two questions (which I commented) and I have my doubts about a couple of others (I’ll review what I can remember and answer that on Microsoft’s follow-up mail on the beta exam). Until then, I’ll anxiously await the result.

In a few hours I’m going to find out if my preparations (and expectations) match up with the exam (or should that be the other way around?).

Anyway, here is the final post on the preparations, covering IIS. On top of that, I’ve updated Preparing for 70-649, part 7 of many with the IIS stuff and some extras on activation and WDS.

IIS is huge and not only in terms of its share in the question pool (as reported in many experience reports in on the Internet). Surely I’m pointing at IIS.NET (www.iis.net), even than a sub selection is required. So let me sum up the resources I used, though I must admit I had next to no clues on what to prepare for other than a lot of command-line stuff, in other words: appcmd.exe.

First I had to get in the mood ;)… so I picked two webcasts (I had their links stored sometime when I was browsing resources).

Live From Redmond: Putting the Lego set together: Inside IIS 7.0's Componentization

There is an audio problem in the original webcast starting just after 18 minutes and lasting for about 2 minutes, nothing wrong with your PC (yes, I did restart the presentation).

I was tempted to only view the admin part of the webcast (~50 minutes), but sitting through the full webcast gives you a good view of what the modularized approach for IIS 7 means in terms of extensibility.

After the webcasts I went through the IIS 7 Resources and read all articles (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8) in “Explore IIS 7”. Just to get the complete picture.  A lot of these pages have a “Learn more … ” as their next/last page. This “Learn more” page has undoubtedly useful links, but after having clicked a few I decided to keep away from them to properly manage my time. Note that having viewed the webcasts makes the reading easier.

Basically I wanted to continue reading the rest as well, but that would present an information overflow, which would probably not be relevant to the exam. I already had my doubts if I wasn’t drilling too deep anyway. Looking at the skills in the prep guide, 14 out of 16 skills towards IIS are configuring. What I learned so far from the resources; configuration is stored in XML files machine.config, applicationHost.config and web.config. What I learned from the comments, emphasizing the importance of the command-line, appdom.exe will be the tool to edit these XML files.

I started taking up the configuration tasks with FTP, based on the 9-page guide from iis.net. In this paper the configuration is done against the bare XML for several different scenarios. In preparation terms, I’ll label this link Resource M_1.

Next was configuring certificates, where I was surprised to learn that appcmd.exe is could not be used for a lot of certificate related configuration tasks (Resource M_2).

This link might address two skills, as I’m not sure to what extend the words components, modules and handlers are used interchangeably (Resource M_3).

A link that (in a very simple way) satisfies three skills is this one, labeled Resource M_4.

This link will hopefully satisfy another 3 skills (well, one already covered by M_4), labeled Resource M_5.

In the configuration corner for rights, permissions and authorization, you should have gotten a pretty good impression from the second webcast, but here are the four links I think add some information. 1, 2, 3, 4 (Resource M_6).

There wasn’t information on backup. But hey, how hard can that be… check out appcmd backup /?, by now you should know the IIS team got their act pretty well together.

SMTP is another story, I haven’t looked deeper in there, other than just install it. To me it seemed nothing changed from Windows Server 2003, it even requires all the IIS 6.0 bits to be installed. Then again, the prep-guide could be hinting at configuring SMTP so your apps can send mail.

And finally UDDI, well next to nothing to be found on UDDI on the iis.net, at microsoft.com UDDI points you in various developer directions. Also Microsoft, SAP and IBM seemed to have the plugs pulled on the public UDDI business registry. This makes UDDI an enterprise niche, which will require cooperation between developer teams and corporate administrators. In other words, UDDI should have no place in a MCTS exam and I’m going to take my chances here.

All information in the resources (with exception of M_2) focuses at the underlying XML-configuration, so armed with this knowledge I started to test my skills with appcmd.exe in a VirtualLab. Unfortunately I ran into some troubles with the lab (which all by itself should take just a minute or 10 (out of 90) to complete, so I booted my own VM to play appcmd.exe a bit more. The thing I liked in the VirtualLab was the inclusion of appcmdUI.exe. Speaking of appcmdUI, life with appcmd.exe can become a lot easier; check out Kanwaljeet Singla’s appcmdUI.exe, after the exam... don't get used to it yet ;). Or use one of the other options to manage IIS7;

• GUI administration
• Edit the files directly with your favorite XML-editor
• PowerShell
• WMI

Updated 2007-08-03 with added stuff on IIS, WDS and Windows Activation. 

I haven't done much in terms of blogging about my preparations the past couple of days. Mainly because I've taken a more structured approach after I caught myself reading an RFC to prepare for an MCTS exam (see part 5). To keep track of what I did, I use the table below so I can match the skills to be tested to the resources I used. So far I’ve gone about the following route;

Don’t forget you’re an MCSE. Windows Server 2008 is yet another evolution in the Windows Operating System. Your skills will evolve along with it (in other words, there’s only a little real new stuff). Or as Lukas Beeler stated: “An MCSE on 2003 could probably answer 50% of the questions without having touched WS2008”

• Search resources (find this documented in some of the previous posts).
• Watch the IPv6 white-paper webcast, followed by selectively reading through the white paper itself. Link (Resource A).
• Skim / glance trough the reviewers guide (Resource B).
• Watch the screencasts by Keith Combs (Resource C).
• Get some hands-on experience with IPv6 (but don’t overdo it). (Resource D).
• The E-Book, well only the chapters from Windows Server 2008 (Resource E). I haven’t looked at the PowerShell Step-By-Step chapters, as PowerShell is not on the exam.
• Some background information on Rights Management Services from Windows Server 2003 (Resource F).
• E-Learning 5934 collection. For a little more detail on the E-Learning and why I didn't add the last clinic, see my previous post.
  • Course 5936 Hindsight, take this after reading the EBook, the clinic is lacking in overview and seems to miss some essential bits (I toke this module before reading the EBook) (Resource G).
  • Course 5937, good clinic but not much new info after having worked with resources B, C and E (Resource H).
  • Course 5938 (Resource I).
• Windows Deployment Service Role Step-By-Step guide (Resource J).
• Volume Activation 2.0 Frequently Asked Questions for Windows Vista and Windows Server codenamed "Longhorn"- Beta 3 (Resource K).
• I’m not sure if "Custom application directory partitions" means the same as in the Windows Server 2003 exams. If yes, check page 5-26 from the MCSA/MCSE Self-Paced Training Kit for Exam 70-291 (isbn: 0-7356-2288-4). Online Chapter 5 included as Resource L.
• IIS was a story for itself, which I described in my last preparation post. For the table below, I labled this post as Resource M (which means the whole post in general) and some further qualified resources (like M_1, M_2, etc.) with specific links in that post (Resource M).
• Get some hands-on experience with Server Core (Hindsight, not a priority. Keith’s screencast probably shows enough) (Resource Z).

Resources reviewers guide (B) and E-Book (E) have their respective chapter denoted as well, like (B_2) for chapter 2 from the reviewers guide.

What’s up with the table? First of all, these are the skills being measured from the 2007-05-25 prep-guide with a priority column and a resource column. Each time I encounter a comment on the internet about the skill being heavy tested, it receives a plus. Plusses are direct or inherited from the group, that is; if I felt a comment could be pointed to a group, that’s where the plus landed. Resources point to thing I used, did or read to cover that topic; finally comments are things I want to mention on the particular topic.

One general comment though, the exam is said to heavily focus on command-line tools. So I specifically paid to attention to the command-line tools used in the various topics.

If time is less of an issue, visit the TechCenter which has lots of resources (Step-By-Step guides) to get the knowledge and Hands-On experience.

Review of the free E-Learning collection 5934 towards preparation of 70-649. Certainly not a catch-all resource, but the first three out of four clinics did add value in my preparation.

Clinic 5936, covers Network Access Protection (NAP). Though the E-Learning doesn’t mention it this way, NAP basically is an extension build around NPS (Network Policy Server, Microsoft’s RADIUS implementation and replacement for Win2k3 IAS). To use NAP, you need clients that are NAP-capable and can validate their Health (think Firewall, AV, Malware protection, patching) with the servers for compliance with the companies System health policy. For better results, combine the E-Learning with the Reviewers Guide sections 5.02 and 5.03. I found this clinic quite lacking in terms of providing a decent overview, but it enhances the Reviewers Guide by adding visualization. 

Clinic 5937, focuses at the branch offices. With Windows Server 2008 this means lots of RODC, but also TCP/IP improvements (for WAN), BitLocker, some administration delegation and stopping the AD Service for maintenance (rather than rebooting the server into Active Directory Restore Mode). Good and useful clinic, but also includes some topics that bear no relevance to the exam.

Clinic 5938, with Terminal Services at the core of this clinic. Listen to the intro and stop wondering why it looks like Citrix (in other words, leverage your experience with MetaFrame or Presentation Server). This clinic throws a lot of different scenarios at you, so you may want to combine it with chapter 3 from the Reviewers Guide to keep an overview. This clinic (like the 5936) adds visualization to the Reviewers Guide.

Clinic 5939, focuses at the “initialization” (initial configuration tasks and adding roles and features) and management of a server. Many topics however, aren’t relevant to the exam (PowerShell, Remote Management, Troubleshooting and Diagnostics). It is a useful clinic in getting to know some new features of Windows Server 2008, but with next to no relevance to the exam. The parts that are relevant to the exam, are already covered by Keith’s screencasts, the EBook and the Reviewers Guide.

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?

The new VM (to be named Win2k8-Full-01) installed overnight, first things first: VM additions and a larger screen size (going graphical now). Second, not being able to do a thing with DHCP on the core-install (Win2k8-Core-01) still bugged me and while in Initial Configuration Tasks on Win2K8-Full-01 I started looking around the roles and features. There it was under features: Remote Server Administration Tools, but no remote tool for DHCP *now what*… well I just installed the DNS Server tool. Next the system wanted to REBOOT ?!? WinNT 3.51 déjà vu, I hope these kinds of reboots won’t make the final product.

The DNS Server tool on Win2K8-Full-01 threw an error “A security package specific error occurred”. I only could stop, restart or pause the DNS Service over at Win2k8-Core-01 and view the DNS Event log. I tried to see what happened if I made changes to DNS on Win2k8-Core-01 using dnscmd. Again the changes didn’t show in the DNS Server tool (although they were visible in the DNS Event log). Time for an upgrade to an Active Directory environment, I installed the role Active Directory Domain Services (reboot again), dcpromo followed by an expected reboot. After the reboot, it was apparent that the roles DNS Server and File Services were installed at Win2k8-Full-01 too.

The thing I realized after kicking off dcpromo was I didn’t look at the domain functional level. I went with the Windows Server “Longhorn” forest functional level, which made the wizards questions about domain functional levels obsolete. Hence I looked it up; Appendix of Functional Level Features a link I think will be useful when going into the Configuring Server Roles (see prep-guide), which is pretty heavy on AD-stuff.

Next step, enlist the Win2k8-Core-01 in the newly created longhorn.local domain (use NETDOM JOIN). Sounds easy, but it wasn’t. The ADSL-router (being DHCP and DNS server) complicated things, so I had to switch to manually configure DNS registration over at Win2k8-Full-01 through netsh. Once I had that setup over IPv6, the join worked.

Unfortunately after the Win2k8-Core-01 joined the domain, I was still unable to connect to its DNS Server as it kept insisting on the error “A security package specific error occurred”. In the mean time, I also found the Core Server Step-by-Step Guide. Hindsight knowledge says I should have read this paper before getting my fingers in the dirt. Anyway I think I’ve played enough with this Core server thing towards the exam.

Next stop: DHCP, DNS and AD. Win2k8-Full-01 already acting a DC, DHCPv4, DHCPv6 and DNS. Threw the Win2k8-Core-01 from the disk and now installing Win2k8-Full-02. In the mean time watching TechNet Webcast: Technical Overview of Active Directory Domain Services in Windows Server 2008.

I also want to share this link: Exam impression by Lukas Beeler.

Commenting on my blog works again; Captcha issue resolved (a.k.a. disabled).

Didn't really do much in terms of preparation yesterday, just read over the IPv6 white paper. Today I fired up my Win2k8 Core VM and started to play around with IPv6. However, before getting to play, there was Product Activation. I had seen on one of the screencasts by Keith Combs that there is this vbs-tool (which you should probably know about on the exam): slmgr. Strange part was that when I checked the expiration date, it told me I had 26 days left, even though I had auto-activation on Internet connection checked when I installed. Well, must be one of those beta-thingies, but slmgr –ato toke care of the situation. Second thing I tried was installing the Virtual Machine additions. It didn’t auto-run, but manually going for setup.exe, installing and rebooting did give me the VW-additions.

Next I went through the commands and tools mentioned on the IPv6 config page. All well, I have ipconfig, route and netsh where the interface ipv6 will be important. Since IPv6 is said to be really easy auto configuring, I tried ping and it started with timed out requests. So much for easy, but knowing my environment (dual-homed Win2k8 VM with one interface connected on the physical interface of my Vista system and also a non-IPv6 ADSL-router plus a WinXP SP2 with IPv6 installed), I started troubleshooting with IPv4. Router okay, Vista okay, WinXP not okay (turned out to be the firewall, disabled it). Next I tried pinging the WinXP system again on IPv6, twice! The first Win2k8 VM always tried first on the non-connected interface (which has ZoneID 3), and then the connected interface with ZoneID 2. Same story when pinging the Vista host. Also Win2k8 quickly forgets the interface it used to successfully connect to the two clients. Forgetting about the interface to use is quickly solved by including the (local) zone ID though, which basically represents the interface trough which the other systems can be reached. So ping fe80::5581:4002:53a2:fef1%2 or something the likes based on your environment should prevent failure (or have a properly setup infrastructure ;) ) You can view what IPv6 knows about the surrounding network via netsh interface ipv6> show neighbors.

Pinging the Win2k8 WM from the two Windows clients didn’t work; again it’s the firewall which is enabled by default on Windows Server 2008. I disabled it through netsh firewall>set opmode DISABLE and pinging the connected interface worked, naturally pinging the disconnected interface doesn’t work as the server isn’t configured as router.

All of a sudden another question popped my mind (those poor 70-431 candidates completely taken by surprise): simulations!!! I didn’t read anything about them yet, so I Googled a bit and landed at Trika’s blog (where else ;) ): Are there simulations on the upgrade exams? No.

Afterwards I installed DHCP and DNS servers on the Win2k8 Core using ocsetup (warning: case-sensitve). DNS Server Service started, DHCP Server wouldn’t. The later indicating through net start “DHCP Server” it is disabled or has no associated devices. Trough netsh dhcp> I got the impression it needed Active Directory.

Not having a graphical UI in these circumstances is no help, so I wanted to see how far I could get from Vista… not far until I gave the administrator a password (not new to Windows Server 2008, but one to remember: a user account without password is inaccessible from the network (under the default policy settings)). Not much use either; I could initially connect with computer manager now, to have the errors thrown at my head one level deeper. I guess I will need a full install, partially to be able to manage the server and to be able to setup Active Directory. Now installing the new VM…

Another day with some hours of preparation for the 70-649. Although I have enough resources to keep me company until August 3^rd, I do still spend some time looking for real gems (and keeping a tap on the buzz for this wave of beta tests). It was through Technorati and Elan Shudnow’s Blog that I learned about Keith Comb’s Blahg. This particular nerd on the grid has a series of Screencasts (currently 5, with a duration between 5 and 18 minutes) on Windows Server 2008. From the looks of his blog, he’ll frequently pour out useful info, so his feed is added to my reader (and blogroll).

What did I do besides watching Keith’s screencasts? I compared the skills being measured between 70-648 and 70-649 (and thus added some topics to the list), have been reading through the reviewers guide and watching the IPv6 white paper as downloaded webcast (sit back and relax). I can recommend the downloaded version, it's easy to pause and if needed go back a slide, very welcome as it is nearly two hours of information. Second tip is about IPv4, if you feel your IPv4 kowledge is sub-optimal, first review your IPv4 stuff. It's on the skills list too and the webcast refers quite a bit to your IPv4 knowledge. From the webcast I learned there are parts of the white paper itself I will read for further understanding.

Okay, so 70-648 is a subset of 70-649? Well almost;

• 70-648 has more skills on "Maintaining the Active Directory Environment"
• There is a smal difference in skill when it comes to "Configuring the Active Directory Infrastructure"
• 70-648 has the extra skills domain of "Configuring the Domain Name System (DNS)"

See the full compare in the table below (based on the prep-guides as they were on 2007-07-20). Changes are not likely during the beta round, which by the way ends August 3rd, but I'd be surprised if there were still seats to be taken. However, should you hit this page when the exams are live, be sure to check the (then) current skills at their respective links: 70-648 & 70-649

What's up with "Configure Windows Activation"?

The reviewers guide talks about Windows Activation Service and Windows Process Activation Service as if it is one thing. Search through the guide on WAS and WPAS (search case-sensitive, was is a pretty common word ;)). Now it could be that this is important, because from what I remember from the things I read on one of the links below, IIS7 is a very major topic. However, I still feel it's that nasty Windows Product Activation that is featured under "Configure Windows Activation". This feeling is based on the location in the prep-guide and this line in the reviewers guide.

In addition, because product activation can be done within a grace period (typically 30 days), and is not critical for the initial configuration of the server, the Activate Your Server command, present on the Manage Your Server window in Windows Server 2003, has been removed from Initial Configuration Tasks.

That's however all I found on product activationin the reviewer guide (maybe that, and how to invoke activation after deployment is all you need to know on the exam).

Experiences from others on 70-649 in general:

http://www.mcseboard.de/mcse-forum-pruefungen-33/mcse-mcsa-upgrade-2008-beta-pruefungen-117512.html (German; forum which had already 3 pages in the thread when I checked)

http://www.techlog.org/archive/2007/06/08/windows_server_2008_upgrade_ex

http://blogs.infosupport.com/ericd/archive/2007/07/17/Exam-70_2D00_649.aspx

http://blog.tiensivu.com/aaron/archives/1171-Took-71-649-will-be-70-649-today-Upgrading-MCSE-2003-to-2008.html