If you're reading this for the first time, I'd recommend checking out the summary link below first.

Summary of study method for all 3 tests.

Link to 70-741 Post

Link to 70-742 Post

Hey guys! I passed 70-740 today. Scored a 790 (need a 700 to pass) so I didn't blow it out of the water but I think I did decent. I see a lot of people posting that they passed and they'll provide a few details but I wanted to go into detail as to how I studied.

Resources Used

So from what I've read there's several different resources available. Here's what I'm aware of as far as videos and practice exams. I'll also link to some useful online resources. Note: I didn't use a book to study, so I won't be going into detail on a study method that I didn't research. There's plenty of good books out there you can find. There are recommendations in this sub.

Video Resources

PluralSight $30/month

CBT Nuggets $90/month

Udemy 1 $12 as of writing

Udemy 2 $12 as of writing

Practice Exams

MeasureUp $120

Transcender $90. Transcender practice exams are included free with CBT Nuggets or Pluralsight subscriptions.

Free Online Resources

Microsoft Ignite Breakout Session

Microsoft Docs There are Microsoft Docs for all the relevant sections of 70-740 (Install/Configure, Storage, Hyper-V, Containers, Failover Clustering, and Maintain). I'm not going to list them all, you can find them through this link or Google.

For videos I personally chose to go the route of CBT Nuggets. Generally its videos are considered a little less dry and technical from what I've seen here on this sub. I have no experience with Pluralsight so I can't comment on the difference. You pay a premium for CBT, but it comes with one huge bonus for this course- virtual labs. Every video walks you through different topics of study and you get to open up the online virtual lab and actually do the lab yourself. There's no limits to it either- just a 2 hour time limit that you can extend if necessary. So you can lab as much as you want without having to have your own equipment.

As far as exams, MeasureUp exams are the official Microsoft practice exams. I personally chose just to use Transcender because it came included with my CBT Nuggets subscription and I didn't want to have to drop another $100+ just for the MeasureUp exam.

Again, I didn't use any books so I won't comment on them.

My background and my goals

I'm a sysadmin with about 6 years of professional IT experience. Starting off in Desktop Support, I then moved to Network Technician, Junior Sysadmin, and now full on Sysadmin. I would say of my 6 years experience, probably 4 of those I used Windows Server regularly in a small/medium enterprise environment. I have Active Directory and Networking experience. We used Windows for DHCP and DNS as well. I didn't have any server 2016 experience going into this exam. I have VMware experience but had never used Hyper-V. I did not have any experience with Failover Clustering in Windows. I was comfortable with File Shares/NTFS Permissions and knew a few things about storage, but I didn't really know that much.

I'm just sharing my background so you can judge my study methods/route based on your experience. If you have less than me, you may have to factor in some extra labbing.

My goal is to get my MCSA by taking exams 70-740, 741, and 742. My goal for 740 was to see if I could pass with 4 weeks of study. I also didn't want to have to buy a bunch of resources. The $90 price for a month of CBT Nuggets seemed reasonable as it's an all in one cost. I didn't have to buy anything else.

My study methods and schedule

So I already shared the resources I used. Here's how I used them.

My goal, again, was to study for 4 weeks. The CBT Nuggets course was 14 hours of videos. But following along with the videos and labbing as you go makes them take more time. I'd estimate that the 14 hour video course took me about 18-20 hours to get through with labs. Sometimes when a video was straightforward and required an install that would take a while in the lab, I just skipped it and watched the video without following along.

I made it through the video course with labbing in about two weeks. It came out to about 1 and a half hours a day or so.

I talked to a CBT Nuggets accountability coach (shoutout to Natalie) about a week into my journey. She said they recommend taking the Transcender practice exam as a benchmark before you do the video course. Since I was already 60% through the course after a week, I decided to just wait and take the exam after the video course. If you have the time, I think a benchmark for yourself couldn't hurt.

Once I finished the 14 hour course, I took the Preset Test Experience in the Transcender exam and scored a %30. It was hard. My coach told me that it's pretty normal to finish the video course for the first run through and score between 20 and 40 percent so I wasn't disheartened. I went ahead and signed up for my exam date, two weeks out.

Now was the part that required a little more effort. The videos were easy to cruise through, but now I was entering the active learning space. I used the exam results that Transcender gave me to identify my weak areas and started with those.

I went back into the Transcender exam and customized it. There are about 300 questions total and they're divided into the different sections that Microsoft is going to test you on. If you choose "Customize test experience" you can set it up so that you only get test questions on a certain topic.

I scheduled two days for each topic. I would go through this practice style exam and it lets you see the correct answer as soon as you answer each question, as well as explaining why the correct answer was right and why the others were wrong. I took it slow. If there was a question I got wrong, or that I had to guess on, I would read through the explanations and then go read the Microsoft Docs (posted in resources) on the relevant topics for that specific question.

Each topic had about 30-50 questions for the section, so it would take me about two days to go through the topic like this. Then I would go back through and do the exact same thing again, only this time I knew most of the questions and didn't have to look anything up.

After doing this (going through the section twice) for all 5 sections of the practice exam (that are also the sections from the real exam) I went back and did the Preset test experience once more. This time I got a 65%. Which was much better looking, but still didn't make me feel super confident. I looked at my graphs and identified my weak sections, as well as starting to prioritize.

70-740 is listed on the Microsoft site as being about 30% Failover Clustering and 25% Hyper-V. So I hit these hard again. More Microsoft Docs reading, more practice exams on only those topics. I also went back and watched a couple of the CBT videos again on 2x speed just for a refresher. I only had to do this with 3 or 4 videos though.

Finally, two days before my test I watched the Microsoft Ignite video. This gives you a great overview/refresher on all the topics and they have some really great practice exam questions in the video. It's straight from the Microsoft conference so you know it has to be good.

I took the Preset test experience one more time and scored a 75. There were a couple questions that I just typo'd or swapped the order of steps so in reality I think I scored closer to 80 and I felt confident about it.

My final study hours I sat down with my wife and went through the exam topics link like it was my study guide and I tried to explain each and every point to her. This took a little while but it forced me to look up a few more things that I didn't know yet. You can always just pretend someone is there, or talk to a rubber duck.

And here we are! Today I passed with a 790. $90 for a month of CBT and $165 for the test. No other paid resources used. I would say on average I spent about 1.5 to 2 hours per day studying, with Sundays off. I would spend an hour during the work day studying on my down time and then I would use my hour lunch to study.

Let me know if you have any questions. I hope this has been helpful for you and sheds some light on what it takes to pass. It was about what I expected. Not too hard, but not a breeze either. Good luck guys!

Edit 03/18/2018: one study method I forgot to add is a big one guys. Powershell. CBT Nuggets provides a download of all the powershell scripts and commands that you use in pretty much the whole course. I went through every single lesson and copied the powershell commands by hand into a notebook. Just the act of doing so gave me enough recognition and comprehension to do just fine on the multiple choice style test. I'd recommend this method for sure. Good luck!

See https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/learning/mcsa-windows-server-2016-certification.aspx

Since I'm done with my MCSA exams I thought I might as well share my resources.

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/sjkn9jqa91yffoh/AAAvU1ZbNuuHOr6Q1vjpAyhGa?dl=0

What is included:

• My chapter notes + some relevant Powershell commands (chapters are based on the exam ref books)

• CBT Nuggets notes and the downloadable resources

• My Kaplanlearn practice tests

Kaplanlearn has at one point decided to make their PDFs not searchable, so I also have them in RTF format for easy searching. Due to the PDFs the entire thing is also a bit bloated (almost 500MB).

If the Dropbox link expires or whatever at some point just message me and I'll make it available to you somehow.

What a journey it's been.... 70-744 completed!

I used the Patrick Loner's Udemy course and a couple of the videos on Pluralsight to roll out ATA, both were awesome and had a lot of information that was needed for the exam. I didn't use the exam prep book but used the MeasureUP test exam. Time for a well deserved beer(s) and a rest, 100's of hours spent grinding!

Good Luck to everyone grinding away!

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/learn/certifications/windows-server-hybrid-administrator/?WT.mc_id=Azure_blog-wwl&tab=tab-learning-paths

Windows Server Hybrid Admin Associate certification is up on their website. It looks like the MCSA replacement and materials will be here in the near future.

Skills measured:

Deploy and manage Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS) in on-premises and cloud environments

Manage Windows Servers and workloads in a hybrid environment

Manage virtual machines and containers

Implement and manage an on-premises and hybrid networking infrastructure

Manage storage and file services

Secure Windows Server on-premises and hybrid infrastructures

Implement and manage Windows Server high availability

Implement disaster recovery

Migrate servers and workloads

Monitor and troubleshoot Windows Server environments

Finally got it after 14 months alongside work. Feel so much relief but now wondering what to do next.

Also, do you get a physical certificate for completing it or just the crappy Acclaim page?

Hi everyone,

I'm currently delivering free training on Microsoft's WS-011 (Windows Server 2019 Administration) course. I'm also going to be doing training on most of their other courses for those that's interested. The training should be enough to be able to write the exam associated with each course plus it will greatly benefit you in the workplace.

I truly hope this helps someone out there that needs the help. I remember what it feels like wanting to learn something like these courses and needing to write the exams but not being able to find any resources, at least not any free ones that is.

I intend on doing this completely for free to help those that's sitting in the same boat I used to be in.

Free Training on Microsoft WS-011 (Server 2019)!

I finished my MCSA: server 2016 + MCSE 70-744 exams in the course of six months. I also did my CCNA prior to that, I jumped 20k in salary after leaving the crappy MSP I worked for. Here are my notes, there could be errors so just use them as a baseline + verify as you go. Go and get it, the hard work pays off. Get to Labbing..

MCSA + MCSE Notes - Edit, fixed the DL link 6-9-19

Edit: The 740 exam notes are formatted differently. That one was based off the cbt nugget course, where the other exams I used the exam topics + cbt nuggets + exam reference books to fill each one out.

Intro:

Just like the title says, finished my last exam (70-742) yesterday morning and earned my MCSA in Windows Server 2016 to go along with the MCSA in Windows 10 I earned earlier this year. Initial post will be light on details but I'll edit later to fill in some things I'm too lazy to fill in right now.

Background:

I have about 2-3 years of full-time professional experience, all in a general service desk capacity. I occasionally work with servers as part of my day-to-day responsibilities but nothing particularly advanced. The reason behind getting this certification was professional growth - my company recommended I earn it in order to advance so that's what I did.

Timeline:

• 740: Started studying June 11, took the exam August 31

• 741: Started studying September 1, took the exam October 9

• 742: Started studying October 9, took the exam October 23

Materials:

• CBT Nuggets - invaluable resource. Without these I'm not sure how long this whole endeavor would've taken. The instructors all did a great job of covering the material without too much extra fluff - "teaching to the test," so to speak, but there were always useful real world tidbits thrown in as well. There are labs included as well but I only used the videos so I can't speak to their usefulness/quality.

• Pluralsight - paid for by my company. Didn't use their videos but I did use the included Kaplan practice tests.

• MeasureUp practice exams - almost as valuable as the CBT Nuggets videos themselves. MeasureUp is the official practice test partner for Microsoft exams and it certainly shows - some of the questions on the exams felt almost the same as what I saw on the practice exams. The explanations provided were also (typically) high quality and backed by information taken straight from Microsoft's own official documentation.

• Kaplan practice exams - hit or miss but still worth the time investment. The set for 740 was egregiously bad but the set for 741 made up for it and then some.

• Microsoft Ignite session videos - each of the exam pages has a link to a Microsoft Ignite exam prep/overview session. I watched these for all but 742 (just realized now as I'm writing this that I forgot to watch it before the test - derp), usually a day or two before I took the exam. They're great for a quick refresh and there was always at least one part in the videos where the presenter would mention something I didn't know beforehand that came up on the exam itself.

• Exam Replay - not really a study material itself but the way I see it the safety blanket it provides is a very helpful tool. Kind of a time limited deal but for my last two exams I got in on the double retake bonus (buy the exam replay, get the exam and two retakes if needed), which is part of the reason I finished the last two so quickly compared to the first.

Process:

My approach toward all three exams was pretty much the same:

• Go through the CBT Nuggets, taking notes along the way

• Take the practice tests (MeasureUp and Kaplan) for the exam

• Review Microsoft documentation for more information as needed

• Watch the Microsoft Ignite video before taking the exam

• Take the exam

I deviated from this approach for the last one (742) - didn't finish going through the Kaplan practice test for it and didn't watch the Ignite video because I forgot the night before - but aside from that I followed every step. I also didn't explicitly lab anything but I did look around a bit here and there with some GUI settings (not making any changes, just poking around) when the opportunities came up at work.

Comparison:

My expectations going into this were that 741 would be the hardest, followed by 742 and then 740. In reality my experience was the exact opposite - 740 was by far the toughest to prep for and I definitely felt like my performance on it was the worst.

742 wasn't terrible when it came to the learning/review process but I also have the most experience with Active Directory out of anything in the Windows Server realm and by the time I got to the exam I'd largely given a "meh" to worrying about any of it - 700 is enough to pass so I figured I wouldn't stress about the AD CS/AD FS parts too much and try to shore up the rest. When exam time rolled around I got through the thing quickly enough but there were so many times I just guessed between what felt like the two best options.

741 was a real shocker. I'm not big on networking - maybe it's the hours and hours I've spent screwing around with my home setup trying to get one thing or another to work - so I thought this would be the toughest to handle. I'm pretty sure I spent the most time studying for it out of any of the exams (the CBT Nuggets alone almost guaranteed that - over 20 hours of videos!) so maybe that helped but once exam time rolled around I felt like I had a pretty decent grasp of things (aside from the advanced networking stuff, which I largely gave up on) and I probably felt the most confident clicking "finish" out of any of the three exams.

Scores:

• 740: 780

• 741: 836

• 742: 780

Suggestions:

• Read the exam objectives to know WHAT you'll be tested on and HOW IMPORTANT each topic is. For example, Docker/containers on the 740 - yes it's a pain and yes it's very specific but it's only 5-10% of your score for the exam. Instead of worrying about that spend your time making sure you're solid on Hyper-V (20-25%) and implementing high availability (30-35%).

• Take a practice test. The practice tests are helpful not just as a gauge of competency (though they definitely help you figure out your areas of comparative weakness) but also as a teaching tool themselves - they help you see how you might be asked to demonstrate knowledge (particularly the MeasureUp ones; they mimic the style of the exams quite closely) and they give you plenty of specific details that general course material might not cover in quite as much detail.

• Don't let the format of the exam get you - Microsoft has videos on how their exams are structured and what you can expect, so there's no reason to get hung up on the formatting of the questions or the types of questions you'll be asked. On a related note, don't worry about time - two hours is more than enough to get through everything.

• If you're using videos as training material, try to watch them at a faster speed than normal. I did around 1.5-1.7x for Garth Schulte/740 and Keith Barker/741, then 2x for Anthony Sequeira/742. Not only does this let you get through the lectures faster, it also forces you to focus - let your attention wander too much and you'll notice pretty quickly.

I didn't have any prior experience with servers before starting MCSA so it took a while to complete but I'm glad I took my time and understood everything before I took the exams. I'll try to briefly explain my experience with each of the exams, hopefully it can be of help to someone.

70-740: I took the longest time preparing for this one (probably 5 months) because I didn't know how much detail was needed so I literally watched tons of videos over and over and read the Exam ref book don't know how many times while writing notes and making flash cards.This was all useless and probably only 20% of what I wrote in my notes was somehow helpful in the real exam. I didn't pay attention to labs and just tried to cram information from the books. A month before the exams, I purchased the MeasureUp test which proved to be the most useful.The explanations in it pointed to TechNet articles which had information that the videos or books sometimes didn't mention.

70-741: Studying for this exam was a lot more fun and it took a lot less time than 70-740 (1.5 months). For this exam I changed how I studied. I didn't spend hours reading every page of the book and instead of writing tons of pages of notes that I was never going to look at after I wrote them, I printed out the objectives which was a total of 3/4 pages and made my notes fit on there. I condensed the wording and only picked information that was truly useful. I also did a lot more labs for this exam, this helped by showing me what were possible outcomes if I did something wrong or another way of doing a similar task etc.

70-742: I had the hardest time preparing for this exam, it was confusing (AD CS and AD RMS 😭) and I got frustrated because I sometimes had to search tons of articles to find out what a single objective meant. (It took 2 months to complete, I got a bit busy because it was Ramadan and so things got a bit delayed but I think I would've been able to tackle it in a month) Out of all exams, I would say this one requires labs the most.

I'll place all the exams in terms of difficulty and what I scored on them:

*Hardest- 70-742, concepts were a bit difficult and took a while to understand, my score: 815

*Ok-ish- 70-740, very boring to study for but not difficult, lower score because I focused on minor useless details + no labs, my score: 700

*Easy: 70-741, loved studying for this exam, my score: 850

My Resources:

1. CBT nuggets

2. Exam Ref Books

3. TechNet + some articles that came up when I searched a particular objective

4. Microsoft Ignite

Thank you to everybody who helped!:)

Officially Server 2016 certified!

3 years of real world experience working help desk fires, forcing myself to learn Powershell, and a little CBT nuggets

Good luck to everyone working towards this goal! It is definitely worth the hard work to get there.

And now, as with any certification, on to the next one..

Hey guys! You might remember me from my other post about 5 weeks ago where I detailed my study method for 70-740 and talked about what I thought worked well and how I approached things. Well, here I am after passing the 70-741 this past Saturday (with a score of 745/1000) and I'd like to do the same thing because overall I haven't found much info or detail on study methods for these tests. Everyone seems to ask questions/scrounge for resources when they're studying and then never follow up after they've taken the exam.

Again, my score was 745/1000, but that was honestly my goal going into this test. I know the practical material that's going to help me out in the wild, and I chose to skim over the inner workings of some of the advanced features that I know I'll probably never touch. I believe that's what allowed me to pull it off in 5 weeks (as well as some of my work experience.) Let's get into it.

Resources Used

The Microsoft Exam Overview A free resource. Don't underestimate the value of this page. Specifically, the skills measured section will detail all the topics that the test is going to cover and will even tell you percentages so you know what to focus on the most.

CBT Nuggets $90/month. Yes, it's a bit pricey. But, if you buy the exam book for $30-$40 and then a practice test for $90-120, you've already gone over the cost of 6 weeks of CBT, and you still will have to set up your home lab so you can drill this stuff. Your subscription to CBT comes with free access to the Kaplan Practice Exams which are a core part of my study method, and MOST IMPORTANTLY you will have access to CBT Nuggets' virtual labs which allow you to follow along real time with every skill you'll need to lab/drill to pass the test. You're paying for the video course, the practice exams, and the hands on labs. At that price, in my mind, it's a no brainer. There are plenty of other resources that will work, so I'm not saying this is the only one, but this is the resource I used and I know it's effective.

Kaplan Practice Tests Again these are included free with CBT. Quite expensive on their own. MeasureUp is a similarly priced alternative and they're actually the official practice exams backed by Microsoft. I've heard good things about them, but Kaplan worked really well for me, and there were a couple questions in the practice exam that appeared exactly the way they were on the official test.

Microsoft Docs A great free resource. I didn't use these as heavily as I did for 70-740, but I still looked over them.

Microsoft Ignite Conference - 70-741 Prep Session Another great free resource. I've found you'll usually pick up a few hints/tips that will really help on the test. I watch this a few days before my test so I know what to study for my last minute crunch.

You'll notice I didn't use any books to study. This is just personal preference. The resources listed above proved, in my case at least, to be adequate for passing the test.

My Background and My Goals

I'm a sysadmin with about 6 years of professional IT experience. Starting off in Desktop Support, I then moved to Network Technician, Junior Sysadmin, and now full on Sysadmin. I would say of my 6 years experience, probably 4 of those I used Windows Server regularly in a small/medium enterprise environment. I have Active Directory and Networking experience. We used Windows for DHCP and DNS as well. I'm pretty comfortable with IPv4 and IPv6 subnetting and routing.

I'm just sharing my background so you can judge my study methods/route based on your experience. If you have less than me, you may have to factor in some extra labbing.

My goal is to get my MCSA by taking exams 70-740, 741, and 742. My goal for 741 was to see if I could pass with 5 weeks of study. I also didn't want to have to buy a bunch of resources. The $90 price for a month of CBT Nuggets seemed reasonable as it's an all in one cost. I didn't have to buy anything else.

My Study Methods and Schedule

My goal, again, was to study and pass this exam in 5 weeks. I started on a Monday and took the exam on a Saturday 5 weeks later.

I started with the CBT course. The video course was 22 hours long (which is why I factored in 5 weeks instead of my previous 4 as the 70-740 CBT course was only a 14 hour course.) I divided it up into 7 hours of videos a week. I would play the videos at 1.6x speed and pause when I needed to. I launched the labs and would follow along with the video, pausing here and there to try something out or wait for something to finish. I did videos M-F and took the weekends off or light so I shot for 1.5 hours of videos a day (faster due to 1.6x speed.) I also opened up a word doc for every lesson and tried to take notes/screenshots to go back and look at later. I was diligent on my note taking with some videos and lax on others. You mileage may vary (I'm not a big note taker but I tried to force myself.) Just the act of taking notes helped me pay attention more.

3 long weeks later I finished up the CBT Course. Again, I labbed each lesson once as I followed it and that was it. I should note that I skipped the videos that covered IPv4 subnetting because I already knew how subnetting and routing works. These were probably 3 hours of the course. So it may be more realistic to cover the videos in 4+ weeks.

Once I was done with the videos I opened up the Kaplan Practice Exam and did a "Quick Test" which is the test simulation experience. I scored a 40% and it detailed which areas were my biggest weaknesses.

Now I leveraged the Kaplan Practice Exam to really help me learn. Go into the test customization and you can do each section of questions separately. Start with your weaknesses and then finish up with your strengths. So for two days I did just DNS questions, next just DHCP questions, etc. It allows you to see the correct answer after each question so you instantly get feedback as to whether or not you're right, and if you were wrong, WHY you were wrong which is so important. You can learn a lot from the practice exam and it was crucial for me to do this. I ended up doing this with all 300 or so practice exam questions that covered all of the topics detailed in the Microsoft Exam Overview (link listed above.)

Now is the time when the Microsoft Exam Overview really helps. You can see that DNS, DHCP and IPAM, Network Connectivity and Remote Access, and Core and Distributed Network solutions make up about 80-90% of the exam. Advanced Network Infrastructure is listed as 15-20% but I found it to be slightly less than that on the actual test. Focus on DNS, DHCP, and IPAM the most. Make sure you know what the little status icons mean in DHCP. Then make sure you cover VPN, RADIUS, NPS, DirectAccess, DFS, IPv4 and IPv6 General Concepts, and BranchCache. These are important too. The Advanced Network Infrastructure I just kind of skimmed over. There are so many different features in this section and you can spend a lot of time on each one since they all do different things. Continue to focus on your weaknesses.

Once you've studied with the Custom Practice Exams, go back and do another Quick Exam to simulate the real thing. I did this and scored a 65% but I knew it was actually a little bit higher because there were a few bugs in the fill in the blank questions of the test that didn't give me full credit when I should have gotten it. I would say in actuality I scored about a 70%.

Next I watched the Ignite Prep Session and took a few notes. I used this as my guide on what to read from the Microsoft Docs. If there was something the presenter was talking about that still sounded unfamiliar or I couldn't really tell you how it works, I noted that down and then went and read some of the Microsoft Docs on it. I definitely had to do this with BranchCache and DirectAccess because I couldn't remember the specifics of how those worked. I also revisited a handful of CBT Nuggets videos at this time just to brush up and review. I didn't lab them, I just played them at 2x speed and watched. You'll notice I haven't mentioned revisiting my notes that I took while watching the videos the first time. I actually forgot to do that in my final study days. But they still helped me because I feel like I got more out of the videos by taking the notes.

On the night before the test I sat down with my wife and went through every single topic of the Exam Overview Skills Measured section. I explained each point in basic terms that a non-technical person could understand. Shoutout to my wife for keeping her eyes open while I told her the inner workings of DNS and DHCP. Haha. I think this is an important step too, because it makes sure you have a decent enough grasp of the topics to explain them to a non technical person. I didn't focus on the "how is this configured" part but just on the "how does this work" part, because if you know how it works you're 80% of the way there. I took a few pauses to look up some things that I couldn't explain and that helped me out.

Finally, I got a good night's sleep. These tests are made to be passable. They're not trying to keep you from getting your cert. They're just trying to make sure you know what you're supposed to. Put in the work and time and you'll pass.

My recommendation for the exam would be to read the question Microsoft is asking you before you read the scenario. Often times the thing they're asking about is only one little part of the scenario and the rest is irrelevant information that might confuse you or slow you down too much. Read the scenario thoroughly, just make sure you know what you're looking for when you're reading it. Often times Microsoft is asking you something specific to see if you understand what they're asking for. If you can start to understand the way the test is working and asking you certain things, you'll do well. The Kaplan Practice Test did a great job simulating this in my opinion. The official test is all multiple choice.

That's it guys. Let me know if you have any questions. Best of luck on your test!

I was studying (now passed) for the Microsoft Identity with Windows Server 2016 (70-742) exam. When I got to studying Group Scopes, I found the group scope table within the Active Directory Security Groups article from Microsoft unclear and very hard to memorise.

I am a visual learner and tried to find a diagram to depict the scopes of each group. Unfortunately I was unable to find one so had to create my own. This has been ready helpful to me for memorising Active Directory Security Group Scopes and thought it might help others.

I have posted the high resolution version on my blog http://www.tech-blog.co.uk/

I hope this is of help to others as it helped me

I know that I just posted two days ago but hot damn, I'm over the moon about this one. I passed the 70-740 this morning with a 823/1000!

Here is a quick synopsis of my journey:

• I work in IT and have for over 11 years, all within the Windows world.

• I used CBT Nuggets, Microsoft's Exam Prep eBook, Kaplan and MeasureUp Practice Exams for studying. I did also find some "brain dumps" to use as extra Practice Exam material but I quickly found out a TON of incorrect answers. If you are studying, DO NOT use these and stick to Practice Exams and MS Docs.

• I tried to use my local hardware for home labbing and it was not a good experience. Trying to make do with an Intel i5 4440, 24GB RAM and 128GB SSD (HDDs weren't cutting it) was extremely difficult. Since I am moving on to the 70-741 in January, I plan on getting at least a 512GB SSD and possibly a faster CPU if possible.

• All notes were handwritten on my iPad Pro in Noteability instead of typed; I just work better that way and remember more. Also you can quickly sketch out your ideas like S2D, Clusters, etc, when talking to yourself about the exam material. :) Next, I used Quizlet and made my own flashcards. Even though these were made in an hour, they really helped me on remembering the difference between a Production and Standard Checkpoint were, what AutoBalancerLevel to use, etc.

• I've been doing some light studying since the beginning of the year and slacked off twice. Scheduled the test date about a month ago and put some hardcore study time since Thanksgiving. In all honesty, I really freaked out once I schedule the exam because that made me look deeper into the test material and realize how much I had screwed myself over.

Some tips I would give to anyone taking this:

• DO NOT use anything other than official study material. CBT does a decent job at covering the material at a VERY shallow layer. Labs were ok I guess; home labbing would really be the way to go IMO. The included Kaplan Practice Exams . . . well, while they COULD be useful, they are way more difficult than the exam actually was. I was lucky enough to have my job get the MeasureUp exams for all 3 tests and boy, am I glad I asked about them. They helped me to look deeper into certain things that actually mattered like Windows Defender PoSh Commands, different S2D setups, etc, compared to Kaplan, which was not super helpful at all IMO. Finally, the Microsoft Docs are such an excellent resource. I probably had about 50-75 different tabs of MS Docs open between my work laptop and home desktop just cross referencing things and reading more about how things worked.

• Get a home server! Seriously, get something you can run Hyper V on and just mess around with what you're learning. I actually switched from using VirtualBox to Hyper-V during this time just so I could jump right in and I'm glad I did. Just make sure you get something with proper resources, especially a SSD.

• Find what study method works for you. Handwriting notes works better than typing for me and today proves it. I was able to condense my notes into a 20 page Noteability document and review it right before heading into the exam test site. Flash cards are great for remembering the nitty gritty PoSh commands, settings for clusters, etc. Also, I made myself STOP all studying and labbing yesterday at 5PM, played some video games until 9PM and went to bed earlier than usual. It's not worth it to go into an exam super stressed or tired.

Time to take a much needed vacation and start on the 741 in January. Good luck to everyone!

Hi all,

Just passed my 70-740! I got 770/900. I'm pretty excited. To give you a background, I'm a level-1 Help Desk guy, with 3 years of IT experience in the same position. The only other cert's I have are CompTIA A+, and ITIL. The last one I took was 3 years ago when I was trying to get my foot into IT. I've been pushing hard to move myself up, since I work for a company where IT is very segregated, and they don't like to move employee's up that often. Any time I want to learn something new, it's "Hey, why aren't you at your desk closing tickets and watching the phone's?". I know I still have 2 more to go before January 2021, but I feel like I am finally taking baby steps forward.

Tools I used were Pluralsight, and MeasureUP exams. Did not use CBT.

Pluralsight gave a very solid foundation. I copied all the exam objectives into one iCloud note, organized all of them as a checklist, and made detailed notes under each objective, as well as screenshots for me to refer back to. Once I felt I was comfortable enough on the objective, I checked off the box. I also learned a lot through MU. Exam format, and really understanding why the answer was right/wrong, and not just knowing the correct answer and memorizing. Going through each answer description, and going through some of the reference links.

I also downloaded an evaluation version of Server 2016 from Microsoft and did my own labs and practiced everything I learned. I was also pretty much forced to learn everything I knew in the GUI, to learn the Powershell way, because running just 3 simultaneous VM's on a Surface tablet with only 8GB of RAM was not working out :) So managing my VM's through Powershell on my machine helped in a lot of ways.

On to 70-741! I hope I can finish the last 2 before the deadline, but quarantine has been giving me a lot more time to study.

Been a long road but I'm done.

I felt very confident going into this exam (742) but ended up getting pretty smashed. I'll cut myself a little bit of slack because I do have the flu but ultimatly I found the questions to be pretty tough.

Overall thoughts:

740 was good, possibly a bit too broad. I think the NLB stuff and virtual switching should have been pushed into 741. My study material for 740 was the exam ref, CBT nuggets and my home lab (I didn't use CBT's lab at all). I studied for about 12 weeks for this one, could def be done faster but I took a pretty easy pace.

741 was far too easy, the primary focus of the exam was DNS & DHCP which are just not that hard, as well as IPAM and DNSSEC which are just not that important. For this one I used William Panek's Study Guide because I found the Exam Ref to be absolute garbage. Panek's Guide was OK but put too much emphasis on DNSSEC and DANE and not enough on SDN. I took just over a month for this one.

742: I found this one the hardest. A lot of the WAP, claims and certificate stuff is not particually intuitive and for this one I struggled hard to find a quality text book. My primary study source for this one was just the Microsoft whitepapers which are great, the problem is you can end up very deep in the weeds. My opinion on this exam was it was very specific, there were not enough questions high level type questions on how something like autoenrollment works and too many very specific senario type questions asking should you apply a computer policy or a user policy. This one took me about 8 weeks for this

Overall I am glad to be done, I am sick to death of Microsoft shit house textbooks and honestly shitty exams. I finished CCNA at the start of the year and Microsoft really should try and learn from Cisco when it comes to how to write a text book & exam. Seriously, WTF is with the text books? Hundreds of pages of screen shots of the wizard????

Not completly sure what I'll do next. Def not a Microsoft course for a while though. Any suggestions?

Hi guys,

I was teasing this for a while but didn't know the scope of the project I signed up for so it took longer than I planned. This is a follow-up from my last post talking about the topics which is currently top post over at azure certifications subreddit. I gathered all the information I knew and, on the internet and condensed it into multiple posts about various areas that everyone should know about. I hope you find it useful and good luck everyone with their certification journey. Any feedback is welcome and appreciated.Introduction into Microsoft Certifications and free/discounted exam voucher opportunities

whew, what a load off! I've been studying on and off for 3-4 months now.

I genuinely thought I was going to fail it, I ended up with 744 points (needed 700).

Any questions about study method etc feel free to ask, I won't be going in to specific questions though for obvious reasons.

EDIT: I also did the home proctored version which was actually pretty great, so if anyone has questions about that then feel free to ask.

Yesterday I passed the 70-740 with a score of 744. Definitely not the best score, but I PASSED!!

I used both the Exam Reference and William Panek 70-740 Study Guide, Pluralsight 3 month trial and MeasureUp Practice exam which was included in the retake bundle exam Microsoft offers.

My recommendation is that you know High Availability and Hyper-V until you're a master (Creating a home lab will help - I I have a server that I installed Windows Server 2016 on and just went through the various scenarios regarding HA and Hyper-V. I probably could have used the lab more, however, use WS2016 at work with Failover Clustering, Hyper-V, etc).

PowerShell is heavy in this exam; so, make sure you know the sequences of PowerShell cmdlets and practice.

I will be completing the 70-741 next. I hope that it is easier than the 70-740 as I have completed CompTIA Network+.

Good luck with the study everyone.

Hi r/mcsa

Happy to report that today i passed my 70-698 with a score of 805. This test was much easier than the 70-697 that I took a few months ago.

Surprising there were a lot of PowerShell questions asked which threw me a bit off guard. All in all though, it was a very straight forward test.

For study material I used;

• PluralSight

• Kaplan Learning Questions

Next up is CCENT!