I passed 70-652! Windows Server Virtualization, Configuring
Today I finally took the exam. I scheduled it for last week and then had to postpone because the darn job got in the way <smirk>, so I finally took it today. I scored an 871. I’m pleased with my score, but I had expected the majority of the test would be around Hyper-V. Boy was I in for a surprise!
I tested at a new testing center (new to me that is) and I thought I was going to be searched! I was asked to leave my car keys and wallet in their locked room. I had a jacket and that was locked up too, but I felt like I was about to be searched! Usually when I go to test, I try really hard to “get into the zone”, so I don’t like any distractions before an exam. When the women told me that I couldn’t take my wallet into the testing center, I was a bit surprised, but I complied. Then when I was questioned to ensure that I didn’t have anything else in my pockets? I truly thought for a minute, that they were going to “pat me down”, but I just kept my mouth shut. I do get it. You can find the questions and answers to almost any of the certification exams online, so I understand that they want to maintain the integrity of the test, but where do you draw the line? I travel a lot and I’m just waiting for the paper gowns to be issued at the airports, I guess they’ll issue paper gowns at the testing centers soon too!
Don’t worry, Hyper-V is the only virtualization technology you’ll be tested on, but I was surprised by the number of SCVMM and WDS questions.
The Preparation Guide is spot on. Check it out and make sure you are comfortable with all aspects of the preparation guide.
TS: Windows Server Virtualization, Configuring
I will not give you the questions I saw on the exam, but I encourage you to understand the areas I mention below.
WDS – This one shocked me! I didn’t expect much on WDS, there was a lot of detail though. Be sure you understand how WDS works and how images are added to and then deployed by WDS. I was totally stunned at the detail the WDS questions were looking for. Oh and while you’re looking at the prep guide, right next to WDS is PXE boot. How does PXE boot work with virtual machines? Understand these two topics, OK?
There were some very detailed questions on this exam, more detail than I expected. Remote Server admin tools, how do you install them, what are they used for, and how do you configure a Server Core to allow remote administration.
Speaking of Server Core, yes, you need to know the details of the command line tools for Server Core. Check out this technet article on ocsetup. OCSetup is the tool of choice for configuring your Server Core installations, know it well. I found this posting very useful as well, more detail on the management of Server Core. The cool part about Server Core is that once its setup and functional, it can be managed remotely.
I’ve setup a number of Hyper-V machines, understanding the details of the setup process helped me ace the setup portion of the exam. Understand the setup process, understand the requirements, and understand that you need to enable the virtualization and DEP in BIOS. I’ve talked about this before, so know the details of setting up a machine for Hyper-V.
What is PRO?? I’d heard about PRO, but I don’t know what it did, so anything other than “can you spell PRO?” put me in the loser line. Don’t worry, I’ll find out more details about PRO and share them with you in the future. What are the requirements of PRO? What other tools are required for PRO?
Do you know the details around the Microsoft Assessment and Planning tool?? If not, you better find out. It’s a cool tool and will help identify your best candidates for virtualization.
I was expecting some perfmon type questions, but I guess I got the other in-depth questions so they spared me here. Don’t expect to get so lucky, so understand that you have to do your performance monitoring from the host OS, not the guest OS. Understand the details on performance tuning; virtualization adds another layer to performance management, so you need to have a grasp on this one.
What are the requirements if you’re running NT 4.0 in a VM? What are our support policies? What about virtual machine additions? Understand this and any special considerations an NT guest OS requires.
These are the items that I had wished I’d spent more time on in preparation for this exam. My score was pretty good, but there’s more to knowing and deploying a product than just passing a test. I know I want to spend more time with SCCM and SCOM and how they can improve my virtual machine management and performance. While these items were outside the cope of the exam, they are key to deploying and managing a fully dynamic datacenter.
Until next time,
Rob