If you just memorize the answers without any lab work, simulations or real world experience, you will never be able to really stand behind your certifications.

One of the most important things to remember with Microsoft Certification tests is that you have to think about the answer in terms of how Microsoft would want you to answer using only their products and practices. It is not about how it would really be done in practice with the resources and vendors at your disposal.

We all know that budgets can be tight and the managers won’t always spring for the full solution right out of the gate but with the Microsoft tests you have to set aside the real-world and force yourself to think specific to Microsoft. I find that with the Microsoft tests it is imperative that you study multiple practice exams to get a well rounded feel for the tests. For some of the core exams for the MCSE it is also important that you have many years of real world experience working with Microsoft products, designing networks, designing security and implementing full solutions for clients (especially 070-291). If you just memorize the answers without any lab work, simulations or real world experience you will never be able to really stand behind your certifications.

With that being said, I do have some great tips on how to help you get through the tests once you have the experience and knowledge:

I found the Exam Cram series of books very useful for learning the material for each exam. They have a great writing style to keep you focused on getting through the content. Each book also comes with a pretty good practice engine for sample tests. An online company Pass4Sure.com also had great practice tests that I found very useful as well. My favorite site was Exam Collection. All of the tests on this site have been created with Visual CertExam Suite. Visual CertExam Suite is an exam simulator developed for certification exam preparation. It is a very active site with tests and content being added regularly. Like I stated previously it is a great way to help you study for the exams but will in no way provide the value of hands-on lab based studying and years of work experience.

Test Engine Tips + Memorization Technique

Once you have read the material, done the labs and have studied hard, I have a tip on how to hold more data in your brain when studying for the tests. It is a technique used for memorization.

1. When you are going through the practice exam engine you don’t read the question at all, you just read the answer. Go through the test engine with the answers turned on and just read the correct answer for each one.
2. Do this 3 times completely. This should take you no more than an hour or two depending on how many questions are in the sample question sets.
3. Then you start taking practice exams in question subsets of around 46 – 50 questions. Try to select the answers again without reading the questions.
4. You will repeat this process of taking sample tests until you are consistently scoring 850 or higher. Once you can consistently score 850 or higher (three tests in a row at least) you are ready to take the exam.

If you follow this method you will be assured to pass. This memorization technique is a great way to cram for tests but do note: if you don’t actually know the content or practice these things in the real world your certifications won’t really mean anything. Make sure to read the material, do the labs, practice in real world jobs and understand the content first. Once that is out of the way then use this technique to just obtain your certifications to back what you already do on a daily basis.

Good luck.

I recently attended a Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer Boot Camp, put on by TECHPROS Group, in an attempt to obtain my MCSE. Yet, the certification wasn’t the only goal, I intended to meet all the criteria for the certification - in one week.

Back in August, I hopped on a plane from Portland, OR to Irvine, CA. To start the trip off, the plane had maintenance issues, so as we started to take off - literally as the front of the plane left the ground - the pilot immediately landed the plane. The plane barely stopped in time before its tires rolled off the end of the runway. For the next two hours we were stalled, waiting for the mechanical issues to be resolved.

MCSE credentials are the certifications for professionals who analyze the business requirements and design and implement the infrastructure for business solutions based on the Microsoft Windows Server System.

Because of this travel hurdle, I arrived three hours late to the boot camp. Missing certification orientation and dinner might phase one’s moral, but here at opus:interactive, it takes more than a false start at the beginning of the race to thwart a victory - a lot more.

The boot camp was held at a rented house in the hills outside Irvine, CA. It was a very nice house with plenty of space and rooms for all fifteen of the boot camp attendees (below). TECHPROS had great content setup for us in terms of lectures and labs (below). The first three days we worked through labs with VMware as well as lectures. I finished the first lab Sunday night before turning in around 1AM. The second day I finished the second lab by dinner time and was ready to start studying for the tests. I crammed for 14 hours straight and attempted my first test on Tuesday:

I passed with a perfect score 1000/1000! The rest of the day was spent going through more labs and some simulations TECHPRO had setup to prepare us for the simulations on 70-291. I studied until around 2AM and was ready to take more tests on Wednesday.

I was the only student to attempt three tests in one day and the ones I chose were:

I ended up passing all three that day with a 984/1000 on the XP test! Even with these three tests behind me, I didn’t stop. I continued cramming and working on other labs and lectures for the rest of the day into the wee hours of Thursday, turning in around 3AM.

I wanted to continue the testing insanity and scheduled three more tests for Thursday as follows:

I was again the only student to attempt three tests that passed them all in one day.

The camp was winding down and there was only one more testing opportunity before the flight back to Portland on Friday afternoon. I schedule one final test on Friday morning which would achieve my MCSE +Messaging.

I ended up taking a second test because I had two hours to kill before catching a ride to the airport. I took the following tests:

Both of these test I completed and passed, which brought my total of successfully passed tests to nine in four days! (Phew, what a relief!) I was literally brain dead at this point.

One week later I felt the itch again and decided I should take the last elective for the Security add-on to the MCSE. I quickly scheduled this test:

Another perfect score of 1000/1000! Completing that exam gave me my MCSE +Security.

Why stop there! I thought and continued a study for the new Hosting Specialization Exam:

This test encapsulates what we offer here at opus:interactive and as such: I nailed it with a 987/1000 score! That achieved me the MCTS: Hosting Specialization certification as well.

In recent months we’ve been internally studying the ITIL Foundations and was finally ready to take that exam. This particular exam was administered by EXIN the Examination Institute for Information Science and is the first step in us implementing ITIL for our organization. I studied all the material I could find and ran some practice exam engines. I was finally ready to take the test. I aced that test with a perfect score of 1000/1000! Obtaining my ITIL Foundations Certification.

A lot of testing and a lot of proof of just how excellent our organization and team are. Some might even say: the best in the business.

With the passage of time, there is always technological challenges that crop up for existing clients, which is why as a managed service provider we step in to eagerly correct issues so our clients need not (after all, this is what they are paying us for.) These challenges manifest themselves either through user growth, hardware limitations or in worse case scenarios: hardware failures. Recently our monitors noticed that a five year old Windows 2000 Server was about to start digging a little virtual six-foot-deep grave and this is where we stepped into the challenge.

I quickly stabilized their old server allowing it to keep running while we worked on a migration to a new solution. While this was happening, Jeremy (our beef-jerky-loving sales representative) sold the client one of our new dedicated managed HP c-Class BladeSystem servers. The web server will be migrated to Windows 2003 and the SQL server migrated to SQL 2005 on Windows 2003 as well. Additionally, I replaced their old Cisco PIX 501 firewall.

After the migration of content, I began setting things up, including the VPN tunnels to the third party development company and the integration with the billing system. Once this was completed, I began full regression Quality Assurance.

After testing, it was quickly discovered that the integration with the billing engine was not working. The reason was the rather old code (Active Server Pages, ASP, version 3.0) which had been written by a third-party development company back in 1999. The code they produced relied on a component called URLFetch, which didn’t work inside of the new operating system environment.

Here is the particular code call:

This component is a COM Wrapper for a few lines of Java code that allow you to, basically, screen scrape sites and return them for use in the code. Since the billing system is on an internal network behind firewalls and a VPN, it can’t be served up direct to the end-user, so it has to be done from the code on the web server. Since this was an old component it was pretty much assumed that it wouldn’t work on Windows Server 2003 and IIS 6.

The research began about this component and the specific error that was being thrown by the code, which was:

I quickly found this Microsoft Knowledge base (KB) article and grabbed filemon from sysinternals to check it out.

Using depends.exe (from Dependency Walker) I looked into finding the missing .dll that I figured was trying to be loaded behind the scenes. This was confirmed and the missing dependent file was DWMAPI.dll.

From there a little more research uncovered another team having difficulty with the same situation. From this information the .dll was found and downloaded.

However, this new .dll didn’t produce results and I had to start again, from ground-zero.

It was at this point that I began to deduct that this old component would not work on the Windows 2003 and IIS6. We then contacted the client and gave them the harrowing news that the possibility that they may need to re-write their code existed. Even in the face of this possibility, we wanted to assure that all avenues had been explored and I continued researching. Next was to review the component itself and how it was written - to define what dependencies it required. This additional digging uncovered the following information:

This was the final ‘a-ha!’ moment. I then quickly downloaded the Microsoft Virtual Machine and voilà, it worked! (The new SUN Java SDK was already tried before this and it didn’t work.)

The end result: The client’s code now works great, on the new environment, with no need to update the code-base and I got to celebrate the moment with a Dr. Pepper.

by Eric Hulbert

Wow! The booth babes were incredible. These shows never cease to amaze me. Every other booth had models sporting ultra slinky spandex wear showing off their products trying to draw you in to their booths. It works!

I took this pic of the opus Director of Ops and one of the Blackcat booth babes.

I was very happy to see that we are well ahead of the curve in almost all areas of the IT lifecycle and daily managed services sustainability practices.

We met with existing vendors, like Ironport, Cisco, Network Hardware Resale, Array Networks and GTA, and it confirmed to me that we have made great decisions in our vendors and partners.

We found a new vendor to replace Intermedia for our Hosted Exchange offering. We talked at length with their COO about their offerings, their network, their solution overall and their technical infrastructure.

The In-Row RP and RC air conditioning units from APC are awesome. This is for sure the design we will go with next year.

We also looked at more of the APC Infrastruxure line and it continued to assure us that their solution/product is the correct answer for us when we build-out/expand next year. They make a newer, same-footprint modular UPS that has 25KVA power modules versus the 10KVA power modules we have now. We are limited to 100KVA for that zone. The new UPS will allow 250KVA scalable to 500KVA. It is a very impressive product and will continue to be the front-runner for our next UPS solution. Their in-row cooling products are incredible. We watched a demo on the Chatsworth CPI Passive Cooling solution and I must say I was not impressed. It was limited by the static pressure available under the raised floor in the facility (a design principle we want to move away from in the future). The In-Row RP and RC air conditioning units from APC are awesome. Chilled water or glycol can be chosen for the configuration and can be combined with their HACS (hot aisle containment system) for the ultimate in high density. This is for sure the design we will go with next year.

Factoids:

• Learned how to play craps. That game is pretty fun. Also played a bunch of limit hold’em, blackjack and roulette. Always good to get in a little gambling time when in vegas!
• Saw KA at the MGM. Wow that was pretty sweet. The drinks were quite nice!
• Watched Jason Nuss drive a simulated Formula One car at Caesar’s Palace. That was intense.
• Great steak at Nine Fine Irishmen at NYNY.
• Absolutely the craziest cab rides. We took a cab from the airport, and the guy was insane—very bitter about Vegas cab drivers. Late in the week, we took a cab from Fremont Street back to the MGM and the driver was NUTS. He just wouldn’t stop talking, and he drove us through the dark section of Vegas and talked about drug runs he took, and how he met Cuba Gooding Jr. and how he was cheating on his wife, etc., etc.

Nuts.

In the last 12 months opus:interactive has made a significant change to focus on being a more efficient Managed Service Provider (MSP) through automation, energy conservation, efficient cooling technologies, extensible platforms and scalable solutions. In order to minimize operations staff and continue to provision servers and applications for customers on a same-day basis, we standardized on HP ProLiant-based servers utilizing HP automation software such as Remote Deployment Pack (RDP) and Insight Control Datacenter Edition (ICDCE).

In Q3, we made a concerted effort to become an eco-aware datacenter facility with the implementation of HP p-class and c-class blade systems. Using the new blade systems by HP has allowed us to scale faster, use power efficiently, provision servers faster, and ultimately, close more deals. We recently implemented a full 18-server solution complete with redundant firewalls, redundant load-balancers, dedicated redundant SAN and full automation. The servers utilizes a little more than 15Amps of power, whereas normal non-blade servers would have used around 40Amps.

The use of HP c-class blade enclosures stays true to our customer-first initiative by providing the best-of-breed hardware that truly is “Always On,” easy to manage, extensible, scalable, reliable and eco-aware. This shift in IT is our push for Business Innovation in all that we do. In 2007, we plan to replace our entire infrastructure with HP c-class blade chassis and servers.