70-296: Planning, Implementing, and Maintaining a Microsoft Windows 2003 Server Environment for an MCSE certified on Windows 2000
Are you looking to upgrade your Windows 2000 certification to Windows 2003? This exam is for you. Be prepared to demonstrate your knowledge by
performing hands-on configuration changes and by answering real-world case study questions.
By David M Davis
December 2003 – Exam 70-296 is for individuals who are already certified with a Windows 2000 MCSE. To obtain your MCSE under Windows 2003,
you need to take this exam plus exam 70-292 (click here to see that review, which I wrote). As this is an upgrade exam, it does not
rehash the basics that you should already know, but instead, it builds on them and covers new 2003 features.
For those who have already read my information on Microsoft’s new testing methods, you can skip to the next section. For those who are taking
a Windows 2003 exam for the first time, please read on.
Improved testing methodology
I’ve had the privilege of watching the Microsoft’s testing methods evolve from the simple multiple-choice questions on the Windows NT 4 tests
to the advanced methods on these Windows 2003 tests. What is different about these tests? Well, primarily, it is the “real world focus”.
This “real world focus” is shown with the new types of questions. They are dubbed: “hot area”, “active screen”, “drag and drop”, and “build list and
reorder”, “create a tree”, and simulations. You can review examples of these at the
Microsoft Learning Innovations site. At this site, you can even
download a very good demo of the different type of exam questions. Of course the demo does not cover any topics that are even close to actual exam
topics as it is only made to demonstrate the latest testing innovations. From the simulation, here is an example of what a hot spot
question would look like:
As you can see, the screen is divided up into panes. You must configure the screen properly to complete the task requested of you. One complaint
I have with the new format is that, with some questions, the screen gets split into about 5 panes. The testing monitors I used looked like
they were 17” monitors at 800x600 resolution. At this size, the panes were tiny but held large (and important) amounts of information. This meant
that scrolling up and down, left and right, was constantly necessary to answer the question. Lots of scrolling makes answering more difficult as
you can never see all of the question, answers, drag & drop, or choices all at the same time.
Be prepared for lots of reading on this test as most every test question begins with a long, complex scenario. Usually, the answer to the question
asked depends not on what you read at the end of the scenario but what you read in the middle or the beginning of the scenario.
In my opinion, having to configure a Windows feature will greatly help to improve the value of the Microsoft certification to employers. If you
can prove that you can configure something in a hands-on test, then you can very likely configure it when asked to configure it in a workplace.
One complaint frequently made about the previous methods of Microsoft testing was that “just because you can memorize answers to multiple-choice
test questions, this has no bearing on whether you could actually do it in the real-world”.
Another way that this “real world focus” is shown is in scenarios. The new scenarios provide focus on issues that network administrators face
daily. For instance, what multi-site network administrator hasn’t had an issue with congested WAN links due to misconfigurations, new
features, or changes that were implemented? What system administrator hasn’t had to deal with a system going down and having to restore
from backup tapes? Who isn’t concerned with better securing servers and network today? These are examples of scenarios and problems that
might be provided, and then you would be asked a question like “what do you do?”
Reviewer’s Take
Part of the title of this exam is “planning”. If you have taken exams that deal with design or planning before, you know that these types of
exams are “wordy”. If you have not, be prepared to spend most of your test time reading complex scenarios that will probably need to be read
multiple times. In terms of exam format, I was presented with a 70-296 exam that had a standard format, not adaptive. I could go forward,
backward, and mark questions for later...
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