but if you say that neither MS Press or Sybex books have been updated with R2 content/questions I dont know what to do... :-(
Hi avp144,
I'm preparing for 70-646 myself. I took 70-640 & 70-642 with two completely different approaches.
With 70-640, I worked with the Training kit. It was sincerely the biggest drag ever, the book was full of errors (google the long errata) and they expect you to expend lots of time learning powershell, which is not tested on, and neglect much
of the CLI detail, which IS tested on. I personally don't think the training kit is very high quality, and don't think it's very effective as a way of preparing to get certified.
With 70-642, I decided to avoid the MSPress and feel much better for it. Here's the approach I took... I went to the microsoft learning site and printed out the blue print (the tested objectives). I told my self, I'm going to start with
the first bullet and study it until I can honestly tell myself I have a solid understanding (or even mastery) of the topic. For example:
Here is the link to 646
http://www.microsoft.com/learning/en/us/exam.aspx?ID=70-646&locale=en-us from the skills measured, consider the following:
Monitoring and Maintaining Servers (20 percent)
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Implement patch management strategy. May include but is not limited to: operating system patch level maintenance, Windows Server Update Services (WSUS), application patch level maintenance
With that information in mind I may start my research here:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc708429(WS.10).aspx
(the technet page on WSUS.
Leveraging the virtualization platforms, including many of the decent free ones (like Oracle VirtualBox, VMWare Player, etc)you can get the hands on experience on each topic that is going to be tested.
With this approach, I hit near perfect marks on my Network Infrasctructure test, and can honestly say I will always prepare this way going forward. Trick is to give your self enough time to actually learn the material.
