Well, I passed the 70-293 exam yesterday afternoon. I have done the 70-270, 70-290, 70-291, 70-299, and 70-293, and I found 70-293 to be the most difficult and time-consuming MS exam I have done (but I still got an 850). I think that part of my problem is that I expected it to be a beefed up version of the 70-291 exam, and to an extent it was, but I spent my time reviewing all of the subject material instead of just focusing on certain areas. In hindsight I think that was a mistake. The 70-293 seemed to me like a combination of 70-291 + 70-299 + NLB and clustering.
Maybe it was just a fluke in my case, but of the 43 questions that I had at least 20 of them were security related. When I say security I mean things like security templates, IPSec, certificates and PKI, SMB signing, EFS, VPN, and firewalls/packet filtering. I'm glad I had already passed the 70-299, because I didn't spend much time reviewing security for the 70-293. I had another 8-10 questions on NLB and clustering, including how to recover from failed clusters, restoring from backups, etc.
The questions and simulations on this test were more complex than on the other tests I have taken. Where previous test questions would usually focus on only one concept, many of these questions involved multiple concepts or technologies being used together. Instead of asking you to do one thing, the simulations usually had 3 or 4 different components to them that needed to be done, usually requiring different tools on the simulated system. There were also a fair number of questions/sims where you had to know how to resolve conflicts, which settings take precedence when conflicting settings are applied, etc.
I'm not complaining or anything. I think that it's a good test of how well someone understands how the technology works together, but I was taken a bit by surprise with the complexity when compared to previous exams. Hopefully this post will help someone else avoid that surprise.
Now on to 70-294 and 70-298.
________________________________________
CompTIA A+, Network+, Server+, Security+
MCP, MCSA:Security 2003
Maybe it was just a fluke in my case, but of the 43 questions that I had at least 20 of them were security related. When I say security I mean things like security templates, IPSec, certificates and PKI, SMB signing, EFS, VPN, and firewalls/packet filtering. I'm glad I had already passed the 70-299, because I didn't spend much time reviewing security for the 70-293. I had another 8-10 questions on NLB and clustering, including how to recover from failed clusters, restoring from backups, etc.
The questions and simulations on this test were more complex than on the other tests I have taken. Where previous test questions would usually focus on only one concept, many of these questions involved multiple concepts or technologies being used together. Instead of asking you to do one thing, the simulations usually had 3 or 4 different components to them that needed to be done, usually requiring different tools on the simulated system. There were also a fair number of questions/sims where you had to know how to resolve conflicts, which settings take precedence when conflicting settings are applied, etc.
I'm not complaining or anything. I think that it's a good test of how well someone understands how the technology works together, but I was taken a bit by surprise with the complexity when compared to previous exams. Hopefully this post will help someone else avoid that surprise.
Now on to 70-294 and 70-298.
________________________________________
CompTIA A+, Network+, Server+, Security+
MCP, MCSA:Security 2003