The majority of Microsoft MCSE exams have been designed to test your knowledge of the hardware and software required for a functional and efficient networking environment. Although there were some short scenario questions that involved deciding which solution was best for a fictitious company, there was no real focus on how your decisions would affect the company in detail on a day-to-day basis and over the long term. You were never asked to make a compromise based on departmental chain of command or the type of IT staffing the company has on board. You were only concerned with the technical feasibility of a particular solution.
That has now changed. In an effort to make the tests a better judge of real-world performance, the actual business environment must be taken into account. Consider the Designing series of tests to be a middle-ground between the old MCSE tests and a Cisco exam where they put you into a room with a disabled network and say “Okay, you want to get certified . . . fix it.”
Don’t be afraid of these exams. Be afraid of your first two weeks on the job if you can’t pass these exams. If you have any on-the-job experience in technical support or network administration, you’ll be fine with the business end of these questions. You will, however, need to be very organized and be able to read through a list of requirements to decide the priority and feasibility of each piece of your solution. Just like real life. Be sure to have read the Active Directory chapter before you continue.
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Need to Know |
Reference |
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How to analyze the business needs for a unified directory structure | |
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How to manage the interconnectivity of hardware and data | |
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How to analyze the geographic requirements of a business model | |
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How to analyze business communication requirements | |
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How to analyze a company’s IT infrastructure | |
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How to analyze Active Directory’s interactions with other directory types |
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Need to Apply |
Reference |
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Plan a replication strategy | |
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Plan a desktop operating system strategy | |
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Analyze Active Directory’s impact on the existing network | |
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Design an Active Directory forest and tree structure | |
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Design an Active Directory naming scheme | |
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Design an Active Directory Organizational Unit structure | |
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Design the placement of operations masters | |
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Design the placement of global catalog servers | |
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Design the placement of domain controllers | |
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Design the placement of DNS servers |