Exam Reviews
MCSE Marathon
The Windows 2000 Accelerated exam lets you prove mastery in four areas-and it's free! This coaching guide warms you up properly for your four hours of exertion.
Wow! Microsoft finally gets it. A single exam that enables
you to demonstrate that you’ve updated your core competency
skills from NT 4.0 to Win2K—and it’s free! If you prepare
well for this exam, with emphasis on what has changed
from NT 4.0, you have a pretty good chance of proving
your technical expertise in Win2K in a single four-hour
sitting at a cost of $0.00.
Now that I’ve made this sound
so great, you must be waiting for me to drop the other
shoe, so here it is: First, the exam is pretty well written
and reasonably difficult, so you won’t be able to skate
through with some light reading and a little lab work.
Second, if you fail it, there are no second chances—you
then have to take 70-210, 70-215, 70-216, and 70-217 to
demonstrate core competency in Win2K.
| Windows
2000 Accelerated Exam (70-240) |
Reviewer’s
Rating: “This test includes a mix
of many of the most difficult topics from
the 70-210, 70-215, 70-216, and 70-217
exams.”
Title:
Microsoft Windows 2000 Accelerated Exam
for MCPs Certified on Microsoft Windows
NT 4.0
Current Status:
Live until Dec. 31, 2001.
Number of Questions:
97
Time Allowed:
Four Hours
Who should take
it? MCPs and MCSEs who have passed
the three NT 4.0 exams (70-67, 70-68
and 70-73). Counts as four core exams
for Win2K MCSE track.
What course prepares
you?
- For experienced MCSEs who want to
quickly update skills to Win2K:
- No. 1560: Updating Support
Skills from NT 4.0 to Win2K; Five
days.
- For people who are new to NT:
- No. 2151: Win2K Network & OS
Essentials; Five days.
- No. 2152: Supporting Win2K
Pro and Server; Five days.
- No. 2153: Supporting a Network
Infrastructure; Five days.
- No. 2154: Implementing and Administering
Directory Services; Five days.
- No. 2150: Designing a Secure
Windows 2000 Network.
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The Exam Experience
This is a long exam broken into four
distinct parts—Professional, Server, Networking, and Directory
Services. Within each section you can go back to review
and change answers, but once a section is complete and
you’ve gone on to the next section, you can’t review or
change answers in the previous section. Each section has
its own time limit, and if you add them up, you come up
with three hours and 55 minutes. Tack on an additional
five minutes for accepting the NDA agreement, and you
come up with a total time limit of four hours. If you
tend to use all of the available time when you take an
exam, be careful because the clock is running non-stop.
If you pause between sections to take a few deep breaths
and to clear your head before tackling the next section,
beware that you might get to the last section and have
less than the full amount of time scheduled for that section
because of the four-hour limit.
The four parts of the exam are given
in random order, as are the questions within each section.
When you finally get to the end of the exam, don’t expect
to see the standard scoring bar comparing your score against
the required score. This exam is like a black box—you
enter your answers to the questions, and at the end it
displays a single screen with text informing you that
you’ve either passed or failed.
Professional
This section of the exam tests you
on the objectives for 70-210. Your focus in preparing
for this section should be, “What has changed since NT
Workstation 4.0?” If you were tested on it in NT 4.0,
you probably won’t be tested on it again here. So, what
has changed? A lot, starting with the installation process.
Win2K has a new network service call Remote Installation
Services, or RIS, which enables you to quickly and easily
set up Win2K Professional on client computers without
using a boot disk.
Tip: Be sure you know which
servers are required on the network for RIS to work correctly.
Know which types of images can be stored on the RIS server,
how they’re created, and how they’re used. Know which
types of client computers are supported or aren’t. In
other words know RIS inside and out.
Another big change is in the Network
and Dial-Up Connections folder. You can create many more
types of connections in Win2K than you could in NT 4.0.
In addition, Internet Connection Sharing is now supported
on Win2K Professional.
Tip: Be sure you’re totally
comfortable setting up any type of connection, including
dial-up, direct, VPN and so on. Also be sure you know
exactly what happens when you configure Internet Connection
Sharing and the effects it has on your network.
Win2K now enables users to encrypt
files using the Encrypting File System. Get familiar with
how this works; how to configure it; and, most important,
how to recover files that have been encrypted by users
whose accounts have been disabled or deleted.
Finally, just in case you forgot, Win2K
uses TCP/IP as its primary protocol. Be cognizant of common
TCP/IP configuration problems, such as DHCP server unavailability,
incorrect name server and gateway addresses, and incorrect
subnet masks.
Tip: Remember that if a
computer comes up with an IP address that starts with
169.254, that computer is configured to get its IP address
from a DHCP server and is unable to contact it; so the
computer has used the automatic IP addressing feature
included in Win2K to assign itself an IP address.
Server
This section focuses on the objectives
for 70-215, again with an emphasis on what’s new. This
section had more questions than any other, and you should
be prepared for several areas of focus regarding Win2K
Server. A big one is disks. You should know how to install
drivers for a third-party RAID controller or any disk
controller not listed on the HCL. Also, Win2K has introduced
a new disk-partitioning scheme called a dynamic disk.
Tip: Be sure you know how
to convert a disk from basic to dynamic and the different
types of volumes you can create on basic and dynamic disks.
What happens to NT 4.0 fault- tolerant volumes when they’re
upgraded? How do you recover from failures on fault-tolerant
volumes created on basic or dynamic disks?
Terminal Services is a feature included
in Win2K Server; you should know how to install it, configure
it, and install applications in it. Be sure you understand
when to install applications from Control Panel and when
to install them by using the Change User command. Get
comfortable with the various licensing modes of Terminal
Services and how to configure them.
Learn all you can about driver signing,
what it is, how it works, and how to configure it. Refresh
your understanding of Gateway Services for NetWare and
how to configure it in a TCP/IP environment. Also review
bindings and how to configure them to optimize network
traffic.
There are a ton of security changes
in Win2K. You should be fully comfortable with the new
set of tools, including Security Configuration and Analysis,
Security Templates, and Secedit.exe. Also, NTFS permissions
have changed significantly. Win2K now supports inheritance
of permissions from one folder to their contents, including
subfolders and files. Be sure you understand the implications
of this and how to configure NTFS permissions in Win2K.
Finally, you should understand how
to use Windows backup to back up and restore files and
system state data on the local computer and over the network.
Be sure you know exactly what’s included in system state
data and how to use Windows backup to back up and restore
it as well.
Networking
This section covers the objectives
for the 70-216 networking exam. Networking itself hasn’t
changed significantly since NT 4.0, but there have been
a lot of new features added in Win2K. The DNS server has
an expanded role in Win2K and now supports dynamic updates,
incremental zone transfers, and SRV records.
Tip: Be sure you know how
to configure forward and reverse lookup zones, zone transfers,
and Active Directory integrated zones. Remember that only
Active Directory integrated zones support secure dynamic
updates.
DHCP has a ton of new features in Win2K,
including superscopes, multicast scopes, and DNS integration.
Be sure you know how to configure the options for dynamic
DNS update to support various types of client computers.
Learn how to use superscopes to manage scopes across multiple
DHCP servers and how to configure DHCP scope options,
including vendor-specific options.
Certificate services is growing up—it’s
now a standard part of the server OS. Certificates can
now be used for authentication, to secure Web servers,
for IPSEC encryption, and various other uses.
Tip: Be sure you know all
of the types of Certificate Authorities that Win2K can
be configured as, when to use each one, and when to integrate
one with a commercial CA such as VeriSign.
Routing and Remote Access is now a
core part of the OS. Lots of new features have been added,
including IGMP, OSPF, RIP version 2, and so on. Also,
it now supports remote access policies and profiles. Understand
how to configure remote access policies and how they operate
in mixed mode vs. how they operate in native mode. Also,
be sure you know exactly what happens if you delete the
default policy. Explore both unicast and multicast routing
configurations.
Tip: Don’t forget to practice
setting up the various VPN options, including PPTP and
L2TP over IPSEC. Be sure you know which types of encryption
can be used with each.
Last but not least is IPSEC itself.
Be sure you know what it is, how it works, and how to
configure and monitor it. Be familiar with the three default
Group Policy options for configuring IPSEC and when to
use each.
Directory Services
The last section of this test is directory
services; of course, it covers the objectives of 70-217.
You don’t need to know how to design an Active Directory
(AD) structure to pass this section, but you’d better
know how to implement one! One of the biggest features
of AD is Group Policy. Group Policy lets you configure
a variety of options on client computers and servers,
including Windows settings, user settings, and a large
variety of security settings. Make sure you understand
how Group Policy is applied to users and computers and
how inheritance works.
Tip: Be sure you thoroughly
understand how to use Group Policy to deploy software
applications to users and computers and the various options
for doing so. Understand the options that are available
when using native Windows Installer files (.msi files)
vs. creating an installation script in a .zap file.
Remember that you can back up AD and
other system state data on a domain controller by using
Windows Backup, still called Ntbackup. Be sure you know
how to restore AD information by using ntdsutil.exe to
perform an authoritative restore.
Tip: To restore AD, you
need to boot the computer in a special mode called Directory
Services Restore mode. Write this on your forehead in
large block letters.
Don’t forget the basic configuration
options for managing replication—sites, subnets, and site
links. Be sure you know how to use and configure each
of these objects and how to make sure a domain controller
actually appears in the appropriate site.
To maintain the integrity of AD, there
are five types of operations masters: the Schema Master,
the Domain Naming Master, the RID Master, the PDC Emulator,
and the Infrastructure Master. Know where to place each
of these operations masters in your enterprise and know
what the effect of a failed master is for each. Also know
which roles are forest-wide and which roles are only domain-wide.
Tip: Learn how to use the
various administrative tools to transfer operations master
roles and how to use ndtsutil.exe to both transfer and
seize the various roles. Be sure you know when a role
can be transferred and when it must be seized.
Parting Shot
As you’d expect for something that lasts four hours,
this is a comprehensive exam. When you get ready for it,
be sure to prepare for all four sections. Don’t assume
that because you’re strong in one section, you can use
your high score there to offset a lower score in another
section. As I mentioned earlier, this exam is a black
box, and no scoring or other section-specific information
is supplied. Microsoft hasn’t publicly stated whether
a single combined score is used to compute your passing
score or whether you must pass each section individually.
I recommend you prepare for this exam as if you were going
to take the four core exams individually to give yourself
the best chance for success.
If you plan to use course 1560 to prepare,
supplement the networking material in it with more information
on remote access policies, certificates, and both unicast
and multicast routing. Good luck!
70-210: Administering
Win2K Pro
70-215: Administering
Win2K Server
70-216: Administering
a Win2K Network
70-217: Administering
Win2K Directory Services
Your
Guide to Victory on Your 70-240 Quest