Self-study Vs training courses

MysticalRain

I am currently off work with an injury and consequently have loads of time on my hands - for the next 3 months at least. I am a total newbie when it comes to Microsoft certification. The exam I'm thinking of doing is: MCSA Microsoft Certified Systems Administrator. As far as studying for it goes, how feasible is it to do a self-study course in preparation for the exams (are there any good ones available?). Unfortunately I'm not able to attend any training courses due to the fact that I am housebound as a result of the injury. I have about two years experience doing the mostly desktop support stuff with MS Exchange and Active Directory.

Thanks in advance.

Static M.e.

Hi MysticalRain,

Sorry to hear your housebound! sounds serious!

To try and answer your questions;

how feasible is it to do a self-study course in preparation for the exams

Generally what I recommend for people that want to self study is get your self some virtual server software, create some images and practice on them.
At the very least it will teach you about Virtual Machines which is a must these days. Then get some books do a little reading and play around with your virtual machines.

You also need to decide in advance what paths you plan on taking to maximise your chances of achieving your MSCA and to maximise the amount of Certs you can get from getting that MSCA.

First off, you say you have been working Desktop Support for 2 years. What exactly have you been working on? What are you most comfortable with?
Are you running Vista or XP on your machines? Your AD experiance is that changing passwords\creating accounts? or have you been creating GPO's? OU's? any sort of design work? How well do you know Exchange? Do you work with ISA at all?

If you could answer those questions, I can tell what I think would be the easist way for you to get your MCSA and\or MCSE after that.
(You can PM me if you dont feel like sharing that Information online)

MysticalRain

Thanks for replying. It's just some cartilage damage in my legs. It is not too painful. But it will take months before a doctor can get around to diagnosing and fixing the problem. Bloody health service.

I have used pretty much every version of Windows up to, but not including, Windows Vista. That would include basic knowledge of Windows server 2003 as well. I have zero experience with ISA unfortunately. I have done a lot of trouble shooting with IIS and website related issues for hosting companies.

My experience with active directory would be mostly at the lower end of the scale: password resets and account creation. I would probably have a basic to medium knowledge of exchange.

The rest would be the usual support for MS Office and fixing hardware related problems, plus support for custom-built applications for various companies. I've done a lot of scripting work as well with VBScript and Powershell, plus a bit of web development.


These are the paths I'm interested in, although it would be for Windows server 2008 at this point. Would there be much training material out there yet on 2008?

Managing and Maintaining a Windows Server 2003 Environment
http://www.microsoft.com/learning/exams/70-290.mspx

Implementing, Managing, and Maintaining a Windows Server 2003 Network Infrastructure
http://www.microsoft.com/learning/exams/70-291.mspx

Would you recommend MS Virtual PC or VMware? I have copies of both. But have only really played around with MS Virtual PC to a limited extent.

Stephen

I found the MCSA and MCSE easy to self-study for but I use most of the stuff involved in the exams every day in my job. If I hadn't that practical experience of it I don't think I would have had a hope of doing them that easily.

MysticalRain

Stephen wrote: »

I found the MCSA and MCSE easy to self-study for but I use most of the stuff involved in the exams every day in my job. If I hadn't that practical experience of it I don't think I would have had a hope of doing them that easily.

That definitely helps of course. What sort of training products/books did you use?