Warami Technology Consulting

Yesterday, I managed to pass the MCTS 70-653 exam "Configuring Windows Small Business Server 2008". Whilst it's all fresh in the mind, I thought I'd blog a little on the approach I used to prepare for the test.

 
Courses and printed material for the 70-653 exam are fairly thin on the ground at the moment but the best primer is almost certainly Eriq Neale's Windows Small Business Server 2008 Unleashed book. I loaded this up into my Safari bookshelf and set about working my way through the 700 odd pages. The book is well written and quite comprehensive and easy enough to cover inside a few days.

Next up was a number of trial installations to get a good feel for the product itself. I won't delve into the hardware requirements for SBS 2008 but suffice to say you'll need a fairly well specified machine in order to have a good play around. Having something like an Action Pack subscription is a bonus (although you can download a trial version) and it also helps if you are in a position to migrate an old SBS 2003 server as this topic forms a reasonable part of the test objectives. If SBS 2008 is new to you then I would recommend doing at least a couple of installations and migrations in order to get a good feel for the process.

The learning plan for Configuring Windows Small Business Server 2008 is another key resource - links are available to all the key technet articles on SBS 2008. The document covering migration from SBS 2003 is definitely a must-read.

I'm also a big fan of the Pocket Consultant series of books and have the following on my bookshelf for reference:

• Windows Server 2008 Administrator's Pocket Consultant
• Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 Administrator's Pocket Consultant
• Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies Administrator's Pocket Consultant

I would definitely say that the effort required to pass depends a lot on prior knowledge of both SBS 2003 and Windows Server technologies in general. If you're already strong in these areas then it shouldn't take too much time to get up to speed with SBS 2008. Make sure you know the SBS 2008 management console inside out, get hot on collaboration, messaging and remote access technologies and you're pretty much certain to hit a good score.

Oh, and for the record my passing score was 894 - which probably means I got a handful of questions wrong. Not bad, but could do better!

Ps. For those of you who like to take practice tests from the likes of MeasureUp - I couldn't find anything for the 70-653 exam. I'd imagine this is just a timing thing and would expect them to appear in due course...

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