Exam dumps
Unfortunately I’ve received numerous requests for an exam dump of 74-409 which really upsets me.
For those that are not aware of it, you are not allowed to share or use exam dumps. “If Microsoft learns that a candidate used a “brain dump” site to prepare for an exam, this candidate will be permanently banned or prohibited from taking any future Microsoft Certification exams and may be decertified from the Microsoft Certification Program. In addition, test scores and certifications, if applicable, may be revoked. These actions may be taken even if the candidate did not intend to defraud the Microsoft Certification Program.”
For more information, see:
http://borntolearn.mslearn.net/btl/b/weblog/archive/2013/01/02/why-brain-dumps-are-bad.aspx
Preparing to take the exam
This is generally what I do for preparing to take the exam:
- Determine the skills that are measured in the exam 74-409
- View the online course Server Virtualization with Windows Hyper-V and System Center at Microsoft Virtual Academy (MVA)
- Reflect how confident you are that the online course has provided you with sufficient skills to take the exam.
- Optionally enhance your knowledge using:
- If you (know someone who) attended the course for this exam (20409A-ENU), then be sure to take a look at the book. It contains a lot of details that are missing from the jump start videos.
- Windows Server 2012 R2 Private Cloud Virtualization and Storage Poster and Mini-Posters
- Community/user created content for taking the exam
–Study resources 74-409 Server Virtualization with Windows Server Hyper-V and System Center
–Born To Learn wiki
–Veeam Study guide
–Free MCP Training study guide (in progress)
- Blogs by people that already took the exam, to see how they prepared.
- Recordings and slides of the Virtualization IT Camp
- Additional Hyper-V and Server 2012 R2 related courses on Microsoft Virtual Academy (MVA)
- Real life or virtual meetings, presentations and user groups. Microsoft has started a Microsoft User Group Portal wiki, but unfortunately it’s not widely being used yet. Therefore I suggest searching the internet or taking a look at the Microsoft Events website.
- Your own lab to work with the products. You can use the existing Microsoft Test Lab Guides (TLG) or if you don’t have the hardware for your lab, just browse the document.
- Technet library documentation about Hyper-V. This can also be downloaded here for offline use.
- Technet TechCenter
- Training videos. By example on YouTube, or from commercial companies like CBT Nuggets and PluralSight. Nowadays you can get monthly subscriptions or just get trials for a couple of days to help you get a good start.
- Great TechNet Blogs.
- Guided labs / guided experiences like by example the Microsoft Private Cloud Guided Labs. Note: these might not be updated to 2012 R2 yet, but they should provide you with a better understanding.
- Virtual labs (search for hyper or virtual machine manager)
- Twitter by following people with interesting information on Hyper-V, by searching for tweets containing hyperv or hyper-v or by connecting with the community.
- Forums to discuss and share information. Since I’m from the Netherlands I use Tweakers.net a lot and can be found discussing Microsoft Certification related stuff in the topic “[Microsoft Certified] Ervaringen en discussies”.
- Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V Best Practices (In Easy Checklist Form)
- Free e-books:
–Introducing Windows Server 2012 R2
–Microsoft System Center Microsoft System Center
–Windows Server 2012 R2 Overview White Paper
–Windows Server 2012 R2 Server Virtualization White Paper
- Printed books, but as far as I know there are no specific books yet for 74-409 and most books covering Windows Server 2012, Hyper-V or System Center 2012 have not yet been updated to the R2 release.
- Channel 9 to search for relevant content.
- Technet Video to search for relevant content.
- Server Posterpedia Windows store app or component architecture posters.
- Infrastructure Planning and Design (IPD) Guides
- Survival guides
Specific topics and resources I used while studying:
Read the rest of this entry »
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Nowadays more and more work, communication and collaboration involves multiple external parties. This can involve by example employees, customers, partners, suppliers, cloud providers/platforms/applications.
This means it is becoming increasingly important to have proper authentication and authorization methods in place for single sign on (SSO) so users can be more productive. Besides the ease-of-use It can also lead to better security.
Microsoft’s Active Directory Federation Services (ADFS) will make this possible. For more information on ADFS, here are some resources. Keep in mind though that while some information may be outdated, it will give you a broad idea of the concept and the inner workings. The current version of ADFS in Windows Server 2012 is 2.1 , while Windows Server 2008 uses 2.0
PS: Microsoft is moving more and more towards claims based authentication. Examples include Windows Server 2012 Dynamic Access Control and also SharePoint 2013 that has switched to claims based authentication by default now.
If you have some other resources that might be useful, please let me know so I can add them as well.
Tags: Access control, Active Directory, Active Directory Federation Services, ADFS, ADFS 2.0, ADFS 2.1, authentication, authorization, Azure, Cloud, configure, configuring, Deploy, deploying, Dynamic Access Control, federated identity, ForeFront UAG, IAAS, ICT, jump start, Microsoft, Microsoft Intune, Office 365, PKI, plan, security, Sharepoint, Sharepoint online, singe-sign-on, Single Sign On, SSO, Technet, Threat Management Gateway, TMG, UAG, Universal Access Gateway, virtual lab, Windows Azure, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2012
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Since I’m currently working with System Center Operations Manager 2012 (also often referred to as SCOM 2012 or OpsMgr 2012), I needed a testing environment.
Because time is precious, I want to minimize the time and effort needed to set it up. This is what I did:
- Install and configure Hyper-V on my Windows 8 laptop.
- Deploy a VM with Server 2012 Datacenter edition.
Configure a static IP address.
Configure AD DS / domain controller role.
Configure DHCP server role.
Configure DNS server role (if desirable, include DNS forwarder for internet DNS queries).
- Download and extract the pre-configured SCOM 2012 SP1 beta VHD (running Server 2012 Datacenter edition). System Center 2012 SP1 adds Windows Server 2012 SQL Server 2012 Support.
- Create a new VM for SCOM and configure it to use the downloaded pre-configured VHD.
Configure it with sufficient virtual CPUs and memory for the DB and the SCOM components.
- Start the SCOM VM, and follow the onscreen instructions. NOTE: First time configuration took about 1-2 hours, but this might be related to my hardware. Still it might be smart to plan the installation.
- Convert the Server 2012 Datacenter edition from ServerDatacenterEval to ServerDatacenter by running an elevated CMD as administrator and issuing the following command:
DISM /online /Set-Edition:ServerDatacenter> ProductKey:<productkey> /AcceptEula
Reboot.
- Replace the SCOM 2012 evaluation license with your own license using Operations Manager Shell:
Set-SCOMLicense -ProductId “yourlicensekey“
Reboot
Check the license using the Operations Manager Shell:
Get-SCOMManagementGroup | ft skuforlicense, version, timeofexpiration –a
- Shut down your SCOM 2012 VM.
- Shut down your AD DS / domain controller VM.
- Create a snapshot and/or export of both VM’s so you can more easily revert to a good starting point.
Also be sure to read Stefan Stranger’s blog post that goes into more detail with regards to the domain controller and automating the task for setting it up. It also includes screenshots to give you a better idea of the process.
PS: I love how Microsoft provides these pre-configured VHD’s. This has been great in the past, but now with client Hyper-V 3.0 in Windows 8 it saves me even more time because I don’t have to boot to Windows Server 2008 or Windows Server 2012 for Hyper-V.
Tags: Beta, blog, Hyper-V, Hyper-V 3.0, ICT, lab, Microsoft, Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2012, operations management, operations manager, Operations Manager 2012, OpsMgr, OpsMgr 2012, OpsMgr2012, SCOM, SCOM 2012, SCOM 2012 SP1, SCOM 2012 SP1 Beta, SCOM2012, Server 2012, service pack 1, SP1, System Center, System Center Operations Manager, System Center Operations Manager 2012, test, testing environment, virtual lab
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