70-290 Study Guide

**craigie** · #1 19-Sep-2008, 07:23 PM

Study Time: One & Half Months (Two Hours Daily Min)
Materials: MS Press Book 70-290 & CBT Nuggets
Mock Exam: MS Readiness Review Suite
Exam: 30 Questions With 6 Sims

Lab

2 x Windows 2003 Servers Enterprise R2 Edition
2 x Windows XP Pro SP2 Clients

Configuration

Server01 Roles

Domain Controller, DNS, DHCP, Terminal Server & File Server

Server02 Roles

WSUS, Print Server & IIS

Deployment

My main aim here was to try and mimic my work environment as much as possible. I would also try everything that in the MS Press Book and ensured that it worked. In the end my lab consisted of the following:

Auditing configured Audit Success/Failures for Object Access & Logon Events

Backups configured various backups including Normal, Differential & Incremental

Disks configured RAID 1 using Dynamic Disks and installed multiple volumes. Also used Disk Quotas.

Offer Remote Assistance enabled Client > Client, Server > Client, Server > Server, Server > Client

Organizational Units created OU’s for Employees, XP Computers, Servers etc to apply Group Policy to.

Performance Logs & Alerts configured multiple counters including disk space percentage free with alerts.

Permissions configured various folders with access for different Departments and Users. Using the explicit Allow and Deny feature.

Printers created Printer Pools for each of the Groups, Accounts, IT, Marketing, Sales and used IIS Internet Printing (have to say that going to Server02\Printers is awesome, it only shows the printers the User can access and you just ‘click’ connect!)

Request Remote Assistance enabled Client > Client, Server > Client, Server > Server, Server > Client

Roaming Profiles configured standard desktops, with a mapped H: drive for Personal Documents, F: for files, with shortcuts for Terminal Server and Offer Remote Assistance. Disabled features such as Windows Messenger, Windows Movie Maker in Active Directory.

Terminal Server & Terminal Server Web with Adobe Acrobat Reader deployed.

Users & Groups imported using DSAdd 20 Users each for Sales, Marketing, Accounts and IT. Privileges for IT to RDP, and perform various admin tasks such as view Audit Logs and logon to Servers.

WSUS deployed WSUS using Client Side Targeting for updates to come from the WSUS. Deployed SP3 using WSUS to my two XP Clients.

The main piece of advice I would give, is to do something every day towards your exam (whether you feel like it or not) this keeps the momentum going and also keeps you in good habits.

1. I start of reading the MS Press book and make notes on relevant points that I could either forget or need to reinforce. I normally study for around 2 hours per day weekdays and 2 hours per day at the weekends. I manage to get the MS Press book down to around 150 pages of A4 note paper.

2. I would then at the end of each Chapter install and use whatever I had learnt from the MS Press book, configuring it to mimic my working environment.

3. Once I have finished the MS Press book, I then use CBT Nuggets. When I have watched the first objective video, I then take the Objective Exam in on the MS Press CD. The purpose of this is to reinforce the oldest material that I have learnt.

4. I then rebuilt my whole entire Lab, to reinforce everything that I had learnt.

5. I then keep going over my Notes on a daily basis at work, during lunch, in the evening. Just a brief flick threw.

6. The last of all I take the MS Readiness Review tests on a daily basis. Normally do around one a day for three days before the exam as not to get to many questions repeated. Also in my limited experience so far, the MS Readiness Review has always been alot harder than the exam.

7. Take the exam!

Hope that helps some people out and if you have any questions please ask.