MCTS Self-Paced Training Kit (Exams 70-648 & 70-649): Transitioning Your MCSA/MCSE to Windows Server® 2008 (Hardcover)

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Product Description

Ace your preparation for the skills measured by MCTS Exams 70-648 and 70-649 and on the job. Work at your own pace through a series of lessons and reviews that fully cover the objectives from both upgrade exams. Then, reinforce and apply what you ve learned through real-world case scenarios and practice exercises. This official Microsoft study guide is designed to help you make the most of your study time. Maximize your performance on the exams by learning to: Transition from IPv4 to IPv6 addressing and services Enable remote and wireless access, authentication, and Network Access Protection (NAP) Use server roles to encrypt data and protect intellectual property Manage disaster recovery, software updates, and network traffic Identify and troubleshoot performance issues on local and remote computers Configure and support Terminal Services Configure a Web services infrastructure using IIS 7.0 Assess your skills with the practice tests on DVD. You can work through hundreds of questions using multiple testing modes to meet your specific learning needs. You get detailed explanations for right and wrong answers including a customized learning path that describes how and where to focus your studies. Your kit includes: 15% exam discount from Microsoft. Offer expires 12/31/13. Details inside. Official self-paced study guide. Practice tests with multiple, customizable testing options and a learning plan based on your results. 500+ practice and review questions. Case scenarios, exercises, and best practices. 120-day trial of Windows Server 2008 Enterprise. Webcasts from Microsoft experts and sample chapters from related Microsoft Press books. Fully searchable eBook of this guide.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 976 pages
• Publisher: Microsoft Press; Har/Dvdr edition (March 18, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0735626332
• ISBN-13: 978-0735626331
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.5 x 2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #15,337 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Helpful in passing 70-649 exam, July 16, 2009

By	Steven L. Umbach (Bartlett, Il United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I recently passed the 70-649 exam with good scores and this book, 70-648/70-649 Transitioning Your MCSA/MCSE to Windows Server 2008 Trainng Kit, was very helpful. However the text of this book alone, nor any other, most likely would not allow one to pass the 70-649 exam that covers a lot of territory via 3 in 1 exam. But if you have several hours [let's say over 100] minimum hands on experience with Windows 2008 exploring it's capabilities and developing expertise for, either on the job or in your training lab, including Active Directory and Roles/Features covered by the exam and remember most of what you learned obtaining your MCSE 2003 you are well on your way to passing the 70-649.

The labs in the book were helpful if you do not have hands on with the topic or want more in depth as were the URL links to additional info sources if you feel you want more detail as configuration info in some cases was sparse BUT keep in mind that there are entire dedicated books covering topics on most of the chapters in this book . Some of the topics such as ADFS and ADRM are very complicated. I did not do the labs in total for those, other then installing the roles and configuring them as much as I could, but read through them until I understood what was being accomplished. The questions on the exam for those topics did not expect you to know configuration in great detail but you need to know in general what they are used for, high level how they work, the flow of the processes, and how authentication is accomplished.

The exam focuses heavily on what is new with Windows 2008 and assumes you have retained your MCSE 2003 knowledge about networking, DNS, Group Policy, Active Directory, forests, global catalog server, trusts, sites, replication, etc. If not I suggest you also study with the Microsoft Press books for 70-640 and 70-642 or if you want some extra reinforcement on those topics.

I found that IPV6 in the book to be a bit overwhelming as in "do I really need to know how to subnet IPV6 and all the interim solutions such as Toredo". There were no hard IPV6 questions on the exam and I believe I had only 1 question. Knowing basics such as what is the IPV6 equivalent of an IPV4 private/public/APIPA address and how to troubleshoot IPV6 connectivity using basically same tools you use for IPV4.

I found the chapter on IIS7 very helpful in learning the new management interface, which has been totaly revamped, and new features such as management delegation and additional configuration for application pools such as recycling, and was all that was needed for the exam. There were also plenty of command line examples for IIS7 and other topics throughout the book and you will see a fair amount of those on the exam where you need to choose the correct command for a task.

The exam places great emphasis on security including what remote solutions need only port 443 TCP open in the firewall, certificates needed for SSL and implementing client trust for such certificates, solutions for revoked certificates, which authentication methods use certificates, CA types and hierarchy to use, distributing certificates to internal and external computers/users, Terminal Services, minimizing risk of having a domain controller in a branch office, and when to use ipsec/EFS/Bit Locker for a stated scenario and which one accomplishes the task. I felt the book did a good job covering those topics.

In addition to this book it would be well worth your while to study Microsoft documentation on what is new in Windows 2008, and individual what is new papers such as for Terminal Services. I felt that I easily got my moneys worth with this study guide.

EDIT 09/05/09: I recently completed my MCITP for Server Administrator and Enterprise Administrator. As the Microsoft Press books mention using Hyper-V to create virtual machines was extremely helpful in my learning process. I found that the ASRock A780GXE mainboard [around $80] with the latest bios update and using a AMD Phenom II quad core processor worked great for Hyper-V and has 4 RAM sockets. Don't assume any modern mainboard or processor will support Hyper-V. Hyper-V is easy to learn. Just remember to install the Hyper-V Integration Services on any guest OS you install right after the install to get networking and the mouse to work correctly! I believe you also need SP2 for W2003 and SP3 for XP for Integrations Services to install.

7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Spotty writing, missing a lot of material, May 10, 2009

By	Cthulhucalling - See all my reviews

About myself: I've been an MCSE for 10 years. I'm also a CCNA, RHCE and CISSP. I've had to read a *lot* of manuals and study guides over the years.

I'm a fan of the Microsoft training books and have found them to be excellent resources for preparing for Microsoft certification exams. I originally ordered the Syngress book while waiting for MS finally print theirs...Unfortunately, this book is far below the standard that has been set by its predecessors.

After only 3 chapters, I'm about to toss this book into the nearest wood chipper and go back to using the Syngress one.

Chapter 1 dives straight into IPv6 and breathlessly screams through a very brief description on what it's capable of, Microsoft's implementation of it, notation, scope.... it leaves a lot to be desired.

If you're studying for this exam and using this book, do find supplementary material on IPv6- you'll need it.

Chapter 3 is a complete abortion, and where I found myself thinking that I wasted $45. The instructions on setting up VPN is confusing for it references screens and options that I couldn't find for the life of me. It also fails to mention until MUCH further down the chapter that adding roles to RRAS requires deactivating the service and unconfiguring it. If you're following along with the book, you're going to be wondering how the hell to "Bring up the RRAS Wizard".

Details into NPS is similarly scant, and doesn't go into detail, leaving a LOT of questions unanswered. It seemed more of a "do this, this and this, and hey! it works!". It's stuff like this that devalues the MCSE - excuse me, MCTS now- and why there's tons of "paper MCSEs" walking around that know only how to do whatever was in the book they read.

By the time I got to the scenario questions, I just about gave up in disgust. The second scenario question asks about setting up 802.1x for a company with standalone servers... unfortunately there was ZERO mention of how to set up standalone servers. The answer to the scenario question offered some hints, but I had to go reading through a MS blog entry to figure out what was going on.

Do yourselves a favor- even if you're going to buy this book anyway, don't let this be your only study guide.

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Buy the separate 640, 642, and 643 books instead, August 1, 2009

By	John Day "computer geek" (Phoenix, Arizona) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This is the book NOT to buy for the 70-649 test. If you don't believe me, go to a brick and mortar book store, and read the first 20 pages of chapter 1, lesson 1, and you will see what I mean. I cannot imagine suffering through an additional 800+ pages of this. Zzzzzzzzzzzz...

Unfortunately, I can't recommend the Syngress 70-649 book either. I used, and really liked, the Syngress series for MCSE 2003, but the W2K8 70-649 book is written by a different team than the MCSE 2003 series, and is extremely verbose. While the Syngress book is clearly better than this book, it is still not all that great.

Here is what I DO recommend to study for the 70-649 upgrade test, and sorry, but it is a bit expensive: buy the separate Microsoft 70-640, 70-642 and 70-643 books. The 70-640 book is particularly good, and while as an MCSE 2003, it covers some familiar ground, that isn't really all that bad to brush up on things.

I can also recommend (but unfortunately very $$$), the CBT Nuggets 70-649 video course by Tim Warner. It is very well done. Highly recommended.